There are various dice rollers on the internet. Today I wanted to share one of my favorites,
random.org. This site is actually a site for generating random numbers. They explain how most computer programs use pseudo-random methods to create random numbers. Random.org uses "atmospheric noise" to produce truly random results. There are some great articles explaining how the site works and how it achieves randomness. My favorite is the
article that shows two bitmaps side by side; one generated by random.org and one by the Microsoft Windows random number generator.
There are two ways that you can use random.org as a dice roller. They have a
dedicated die-roller page, where you can roll up to 60 six-sided dice at a time.
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I rolled boxcars on random.org
If you want to roll other types of dice then you have to use the integer generator. You can have it generator a number between 1 and 20 for a good old d20 roll. |
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I've set it up to generate a d20 roll. Note that you can have it generate more than one number at a time.
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| I rolled a 4 |
Random.org has other great uses. You can use it to randomize lists, shuffle a deck of cards, pick lotto numbers, and even white noise. I use it in education to randomize lists of students and answer choices. They have an app that you can download. The app has a coin flipper that allows you to pick different coin images. You know nerds made it because one of the coins that you can use is Two-Face's double-headed coin. The app gives you the coin flipper for free and for a small fee you can unlock the other features.
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| Two-Face's coin on the app |
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| Rolling character stats on the app |
Random.org is a cool website and it is worth a visit to see what it can do. I recommend it.
