The d6, properly introduced
Cubic dice show up in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia by around 3000 BC, and the design has barely changed since: opposite faces still add up to seven, a convention already common in Roman tesserae. It won because it works. A cube tumbles well, lands flat, and reads instantly, which is why it runs everything from backgammon to Monopoly to the craps table.
Roll it for: board games, from backgammon to catan; craps and street dice; anywhere "roll a die" needs no further explanation. And if the d6 isn't the die your game asks for, the full dice roller has the other five.
Every throw comes from your browser's cryptographic generator through rejection sampling, which is why each of the 6 faces lands at exactly 16.7% rather than approximately. How random is random covers why the daily numbers elsewhere on this site are deliberately drawn the opposite way.
- 6, numbered 1 to 6
- Cube, a Platonic solid
- 16.7% — exactly 1 in 6
- 3.5
- averages 7; totals range 2 to 12
- two 6s in a row: 1 in 36
D6 — frequently asked
A 6-sided die shaped as a cube, one of the five Platonic solids. The die everyone means when they say dice. Faces are numbered 1 to 6, and on a fair d6 each lands with exactly a 16.7% chance.
One in 6, or 16.7%, the same as every other face. Rolling two 6s back to back happens once in 36 attempts. The roller here uses rejection sampling on a cryptographic generator, so those odds hold exactly.
3.5. A fair die averages the midpoint of its range, so 2×d6 averages 7 and 3×d6 averages 10.5. Single rolls are flat: an average result is no more likely than a 6 or a 1.
Board games, from backgammon to Catan; Craps and street dice; Anywhere "roll a die" needs no further explanation. Beyond those, any decision with 6 options maps onto it directly.