You probably don’t now who Lou Zocchi is, unless you’re a gaming nerd like me. Lou Zocchi was a giant in the gaming industry. He created the d100 (a one hundred sided die) which was thought to be impossible to manufacture. He also ran a distribution network that helped tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) out to the market.
I didn’t know that he was in the military, or that he was a professional stage magician. He was definitely a problem solver.
And it all started with a 20 sided die.
Back in the day, dice had rounded edges instead of hard edges. Lou saw that and figured out that the die were not rolling true. A 20 sided die should have a 5 percent chance of any given side coming up on any roll. But with the dice having rounded edges, that wasn’t the case. Dice were often put into a tumbler to polish them up after manufacturing. This caused the rounded edges, which threw off the probabilities of the dice rolling fairly.
Lou went into manufacturing dice. His had hard, well-defined edges, that made the die roll true. He used to go to game conventions and present his findings about dice manufacturing and probability to the crowds in the dealers room. This is where being a professional magician came in. He made it entertaining. He’d float dice in salt water. If they kept coming up on the same number, the dice was wrong. He’d hit competitor’s die with a hammer, to watch them shatter. Then he’d hit one of the die he manufactured and it would withstand the beating.
He went on to create a range of odd dice types – three siders, five siders, fourteen siders, even twenty-four siders. Joseph Goodman, from Goodman Games, went on to create Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), similar to Dungeons and Dragons, but different, that used all the weird dice that Lou Zocchi made. DCC has gone on to gather a large fan-base that has been going for decades.
Lou also solved the problem that game manufacturers had with getting their products out to their customers. Lou worked in Logistics in the military, which deals with moving things around. He set up a distribution network that would get the games out to bookstores and other retailers (game specific stores weren’t a big thing back in the 1970s – yet). He’d buy copies of the games and then use his network to supply the retail shops where gamers would get them.
I never got to meet Lou Zocchi but I think I would have liked him.
Farewell, Lou Zocchi. Your efforts have enriched my gaming life and I thank you for it.
Rest in peace.
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