Louis Zocchi | |
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 Zocchi at his GameScience booth at Gen Con Indy 2007. | |
| Occupation | dice manufacturer |
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Louis Zocchi is a gaming hobbyist, former game distributor and publisher, and maker and seller of polyhedral game dice. In 1986, he was elected to the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame. [1]
Lou Zocchi was one of the first editors for Avalon Hill's magazine, The General , and a regular contributor during its first 11 years of publication. [2] He also playtested such early wargames as Bismark , Afrika Korps , Jutland , Stalingrad , and a number of titles Avalon Hill did not publish. [2] Zocchi was the first U.S. distributor to sell nothing but adventure games. [2] As a board wargame designer, his credits include Luftwaffe, The Battle of Britain , Alien Space , and Flying Tigers , as well as the 3-, 5-, 14-, 24-, and 100-sided die. [2] Zocchi contributed to the series of books by Guidon Games that began in 1971 with Chainmail . [3] : 6 Zocchi produced the superhero RPG Superhero: 2044 in 1977. [3] : 73, 145
Zocchi also designed and published the Star Fleet Battle Manual (1977) miniatures rules, which he licensed from Franz Joseph, and in 1979 Zocchi's friend Stephen Cole licensed the rights from Joseph to publish the Star Fleet Battles game. [3] : 114 Zocchi also distributed the Wee Warriors line after 1977. [3] : 10 Zocchi helped Judges Guild with their financial difficulties in the early 1980s by paying them $350 every time they gave him the rights to reprint their out-of-print supplements. [3] : 68 Mike Hurdle of Holly Springs, Mississippi purchased Zocchi Distribution in February 1998.[ citation needed ]
Zocchi and his company GameScience [4] have published a number of games over the years (many designed by Zocchi), but are best known for making dice and inventing the Zocchihedron (100-sided) die.
Zocchi has designed a few games himself, including Hardtack , and Battle Wagon Salvo.
In 1987, Zocchi was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming's Hall of Fame. [2] He was honored as a "famous game designer" by being inducted into the Game Designers Hall of Fame and featured as the king of clubs in Flying Buffalo's 2009 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck. [5]
GameScience is still trading, and (as of 2015 [update] ) Zocchi is still active in the gaming community.
He later joined the AL.S.D.F. force and held the rank of Colonel. [2]
Most dice, according to Zocchi, do not roll accurately because of flawed manufacturing processes. The dice favor certain numbers and are more likely to land on those numbers. Zocchi believes the "superstition" of many gamers who use specific dice to roll high and others to roll low results from the fact that major dice manufacturers smooth out the straight edges of their dice in machines much like rock tumblers. The result is that plastic dice originally molded evenly are unevened and unbalanced, making them more likely to land on some numbers than on others.
Zocchi demonstrates the imperfections of dice with statistical results (showing uneven distribution of rolled die values) and with photographs of uneven die edges, faces and vertices. His demonstrations are sales pitches for his precision edged dice (with sharp edges) manufactured by his company, GameScience. Tests by Jason Mills in 1987 and published in White Dwarf magazine showed that his Zocchihedron had a significantly uneven number distribution. [6] Right after that article came out, Zocchi adjusted the numbering of the Zocchihedron to correct the distribution and claims that the d100 now rolls rightly, whereas the original Zocchihedron had all the mid-range numbers clustered at the equator. The modified layout assigns one number from each tens-cluster to each ring of numbers around the die.[ clarification needed ] Only white dice with black numbers use the older number distribution. Corrected dice are manufactured in other colors. However, while this "correction" will prevent the Zocchihedron from biasing against very high and very low numbers, the distribution of the individual numbers themselves will remain to be proven by tests.
Due to safety concerns, the 4-sided die (or d4) produced by GameScience has truncated points.
Zocchi has invented and produced several "non-standard" dice. These are a 3-sided die, a 5-sided die, a 14-sided die, a 16-sided die, and a 24-sided die. All these except the 7-sided (d7) are available in high-impact translucent plastic. The 7 sided die Zocchi was invented by Bernard Beruter of Canada. [7]
How to $ell Your Wargame Design is a book about how to successfully sell a board wargame design that was written and self-published by Zocchi in 1975. [8] As game designer Stephen V. Cole noted, Zocchi ran a seminar every year at Gen Con on "starting a game company and selling your wargame design." [9] Zocchi distilled this into a 16-page book that he self-published, How to $ell Your Wargame Design, with the intent to help other game designers get their games published. [8] The book includes a list of game publishers, as well as various publishing goods and services for the person wanting to self-publish. [8]
In Issue 35 of The Space Gamer January 1981), American game designer Steve Jackson noted the book's largest drawback was that it verged on being out of date: "Most of the basic advice is still sound, but many of the names on those lists are certainly obsolete. And don't take the copyright advice. The laws have changed since Lou wrote this book." Jackson also warned that the result would not be pretty, since Zocchi was advising self-publishers how to save money. "It tells you how to do a cheap-looking job without spending every cent you own." Despite this, Jackson concluded, "On the whole, I recommend this book highly. I wish I'd seen it a year ago. If you ever intend to see a design professionally, order this one." [8]
A die is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance.
A wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for recreation, to train military officers in the art of strategic thinking, or to study the nature of potential conflicts. Many wargames re-create specific historic battles, and can cover either whole wars, or any campaigns, battles, or lower-level engagements within them. Many simulate land combat, but there are wargames for naval, air combat, and cyber as well as many that combine various domains.
Zocchihedron is the trademark of a 100-sided die invented by Lou Zocchi, which debuted in 1985. Unlike other polyhedral dice, it takes the appearance of a ball with 100 flattened spots. It is sometimes called "Zocchi's Golfball".
In some role-playing game (RPG) systems, rather than rolling a single die to determine the success or failure of an action, the player rolls a number of dice simultaneously, known as a dice pool. The number and type of dice to be rolled are defined by the mechanics of the game.
Battle Cry is a board wargame based on the American Civil War, designed by Richard Borg and published by Avalon Hill in 2000.
Battlesystem is a tabletop miniature wargame designed as a supplement for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The original Battlesystem was printed as a boxed set in 1985 for use with the first edition AD&D rules. For the second edition of AD&D, a new version of Battesystem was printed as a softcover book in 1989.
In geometry, a pentagonal trapezohedron is the third in an infinite series of face-transitive polyhedra which are dual polyhedra to the antiprisms. It has ten faces which are congruent kites.
Guidon Games produced board games and rulebooks for wargaming with miniatures, and in doing so influenced Tactical Studies Rules, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons. The Guidon Games publishing imprint was the property of Lowrys Hobbies, a mail-order business owned by Don and Julie Lowry. About a dozen titles were released under the imprint from 1971 to 1973.
Dice notation is a system to represent different combinations of dice in wargames and tabletop role-playing games using simple algebra-like notation such as d8+2.
Gettysburg is a board wargame produced by Avalon Hill in 1958 that re-enacts the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg. The game rules were groundbreaking in several respects, and the game, revised several times, was a bestseller for Avalon Hill for several decades.
Melee is a board wargame designed by Steve Jackson, and released in 1977 by Metagaming Concepts. In 2019, Melee was revived and re-released by Steve Jackson Games.
Chessex Manufacturing is an American company that sells dice, primarily for the role-playing game (RPG) and collectible card game (CCG) market. It also offers other accessories used in RPGs and CCGs. The company also has a Chessex Europe branch office.
Gamescience is an American game company that produces role-playing games and game supplements.
Superhero: 2044 is a role-playing game first published by its designer Donald Saxman in 1977 and republished by Lou Zocchi later that year.
Alien Space is a science fiction board wargame published by Gamescience in 1973 that simulates space combat as seen in the Star Trek television show.
Wellycon is the largest board game convention in New Zealand.
The Battle of Britain is a board wargame published by Gamescience in 1968 that is a simulation of the Battle of Britain during World War II.
Luftwaffe, subtitled "The Game of Aerial Combat Over Germany 1943-45", is a board wargame originally published by Poultron Press in 1969 under a different title, then subsequently sold to Avalon Hill, who republished it in 1971. The game is an operational simulation of the American bombing campaign against Germany during World War II.
Eagle Day: The Battle of Britain is a board wargame published by Histo Games in 1973 that simulates the Battle of Britain. Reviewers noted its marked similarity to previously published wargames The Battle of Britain, and Luftwaffe, but found Eagle Day to be inferior to both.
Flying Tigers is a board wargame published by Gamescience in 1969 that simulates aerial combat over China by the Flying Tigers during World War II.