Zocchihedron Zocchihedron

Zocchihedron - Definition and Overview

The Zocchihedron (approx. 1.5 inches in diameter)

Zocchihedron is the trademark of the most common 100-sided die, patented ( USPTO number D303553 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=D303,553.WKU.&OS=PN/D303,553&RS=PN/D303,553)) by Lou Zocchi, which debuted in 1985. It is not a polyhedron. Rather, it is more like a ball with 100 flattened planes. It is sometimes called "Zocchi's Golfball".

It took three years for Zocchi to design his die, and three more years to get it into production. Zocchi discovered that the die would perform best at a thickness of 13.85 mm.

Zocchihedrons are designed to handle percentage rolls in games, particularly in roleplaying games. They are not in common usage because of their unwieldiness (they take several seconds to settle), and their scarcity. Players often find it more convenient to use two ten-sided dice (or 20-sided dice numbered 0-9) of differing colors, in advance declaring one color as the "tens" die and the other as the "ones" die; there are also ten-sided dice marked 00,10,20... which can be combined with a regular ten-sided die marked 0,1,2... to the same effect.

A test performed by White Dwarf magazine concluded that the frequency distribution of the Zocchihedron was substantially uneven, but that there was no particular bias towards high or low numbers.

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