One side on the 6-sided die
- Input
- 1/6
- Expected output
- 16,67%
Every action has the same chance.
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gift exchange dice game rules
The die swaps the story for a draw on every turn: whoever rolls finds out what to do with their gift, and the fun becomes the surprise. You can play with the 6-sided die, which is quick, or the 12-sided one, which has more actions and more chaos.
Every action has the same chance.
Twice the actions, half the chance.
Chance of a steal coming up at least once.
Nearly the same, with double the actions.
An average, not a promise.
Everyone sits in a circle with a wrapped gift while one person reads a story, passing the gift every time they hear right or left. On right the gift goes to the person on the right; on left it goes to the person on the left. When the story ends, everyone unwraps the gift in their hands. The more cues in the story, the more the gifts travel.
On their turn each person rolls the die and does the action of the side that comes up: pass left, pass right, swap with someone, open a new gift or steal. Once everyone has rolled the agreed number of times, each person opens the gift in their hands.
The 6-sided die is quicker and has six common actions, each at 16.67%. The 12-sided adds six more such as group rounds, and each action lands at 8.33%. For big groups, the 12-sided keeps the same actions from repeating.
You can. Open Edit the actions, change the text of each side (up to 80 characters) and the table stays saved on your device. Back to default actions restores the originals. The 6-sided and 12-sided tables are stored separately.
It is fair: the browser secure generator draws the side with rejection, without modulo bias. The tool tests roll the die thousands of times and check that the sides come up with uniform frequency, on both the 6-sided and the 12-sided die.
At the end, everyone holds the gift from the person 1 seat to the left.
When printing, turn off Headers and footers in the print dialog.
On Christmas Eve, Granny Joan's house glowed with lights, one string on the left window and another on the right window. Uncle Ben showed up first, came in through the door on the right and hung their coat on the hook on the left. Little Max ran down the hall in a sock on the left foot and a slipper on the right foot, because they got dressed in a hurry. Aunt Dee carried in the potato dish and could not decide whether it belonged to the left of the turkey or to the right of the beans. In the end the potatoes went right, the beans went left, and the turkey stayed proudly in the middle.
At midnight Granny Joan clapped twice and sent everyone to the living room, the grown-ups to the right of the tree and the kids to the left. Under the tree sat a big gift on the left, a small gift on the right and one wrapped in a hurry in the back. Uncle Ben ran their right hand over the bow, then their left, and announced that the box felt exactly like a pair of socks. That was when Little Max shouted that the gift on the right was for a cousin and the one on the left was for an aunt.
Aunt Dee opened the first one with their right hand while holding their cocoa in their left, and made the face of a person who just got socks. The socks were green on the right foot and red on the left foot, and nobody could tell if it was fashion or a mistake. Granny Joan raised a finger, looked left, looked right and swore the gift in the middle was theirs, again. Uncle Ben leaned to the right, stretched their arm to the left and fished out a package that had slid under the sofa. On the left side of the table the cousins whispered; on the right side the uncles placed bets. Who would end up with the gift on the right? And who would get the one on the left? Nobody knew, and everybody pretended not to care.
Granny Joan laughed, crossed their right leg over their left and said the game only counts if everybody follows the story. Then Uncle Ben cleared their throat, hugged the gift with their right arm, then their left, and said real Christmas starts when you pass along what you hold.
And so, laughing, everyone traded gifts: one step to the left and one step to the right. When the clock struck one in the morning, each person held someone else's gift, and the very last pass went one step to the right.
Every whole word right or left counts (rights too), in any capitalization and in any sense. Alright, copyright and leftovers do not count; right-hand counts once.