http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RandomNumberGod

he's handing you a depleted die in the hopes of taking advantage of you. Don't fall for it!" Shamus Young, DM of the Rings "If a statistician hands you a die insisting that 'any given roll has the same odds of rolling a one or a twenty', it means. Don't fall for it!"

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"We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don't guarantee that more than one of them is random."

Also known as RNGesus, if you're feeling punny.

A statistician can tell you that properly generated random numbers will follow a discrete uniform distribution, giving you a roughly equal chance of rolling very good or very bad numbers. They may wax eloquent about how pseudo-random numbers are generated in computers, and how dice are wonderful randomizers. A good statistician will even disabuse you of the notion that a six sided die has an exactly 1/6 chance to land on any one side; most dice are not built to that kind of precision. (Casino craps table dice are. They're also more expensive.) But it's going to be close to even distribution, even with a cheap die.

A gamer, either of the tabletop or video variety, will tell you that this is all a load of dingoes' kidneys. The characters that gamers play live and die on good or bad rolls, and even if your dice are perfectly square and uniform, even if your game uses cryptographically strong random numbers, these numbers do not follow "distributions" or "probabilities." Instead, they usually produce whatever number you really didn't want. A tabletop gamer may say that the dice are "trying to kill" them if they encounter a long series of bad rolls (e.g. broke every weapon he was carrying). Unless, of course, you know the proper way to placate the Random Number God: then the dice will smile upon you. Usually.

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The name of this trope comes from Angband's and NetHack's fanbases (coined in the Angband fanbase, spread by Nethack's), as a fanciful expansion of "RNG", for "Random Number Generator"; both games use Gameplay Randomization and are partially Luck-Based Missions, considering how many Instant Deaths there are, and the players of both games have been known to build altars to the "Random Number God" or curse his/her/its name. Or both.

Some games try to cut out the nonsense by supplying their own Luck Manipulation Mechanic. This never works—the Random Number God is not mocked, and it'll find a way to mess with you regardless. In Real Life or certain other situations, a Two-Headed Coin can masquerade as a mere minion of the Random Number God up until The Reveal.

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Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Saki proves that this trope applies to mahjong tiles as much as it does to dice. Nodoka refuses to believe in players being "loved by the tiles" and such, but other players' freakish abilities to defy all probability when playing (as someone mentioned on the page, "how much can we make a statistician somewhere cry?") pushes her into Flat-Earth Atheist territory.

In Quick Start!!, a 4koma about tabletop gaming group, a resident powergamer Karasuyama Sachi is on RNG's bad side, despite buying dice with equal distribution.

In Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Hayashi hears about a special lootbox event and declares that he wants all the rare items. His guildmates cringe and warn him that he's triggered the "Greed Sensor", which responds to greedy players by ensuring that they'll only get bad pulls. True to form, for a while Hayashi rolls nothing but common healing potions (though he does eventually get one of the rare items). Lily, on the other hand, gets every single rare item...because she's the type of player willing to buy lootboxes until she gets everything she wants.

Defied by the titular character in Goblin Slayer whose tagline is "He does not let anyone roll the dice". Considering the whole setting is based on tabletop gaming played between 'Truth' and 'Illusion' , everything should be decided by chance... But GS is too meticulous to leave anything to chance, he always comes in prepared with multiple contingencies that could turn the table in one fell swoop. At one point, the whole thing is illustrated by a figurine representing him kicking a bad die roll as if defying fate itself and succeeding.

Comic Books

In Knights of the Dinner Table, related to Hackmaster, a character was once beaten to a pulp for touching another gamer's dice. He was blinded by a cupful of soda and then was on the receiving end of a flying tackle. No one (except Sara) thought that this was uncalled for, as "that's one dice squirrel who'll think twice before touching another man's dice!" The attacker in that scenario was the 5'3" pencil-necked Bob Herzog, and the man who touched his dice was the 6'11" ex-marine Nitro Ferguson, and every time the event is referenced (the fight itself was never shown) it is strongly implied that Nitro got hurt at least as bad as Bob did. In the strip, they even outlined a "dice cleansing" ritual, used to banish bad luck from the character's dice. Many dice superstitions are explored in this strip. Bob refers to his dice by name, keeps them segregated according to purpose and game genre. Dave refers frequently to having his section of the table "trained" the way he likes it for dice rolling. All of the Knights, even the sensible Sara, have dice rolling styles. But the most infamous incident had Brian and Bob "fame-rubbing" their dice on Gary Jackson's corpse (a "legendary RPG creator" pastiche of Gary Gygax and Steve Jackson) to charge them with good luck. This backfired because Gary, being dead, was obviously out of good luck (as Sara pointed out, someone who'd died in a plane crash couldn't have been very lucky to begin with). All the fame rubbed dice performed poorly in game play. Or possibly because that corpse wasn't Gary Jackson's.



Literature

Pinballs

This is such a big thing among pinball fans that they have adopted this term in recent years too as they have intermingled with fans of tabletop games and video games. It is no longer in the same sense as it used to be, however: Whereas older games were full of bumpers, slingshots, and other bouncy things to make the path of the ball unpredictable, more recent machines allow the player greater control of the ball and it is no longer nearly as much of an issue as it used to be. The main issue, now, are random awards, benefits given to a player upon fulfilling certain conditions chosen randomly (or pseudo-randomly) from a list. If you're playing, say, Family Guy, and you really could use an Extra Ball, expect the game to just give you 100 points instead (which is ludicrously small).

There is one that continues to persist to this day though: The "house ball," in which the ball, upon launching, falls into the drain without it having gone anywhere near the flippers—in other words, losing a ball with nothing the player could've done to influence it. Recent games where the ball must pass through bumpers after the launch, like Bram Stoker's Dracula or The Walking Dead, are particularly vulnerable to this.

In KISS (Stern), shooting the ball into Gene Simmons's head will hold the ball on a magnet on a spinning disk hidden inside his head, then spun and spat back out at the player. Because the ball is spinning, it will take a random and arced path back down. The ball has fallen between the flippers and straight into the drain so often that the game was issued a patch a month after it first came out that returns the ball back to the player with no penalty if the ball goes down there the next 3 seconds (default setting) after Gene lets go of the ball.

The central pulsing magnet in The Addams Family causes the ball to get flung in wild and random directions whenever it's active, which happens pretty often. note It is always active in "Seance," any time a multiball is ready to begin, and continuously throughout all multiballs. There is, however, a glitch in the code where if the player traps the ball for 15 seconds, the magnets deactivate, allowing the player to take a free shot. Since almost all higher-level players are aware of this glitch, the magnets are simply disabled in competitive play in an effort to keep the game moving.

Tabletop Games

In the back of the Hackmaster 2nd Edition rulebook, there's actually a list of various dice rituals that are prescribed for the game, including rubbing the dice clockwise for higher rolls and counter clockwise for lower rolls.

A number of bizarre good luck superstitions have arisen in the Warhammer 40,000 community. Such as never calling missile launchers by their proper name (it has the word "miss" in it), the idea that painted models are luckier than unpainted models note Ork players don't count; their paint actually does change their units' abilities, by the rules. , and the practice of occasionally muttering prayers to the Emperor. Never taken seriously, but often endearing. Don't ever say "anything but an X." The more important the roll is, the higher the chance that you will get that X. Most players have lost more games by saying "anything but an X" than by bad strategy. note If you need to say something, and good sportsmanship dictates you usually do, saying "2s to squish " is usually safe-ish Also worth mentioning are the Chaos gods' chosen numbers. Chaos players used to get bonuses for fielding units of a certain size based on which god you were using. Slaanesh was 6, Nurgle 7, Khorne 8, Tzeentch 9, the idea being that the Chaos god makes the characters more lucky as long as they spend time in their chosen number. Modern versions of the game, for the sake of simplicity, have removed this rule. The 40K rule book advises players who are rolling large numbers of dice to take out the dice that failed and continue rolling the successful ones note each bullet is determined by 3 dice: whether it hit, how much damage, and whether the target's armor withstood, so squads with automatic weapons can expect to roll 30+ dice up to three times each . Players will tell you the exact opposite: NEVER reroll the successful ones immediately afterwards, because they have just used up a good roll. A player will say, "I never seem to roll as well as I just did." A statistician will say, "Well, duh. Regression to the mean. You just had a lucky break, so the same entirely random process is very likely to produce a lower value simply because most possible values are lower." Both are correct. The player will usually retort, "Whatever," and produce another fifty dice. 40K players always have enough dice, just never enough dakka. Ork players are advised to use green dice for standard rolls ("green iz best"), red dice for moving through terrain ("coz da red ones go fasta"), and blue dice for critical rolls ("da luckiest"). Buy in bulk. A related more-general "rule" is to never roll red dice for armor saves, because they're for killing. And, with Games Workshop occasionally doing promotional faction-specific dice, those are of course, far luckier if you're playing that specific faction. It is also recommended, as the melta is one of the most powerful anti-armor weapons a troop can carry, that it never be referred to as such, as firing a melta weapon is an exercise in comedic inaccuracy. Simply referring to which model is firing should suffice. And never use Meltaguns against infantry. They might be great for blowing up tanks, but against infantry you're guaranteed to roll a 1. Some Eldar players mutter prayers to Khaine, or to Cegorach if using Harlequins. Chaos players, meanwhile, invoke the Dark Gods, and Ork players just shout "WAAAAAGH" when shooting. Or charging. Or at random intervals. The Rogue Trader spin-off RPG made off with the old idea of the Chaos gods' favored numbers by making 9s occasionally have special effects on rolls - especially those related to psychic powers. Yes, this means that Tzeentch, the god of Sorcery and Change, is implied to be the RNG that is out to get you.

In the Wuxia RPG Weapons Of The Gods, observed good or bad luck with the dice can be utilized as a game effect, discovering that the character is under a curse or blessing which can then be either increased to add actual bonuses or used to create a balancing effect of the opposite type. The system itself also features the River mechanic, designed to mitigate the influence of the RNG. You can take dice results out of a role and store them for later use, so if you make an awesome roll on a trivial task, or roll two sets when you only need one, you can set some aside and break them out later when you screw up something important.

The Red Dragon Inn provides an in-depth (and tongue-in- cheek) tutorial on how to make the dice roll high numbers .

. Referenced by name in Hoyle's Rules of Dragon Poker, where players are afforded infinite mulligans if they've angered the RNG.

Blood Bowl features a literal example of this in-universe, in the form of Nuffle, the game's patron god. This trope is also very much in effect for the players, since one of the keys to a successful game is rolling your dice as seldom as possible while forcing your opponent to roll dice as often as possible.

Random Encounter Dice includes disclaimers on their packaging such as "Random Encounter Dice are not responsible for your party falling into the same trap twice", "Random Encounter Dice are not responsible for that TPK by goblin ambush", and "Random Encounter Dice are not responsible for you rolling a natural 1 when throwing Alchemist's Fire".

Video Games

Web Comics

Web Original

Ribbon of /tg/ explained series explains ◊ .

series explains . In Tales of MU, Glory and Mack discuss the possibility of whether or not there's a god of magic, which leads to describing said god as using dice, complete with a spin on Albert Einstein's quote "God does not play dice with the universe."

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