Louis Joseph Zocchi (February 16, 1935 – April 15, 2026) was an American gaming hobbyist, 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.

Early life

Lou Zocchi was born in Chicago, the eldest child of Louis Alexander Zocchi, a machinist and engraver, and Martha Adam. Lou was fascinated by his father's precision craftmanship, and became obsessed with mathematical accuracy. Following his retirement in 1975, Zocchi stayed in Mississippi, and continued to serve, first with the Mississippi State Guard, and then the Alabama State Defense Force., eventually reaching the rank of Brigadier General in 2021. He playtested such early Avalon Hill wargames as Bismarck, Afrika Korps, Jutland, Stalingrad, was well as a number of games by other publishers. Zocchi also produced the superhero RPG Superhero: 2044 in 1977.

Zocchihedron

Zocchi also invented a 100-sided die, dubbed the Zocchihedron. However in January 1987, White Dwarf published a letter from Jason Mills of Manchester, who shared the statistical results of 5164 rolls that proved that numbers 1–10 and 91–100 were less likely to be rolled. This was because when Zocchi numbered the die, he clustered these numbers at the north and south poles of the die, where the faces were slightly different sizes than the faces around the equator of the die. As soon as the article came out, Zocchi adjusted the numbering on the die to ensure that numbers were randomly scattered around the die rather than being clustered together. This revision prevented the bias against very high and very low numbers.

The original die had been white with black lettering. To differentiate between older, uncorrected dice and the newer "truer" dice, Zocchi manufactured new Zocchihedrons in a variety of other colors. In 1975, Zocchi distilled this into a 16-page booklet, How to $ell Your Wargame Design that he self-published. The book included a list of game publishers, as well as various publishing goods and services for the person wanting to self-publish a game.

In 2022, Zocchi received the E. Gary Gygax Lifetime Achievement Award for his "significant contributions over [his] lifetime to the industry."

References

  • US patents , and .
  • Interview with Zocchi discussing his dice: Part 1, Part 2, at YouTube
  • Ten-thousand roll statistic comparison of Chessex and Lou Zocchi's dice: http://www.awesomedice.com/blog/353/d20-dice-randomness-test-chessex-vs-gamescience/