So, this weekend I did a marathon pen and paper session with my old group from years and years ago. We ended up getting a solid 30 hours of play time in, and we all had a blast. But I couldn't help but to notice that my dice seemed to have a lot of rolls either on the 1 or near the 1, or (occasionally) on the 20 or (more often) near the 20.

So at the end of the session, I swore the next time I needed real dice (at this point in my life, there's no group near me, and my old group is going to try to take it online, with IRC and teamspeak), I would buy new dice.

I started looking around last night, just to see what was out there for dice. I liked the heavy metal ones (such as the steel ones) for $50, I saw some actual amythest ones, which looked really nifty (for $70), but I kept looking around. I came across a website called Game Science and listened to both videos. Then I took a micrometer out to use on my d20. I found the following values:

Maybe the guy was right after all. So, I thought I'd ask people on here what their thoughts were. Have you used "precision" dice before? Are they terribly precise? Is it worth it to invest in a set? Any and all thoughts are appreciated, of course.

It depends, I like having dices that roll less precise and more extreme.

It's really up to you, however that guy seems legit enough. You can also get his dices from think geek. If I ever lost my dices, I'd probably buy them from him.

So if you have the money, go for it.

There is some truth in it, but what he fails to show is actual tests. You have to roll a d20 about 3000 times to find a defect which causes an error in the number of times you roll a specific number larger than 20%, e.g if you roll 16 4% of the time instead of 5% of the time, you can only be sure after after rolling and recording the result 3000 times.
I did that once for a die which has a very large gap between two numbers. I can't find the result anymore, but there was indeed an error like that. Another die, also a cheap one, did not show a statistically significant deviation after 3000 throws.

Unless you had a very combat-intensive game, you rolled maybe 1000 times. If you got only 40 20's instead of the expected 50, that is still likely to be random chance rather than a defective die.

And then the defect has to be on the number of 1's or 20's. A defect on the 5 is not going to affect play, even if it is 2%.

Now, apart from edges and face-to-face distances, there can be other factors which influence outcome, like density variations, or the molding scar he's talking about. Without testing, it is hard to say what the actual influence of the different factors are.

In short: I sincerely doubt cheap dice affect role playing games. Then again, those dice look nice with the sharp edges and aren't really that expensive anyway.

recording dice rolls

I am a big fan of the gamescience dice, but imperfections in non-precision dice create a negligible error in randomness for hobby gaming.

While the precision dice would be nice in the end I don't think its going to make a big enough difference. If you're looking to get new dice regardless, particularly if its for the group and not just you, I'd recommend the Chessex Pound of Dice. Lots and lots of dice for cheap.

Agree with that -- I lost my dice a while back, so I bought the pound. You also get a standard seven die set with it, then all the random ones. My cats were -so- interested in them, but luckily I got a huge d6 they couldn't swallow, so I gave that to them last night and haven't seen it since.

Believe it or not my mom of all people was fascinated by the dice, she didn't realize there were more than just d6's. Ended up taking a small baggy of them for her classroom to use for counting practice. Still left me with more than enough dice given how much you get.

They're neat but generally I prefer my dice for aesthetic reasons. Lots of little convention dice, specially branded ones, etc.

Convention dice...? And... specially branded ones? (Up until this past weekend, I thought dice were dice were dice)

They now have all sorts of wierd ones. Look for Steampunk dice and things like that: Their faces are odd and detailed and such.