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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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By now, most people have probably seen the youtube videos of Louis Zocchi's GenCon 2007 demonstration and explanation of manufacturing issues associated with dice. I watched the video and was quite interested, especially since I have a variety of polyhedral dice that are anything but "random" and really hate it when the introduction of chance in to my games isn't really chance. I'm sure most people are also familiar with players with their "lucky" dice and I've actually played in Warmachine/Hordes tournaments where I wondered if my opponent's dice weren't "off" given the frequency certain numbers tended to come up. Of course much of these phenomenon could be chalked up to dealing with a limited sample, but so can the belief that one's Chessex dice are fair.
In any event, I purchased a couple of of the GameScience sets to give them a try and then later picked up a couple more sets on sale, and so now own 5 sets of Precision dice - two gem sets and three opaque ones. The point of telling you this is that I'm reviewing multiple sets of dice here and so I hope my review is a little more indicative of the general quality of the dice, than the reviews you see of single sets on retailers' websites.
Options
GameScience precision 7-piece sets come in two varieties: Translucent, "gem" dice and the somewhat plainer "opaque" sets. Each set comes with 7 polyhedral dice covering all the standards: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and a d% (a double digit d10 for the 10s position).
You also have two options for each set - you can buy them un-inked or pre-inked. What that means is that the numbers are either pre-filled in or not (leaving the job to the purchaser). The difference in price between the two options is pretty steep: It's $4 more for the inked versions of the 7-piece sets. The GameScience website explains that the steep mark-up is because the dice are hand-inked (a labor intensive job which I can attest to having inked my own dice) - they are not dipped into paint and tumbled clean which is one of the reasons these dice retain their sharp edges. In any event, the website has info on how to ink the dice yourself - the recommend a fine-tipped, permanent marker or paint pen (for white) which is apparently what they use to complete the pre-inked versions. The un-inked versions also need to be buffed and cleaned up a bit to get rid of the blemish where the dice were cut from the sprue, something that can be accomplished with an emery board and some fine sandpaper
The Pros
Let's talk about the feel and accuracy of the dice. I've been using my sets for about a year and they definitely seem to be give a more even spread of results. Again, this is a purely subjective impression but one shared by most of the people I've introduced them to. For example, the kids at the gaming club where we used them for a 4E campaign, quickly refused to use the Chessex sets we have because some of the dice (the d20's in particular) in a couple of the sets came up with low rolls a lot. While much of this we can probably chalk up to bias, I do have at least a couple Chessex d20s that seem to have a tendency to come up on certain numbers far more often than chance.
In contrast, these dice "feel" precise - they have very sharp (and I do mean sharp, especially for the D8 which has points that could wound someone) edges and they behave as advertised in the video - they tumble a couple of times and stop dead. While some people might think that dice are supposed to roll all over the place, the fact that the GameScience dice behave just like machined, casino dice (I own a set of these too), attests to the fact that they're designed to be fair. It's also a big bonus, for me, because these dice are far less likely to roll off the table.
The dice, in a spartan, function-over-form kind of way, also look good. The opaque sets are plain but the plastic comes in nice colors. The gem dice actually do mimic the colors of many gemstones and also look good. Sure they're not incredibly beautiful, especially with the sprue-cut marks (which even when sanded smooth are readily visible), but they're nothing like the crappy dice that came in those old TSR box sets I grew up using. I should also point out that I hate "overly artistic" dice, like those made by Q-workshop since, at least for me, they're too damn difficult to read. Thus, the GameScience dice are a good match for what I like - fairness, elegance, & simplicity.
The Cons
Aside from being a bit pricey, which isn't exactly true since a set of Q-Workshops can be just as expensive and even Chessex dice aren't much cheaper ($8.75 vs. $12 from Gamestation for the inked version, or $8.75 vs. $8 if you ink the GS dice yourself). However, individual GameScience dice are appreciably more expensive ($2.25 for a d20) which means buying a few extras or a collection of d6's for your Burning Wheel game can be pretty cost prohibitive.
The major problem with the GameScience dice, however, is the inking. It is anything but permanent and it's not nearly as "simple" to do yourself as the GS site makes it out to be. Permanent inks (and I've tried 3 different types of high quality pens) do not adhere to the plastic; they rub off pretty quickly (less than 3 months of regular use). The other issue with inking the dice with the markers is that the ink, while it's not permanent within the grooves, does stain the faces permanently, leaving a smudged look to the faces if you're not careful. This is especially a problem with the white opaque dice, although it affects all of them to varying degrees. Thus the claim that you just "wipe the excess away with your thumb" isn't true because this can really exacerbate the issue if you're not careful. My white set, which I got on sale for $4, was the easiest to ink due to the high contrast, but also looks like crap, because of the staining on the faces. Of course, those were the first dice I tried to ink and thus suffered the most from my learning how to do it properly - my later dice look much better but still do have some staining in places.
I'd like to try a paint pen, but I've yet to find one that's fine enough to work with on the narrow grooves. I was actually tempted to pull out one of my fine brushes and hand paint the dice, but that's a lot of work and I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. That however, is going to be lot of work. One thing I have tried is using the old-school white or black crayon to color in the numbers but that didn't work at all - whether it's a change in the formulation of modern crayons (they're not as soft as I remember them back in the 1980s being), the plastic of the dice, or a combination of both factors, the crayon does not go into the grooves easily and what little does make it into the grooves doesn't stay put.
Which raises the question of whether I would have been better off paying the extra money for the pre-inked dice. I can't answer this definitively since I have only bought the un-inked versions to date, but looking up close at the pictures on the website (the bigger versions you get when you click on a picture) and reading through the reviews, it appears that the pre-inked dice aren't much better than mine - they're not inked solidly in some pictures and though 95% of them in the pictures look good, multiple reviews complain about sloppy or incomplete inking. Worse yet, if the ink is no more durable than the ones I've used (and I've used nothing but high quality brands), then you could be paying a hefty premium for a very temporary benefit. YMMV.
The other major problem, but one which is exclusively confined to the translucent, gem dice, is that they can be very hard, if not impossible, to read from a distance - it seems to me that the dice are actually too translucent. The clear ones I have, which are inked in dark blue, are impossible to read unless you cup your hand around them, due to the way the light refracts through the faces. The opaque dice, which are cheaper too, don't suffer from this issue (but are more prone to the aforementioned staining), so those are the ones I'd recommend to anyone.
Wrap Up
It may seem like I have a very negative view of GameScience dice after that last bit, but in reality I still like them and greatly prefer them over "prettier" dice - I like how they behave at the table (both probabilistically and how they roll) and the advantages, for me, outweigh the problems. I will admit that I wouldn't buy the gem-style dice again - they're simply too hard to read. The fact that the opaques are cheaper as well makes that decision a no-brainer for me.
I probably wouldn't bother trying to ink the dice with a marker either - I have a feeling that a fine brush and some enamel model paint is the solution to my problems and probably ultimately the longest lasting solution but I have yet to try this method.
Ultimately whether or not the GameScience dice are worth buying will depend on the way one views the nature of random rolls at the table, as well as the type of game you're playing. Games using dice pools (e.g., Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard, SilCore, etc) are far less prone to problems with "uneven" dice than games relying on single dice rolls. Similarly, the rounder the dice (which typically means the more faces but there are exceptions), the more potential issues that will come up with uneven result distributions. For me, I like knowing (thinking?) that whatever die I happen to pick up, my chances are the same at getting any given result and thus the GS dice have found a permanent place at my table for games using polyhedral sets.
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Bruce McGeorge
United States
Lawrenceburg
Indiana
Hey you kids, get off my Avatar!
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My experience is almost identical.
I have 2 sets, both bought at cons and inked by Gamescience. My purple-inked pink gem set was a mistake; they are very hard to read, and I rarely use them because of that. My white-inked, purple gem set is great.
Anecdotally, I completely agree that the dice feel more random. For 25+ years I was known as a very unlucky dice roller; since I switched to the Gamescience dice... well... not so much. It's likely all in my head, but that's fine by me.
I also agree about the Q-Workshop dice. I think some of the designs are really "kewl", but 85% of the line is nearly impossible for me to read.
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D. Quinn Nix
United States
Arvada
Colorado
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While we're on the subject of dice...
MY PET PEEVES ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S ROLE-PLAYING GAMING DICE:
1. "Cool" looking dice that are hard to read, e.g. red numbers on marbled purple & black dice, or dice with spidery or rune-like markings around each number . If a single dice roll takes you two seconds to read it, that's 1.5 seconds too long.
2. Miniature dice. I've yet to see an owner of these "cutesy-mini" dice, no matter how good his vision, not have to bow his head and squint his eyes – at least a little! – to see the tiny numbers rolled. Again, if a dice roll takes you two seconds to read it...
3. Giant dice. These obnoxious dice tend to roll too far and bump into or knock over other items on the table.
4. Metal or "dwarven" stone dice. Please! Not on my wife's expensive oak table.
5. "Spindle" dice. When rolling these dice, they take too long to come to a complete stop. (And they're kind of hard to read, too!)
6. Dice with faded ink or no ink at all. Go buy you some new dice!
7. "Unlucky" dice. First of all, you're being superstitious. Second, if you truly believe that d20 of yours is unlucky, then quit bringing it to the gaming sessions, already!
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Wigner's friend
United States
Metairie
Louisiana
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I just had a thought while reading the "cons" part of your review and thought 'what if I spray a clear coat on the die?' maybe a mat finish or even a glossy finish? would that effect the weight of the dice by any tangible amount?
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Re: Clear-coating the dice - I too thought about that but I would worry about it really ruining the finish (by drying foggy) or making them sticky. You have to be careful with clear finishes. However, if you're careful (think coats, can well shaken, proper temperature range), I can't see why it won't work.
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J Boyes
United States
Unspecified
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What about the old school using a crayon? I found wax stayed in the grooves a long time on the D&D dice.
Have you tried using mineral spirits or paint thinner to get rid of your smudging?
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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I did try using naptha to remove the smudging to no avail - it lightened it in places but on the white dice, it's permanent. Worse yet, it worked effectively on the ink in the grooves so that they lost most of the color (just the tinting/staining stuck around) when I tried to clean the faces.
You must have missed the comment regarding the crayons in the review - I too thought "ah, I'll just go old school" but the groves on the dice are smaller and the formulation of modern crayons must be different because they simply don't "melt" into the groves but rather the crayons crumble as you try to work them into the grooves. I still need to find one of the crayons from my TSR boxsets and see if it works any better.
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Kevin H.
United States
Crescent City
California
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Cynosure wrote: 3. Giant dice. These obnoxious dice tend to roll too far and bump into or knock over other items on the table.
I have a set of these, but I only pull them out for the "big" rolls. 
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Patrick Riley
United States
San Jose
California
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I like giant dice: they are easier to find when I inevitably drop them on the floor.
Back to the OT: the one thing I absolutely can't stand about the GS dice I bought is that the dice were numbered incorrectly. Maybe it was because I got an older set and they've fixed the problem, but even the d6 was off. What do I mean? I mean that opposite sides of a dN don't add up to N+1.*
Does this matter? No. Does it affect the randomness of the dice? No. Does it annoy my AR-ness and OCD-ness? Hell yes.
Plus, the d10 and percentile d10 (numbered 00, 10, 20, etc.) are numbered differently. And the percentile d10 clearly looks like they took they d10 mold and modified it with numbers. It looks ugly and unprofessional, like they only did a half-ass job of it.
* Alternatively, for a d10, I'll accept the sum to be N if you count the 0 as a zero. And for a d20, I'll accept the opposite sides to be M and 10+M (1/11, 2/12, ... 10/20), in homage to when d20s were numbered 0 to 9 twice with opposite sides being the same.
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Eric M. Aldrich I
United States
California
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Yeah, no kidding on the numbering. I have several sets of the 1980 vintage GameScience dice (pre d10, though I later picked up matching d10's). All of them have wonky numbering except the d20's which have the same digits opposite each other (and for those scratching your heads on this, back in the day d20s were numbered twice from 0-9. You had to ink/crayon in two different colors to get 1-20).
I had never seen Lou's rant until recently, though I found it interesting the pictures he uses are from his ads in the early 1980s. My favorite dice are the old Koplow "high-impact" dice, but those haven't been made since the mid 1980s, and Lou's rant got me thinking about how unbiased (or not) they really are.
Anyway, this past weekend I gave my old GameScience dice a workout, and they seemed as random as ever. Some of them are now 30+ years old and are holding up fine (since this was at Cal Poly SLO the dice were older than several participants in the game). Had to teach a few people how "old skool" percentile dice were rolled.
But these are good dice. Get the gem dice because opaque dice can have air bubbles inside that can bias them to a certain degree.
xenongames wrote: I like giant dice: they are easier to find when I inevitably drop them on the floor.
Back to the OT: the one thing I absolutely can't stand about the GS dice I bought is that the dice were numbered incorrectly. Maybe it was because I got an older set and they've fixed the problem, but even the d6 was off. What do I mean? I mean that opposite sides of a dN don't add up to N+1.*
Does this matter? No. Does it affect the randomness of the dice? No. Does it annoy my AR-ness and OCD-ness? Hell yes.
Plus, the d10 and percentile d10 (numbered 00, 10, 20, etc.) are numbered differently. And the percentile d10 clearly looks like they took they d10 mold and modified it with numbers. It looks ugly and unprofessional, like they only did a half-ass job of it.
* Alternatively, for a d10, I'll accept the sum to be N if you count the 0 as a zero. And for a d20, I'll accept the opposite sides to be M and 10+M (1/11, 2/12, ... 10/20), in homage to when d20s were numbered 0 to 9 twice with opposite sides being the same.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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ealdrich wrote: Get the gem dice because opaque dice can have air bubbles inside that can bias them to a certain degree.
Interesting... I hadn't thought about that. I have three sets of opaque GameScience dice. I like them and I use them when I am DMing, and I roll in a dice tray. I figure that makes it about as random and I'm gonna get for a DM roll.
When I play, I sometimes use the GameScience dice, but most of the time I use other sets (Chessex and Koplow mostly). I don't do it because I think the chessex or koplow dice are necessarily unbalanced or anything, I just like to mix up which dice I use when I am playing.
If I ever notice a die rolling a particular number or set of numbers over and over again, I toss it. It does have to be pretty extreme for me to notice it, but if I do, I throw it right away into the trash bin. Dice are cheap enough for me to justify that. It has only happened once in the past 20 years or so of RPGing.
ON a side note, I did happen to get a bad die in one of my boardgames, Aquadukt. Apparently, though, this game is notorious for having a very low quality d20 included. Mine rolled 16 and 17 about 90% of the time (yes, when I noticed at first, we finished the game and then I rolled the thing about 50 times - sure enough 16 or 17 at 90%).
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Sean T
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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I went old-school crayon on mine. Orange crayon over light blue gem. Use cheap dollar store crayons or the kind you get with the kids menu at your local chain restaurant. They're more "waxey" and should stick in the grooves better. And really grind them into the grooves. If you have half a crayon or less when you're done, you've probably got it.
I do want to pick up a set of the opaque lime green colored ones. They look exactly the same color as the set that came in my 80's Moldvay basic set I had as a kid.
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Eric M. Aldrich I
United States
California
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lorddillon wrote: ealdrich wrote: Get the gem dice because opaque dice can have air bubbles inside that can bias them to a certain degree. Interesting... I hadn't thought about that. I have three sets of opaque GameScience dice. I like them and I use them when I am DMing, and I roll in a dice tray. I figure that makes it about as random and I'm gonna get for a DM roll.
The gem dice can have air bubbles as well, but you can see those when you pick them out, so you can avoid them.
On a really odd note, I have a friend who is an X-Ray technician and is a gamer with a whole lotta dice. He decided to X-Ray many of the dice and discovered most of the opaque ones had lots of bubbles in them, effectively rendering them biased. The exception was the old Koplow "High Impact" dice from the early 1980s -- not a single bubble. Alas, Koplow discontinued these due to poor sales (due in large part to them being really friggin' expensive -- $2.50 each back in 1982 or so!) I have two sets of these and he keeps trying to buy them off me -- not going to happen.
That said, the old Koplow dice were pre-inked and obviously tumbled as a couple of numbers had the problem Lou brings up in his rant -- uneven number depth. So what are the best polyhedral dice? I'm going now with my old Gamescience gem dice. This might change, but in lieu of a better alternative, I'm giving Lou and his rant the benefit of the doubt.
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Christopher Wilson
Canada
Kamloops
BC
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He x-rayed his dice?? Hahaha, that's awesome! Now there's a gamer who cares about the quality of his dice! That's disturbing to know about the opaque Gamescience dice. I was going to get the opaque because they look easier to read than the gems. Damn, now I'm not sure what to get...
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Meow San
Chaos Realm of the Soul
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try using miniature base coat for the unpainted dice with a fine brush. after that u could paint any colour you like with miniature paint if u want metalic.
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John Middleton
United States
Laramie
Wyoming
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I've used GameScience dice for years and never had a problem with them de-inking.
Scrub them really well with a small brush and dish soap - rinse in hot water - air dry - ink with Pigma Graphic pen by Sakura. These are archival ink pens that are waterproof, alcohol proof (like for writing on labels in specimen jars full of formaldehyde), and UV radiation proof. Any good art supply or university bookstore should have them.
I also don't use d10s, yeech!!!! Freaking non-solid, non-Platonic garbage. If you are using GameScience buy some d20+
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I've been using GS dice for about 2 years now.. looking at ordering more now that they have the translucent Tanzanite deep purple.. not the more pink than purple Amethyst.
I've used wax crayons on the grooves as the ink wore off.. and put a clear coat of nail polish over them.. but even that isn't satisfying.
Wonder if I can find some Minis painters to do the basecoat and such suggestion for me. Laser Eye surgery prevents me from doing close up detail work like hand painting...
Aside from the inking issue.. I
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