Biloxi Man Knows His Dice

BILOXI, Miss. (Associated Press) - A Biloxi man’s dice are sold nationally and have made him a familiar figure in the role-playing gaming

Louis Zocchi’s involvement in magic and gaming goes back decades, and modern gamers who enjoy role playing are familiar with one of his specialties.

Zocchi’s company, GameScience, was the first to patent and produce polyhedra dice in the U.S. A polyhedra die, as the name suggests, has multiple sides. Most of us are familiar with the six-sided cube dice used in gambling and board games. But Zocchi’s die can have a few as three and as many 100 sides. That 100-sided version - known as a Zocchihedron - looks much like a golf ball, albeit a golf ball with flat dots instead of dimples, and numbers and symbols that role-playing gamers use to advance their characters in the storyline.

Zocchi’s interest in games predates GameScience.

“I play chess, and 95 percent of people who play role-playing games play chess,” he said. Chess, he said, lets a player develop strategies instead of rolling that cube dice and moving from one to six steps in a game’s progress.

“You’ll find they’re all basically the same,” he said, referring to the classic board games produced by more famous companies.