Dice tower

A dice tower is a device used by tabletop gamers to roll dice fairly. A player drops one or more dice into an opening at the top of the tower, and the dice fall past a series of internal baffles or platforms that force them to bounce and tumble repeatedly before emerging from an opening near the base. This forced tumbling is meant to produce a more genuinely random result than a hand roll, and to make it harder for a player to influence or fake the outcome through practiced throwing technique. Dice towers serve a competitive fairness role in games such as backgammon, where a controlled roll can be a real source of cheating, and a narrative role in tabletop role-playing games, where a gamemaster can use a tower, or a screened version of one, to make a blind roll that only the gamemaster can see, preserving suspense for the players. The basic concept is old rather than a modern invention: physical dice towers of similar design are known from at least the Roman period, as early as the 4th century.