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For a while they sold a pack of 36 cards as a Catan accessory, labeled with 2 through 12 in the same frequencies as two six sided dice, and instead of rolling t
by kej 5y ago
For a while they sold a pack of 36 cards as a Catan accessory, labeled with 2 through 12 in the same frequencies as two six sided dice, and instead of rolling the dice you flip over the top card and then you shuffle them and start over when you reach the bottom.
It's an interesting change to gameplay, since the numbers are no longer independent and the gambler's fallacy ("I haven't had a 12 for a while, so it's more likely to come soon") actually makes sense here. You could restore independent numbers by reshuffling the entire deck after each turn.
That seems like an easy way to get the results from the article, without worrying about biased dice or repainting. If you want to alter the deck's probability you can just add or remove cards.
- wartijn_ 5y agoO that's really interesting. I've been thinking about making something like that myself, didn't know there was an official extention. I think it should improve the game when you remove a bit of luck with this.
- asciimov 5y agoThe dice deck is alright, but just alright. Even if you include the card that tells you to reshuffle the deck, the bell curve is just too smooth. If you have a roll drought, you know that deluge is on its way. The best thing I have done for dice in my Catan set is to include a bag with a random assortment of 6 sided dice. At the beginning of a new game we randomly pick two dice. The random sizes, materials, and origins of manufacture keep the clustering of rolls inconsistent from game to game, which makes the game more enjoyable.
- wes-k 5y agoCatan universe has a “card stack” mode where they take two sets of those 36 card decks and randomly remove 18. You end up with some randomness but much better bell curves on dice distribution. My friends and I debated for a while but once we switched to using card stack we never went back.