non-6-sided dice > number cubes

[James Harbeck]

>So the mathematicians have redefined "cube"? I would call the
>four-sided solid a "pyramid."
Not so much the mathematicians as certain education policy makers,
I'd say. Ones who can't seem to recognize an opportunity to teach
"tetrahedron," "heptahedron," etc.

I don't think four-sided dice (number tetrahedra) roll all that well,
but they seem to serve the purpose for many role-playing games. The
ones they use (along with various other aleatory polyhedra --
octohedra, decahedra, dodecahedra, icosahedra, and of course cubes,
all of which are generally referred to as X-sided dice in my
experience) have rounded vertices. They land with point up, of
course, so the numbers are written along the bottom edge of each face
-- i.e., each face has three numbers, one for each edge. One way of
getting around the rolling problem and still generate a number out of
4 is of course to use octohedra with two of each number.

James Harbeck.

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