I sometimes have people at the table I am playing with complain when I use the dice roller built into HLO saying they don't trust it. I have faith in the RNG in HLO but I would like to know what RNG is used so I can be like, "Here is the RNG they use, see it's random". It blows my mind the number of people that don't trust a RNG to roll a d20 but they trust one to make secure financial transactions.
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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Random Number Generator
- Thread starter evdjj3j
- Start date
Not all RNGs are created equally. There's no such thing as a true RNG. All the RNGs we use are simulated RNGs. Some simulations are better than others.
I don't know what HLO uses, but if it's just a dice roller, I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be on par with RNGs used for cryptography. It COULD be on par, but there's no reason to expect it to be.
Even if it isn't a good one.. it's still equivalent of a typical die, it's not like non-casino dice are perfectly weighted. Especially after the die has been used for a while.
jfrazierjr
Well-known member
google for "check dice for balance". If they are using dice that are not clear(ie, those multicolored speckled dice vs the gem dice that are translucent), there is a decent chance that their dice are completely not random. And if you can prove that any of their dice they use are not random, that should shut them up. Make the prove that their dice are all balanced and truly random.
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You're confusing reality with perception.
If I'm running a game, and I'm attacking the party with a creature, a monster or an NPC, and I used HL's dice tool, and I roll three natural 20s in a row, that's not only allowed for with randomness, but it's to be expected sometimes. But that's counter-intuitive to our brain's understanding of randomness.
If I do the same thing with a physical d20, it appears symmetrical, therefore it appears to be fair. Also, people have been using dice for games much longer than we've been using computers, so it's also more "normal" and more trusted.
When it comes to understanding random number generation, computer code is more esoteric and less approachable than the perception of physical symmetry. I doubt the average gamer, even if you showed them the code, would understand the intricacies of random number generation anymore than they would have the capacity to measure the balance (and, by extension, the randomness) of a physical die.
Physical rolls or digital rolls?
The same one we all use, or your own, personalized, hacked version? ;-p
I think Hero Lab is C++, which makes the Rand() implementation the most likely. Here's GCC source code.