GameScience Precision Polyhedrals

Who is Gamescience?

One of the leaders in the clubhouse. Gamescience is one of the largest producers of dice, and among the most recognizable brands in the community. Their website offers numerous products that are hobby gaming related, but their signature item is polyhedral dice. Their take on them eliminates a step in the process used frequently that involves tumbling the dice. Tumbling the dice typically causes the edges to have a rounded quality. Gamescience’s theory is that this creates more uniform edges, and perfectly sized faces, giving each face an equal chance of landing face up.

They don’t advertise them as precision dice

But they’ve been making them the same way since 1974 for the purpose of creating maximum uniformity. The hope being that maximizing uniformity maximizes randomness. 44 years of making dice without tumbling them has led to a reputation of dice with razor edges and exceptional performance. We’ve put them to the test, with results here. That said there are far more conclusive test that have been performed, including this one here. Generally speaking they are very fair having an extremely even distribution of results.

What makes them unique?

Well, they feel and look significantly different than your typical polymer dice. For a quick little history lesson, the leader in polymer dice, probably in all polyhedral RPG dice is CHESSEX. Almost every plastic dice you find either are Chessex, or are knock-offs. They have a typical feel to them, from a weight to a propensity for rounded edges. Gamescience, which is CHESSEX’s primary competitor doesn’t have the same rounded edges, and changes the entire look and feel of the dice. They aren’t razor sharp by any means, but they have a palpable bite to their edges that completely changes the feel of having them in your hand. They don’t look drastically different at first glance, but if you take more than just a passing peek at them you’ll begin to notice differences. They have more squared edges, including the brim on the d10s. The biggest visual difference is on the d4, however. It interestingly has 8 faces, although 4 of them are way too small to ever be landed on. Those 4 extra faces are a result of clipping the corners off of what would otherwise be a lego on steroids.

Check out my barefeet compatible corners.

Imperfections?

Yes. By design in fact each die will have a little blip on one side. This is where the die connects to the mold. If your blemish on the d20 for example is on the face of the 7, it’s by design. Does it affect randomness? It certainly appears to, and Gamescience themselves offers the suggestion of evening it up with a hobby knife. This might seem like a touch undesirable, but who doesn’t have an X-Acto knife laying around somewhere?

Do I want these?

It depends. If they have a set in your favorite color? Absolutely 100% yes. They set you back about $11. Yes, you can find CHESSEX sets for $8-9. And you can find 10 sets of dice of questionable quality for $4-5 each if you go searching on Amazon. However, $11 for a single matching set of plastic dice is completely reasonable in its own right if you like the color. Just keep in mind they will feel a bit different than bulk 10 cents a pop dice. Now, if you’re particularly interested in true randomness: these are amongst the leaders of the pack. If you’re looking for truly random “Precision Dice” you had better expect to pay $100 or more depending on brand and material. Even competing precision plastic dice from Artisan dice cost $173. $11 for incredibly similar results? That’s a no-brainer. The only aspect of these that you don’t get, that other “Precision Dice” bring, is the “look-at-me” factor of the brand (As with Artisan Dice or gravity dice).