Inking GS dice

In the past, I’d found that extra fine Sharpie paint pens worked better than markers for me when inking Gamescience dice. Recently, however, I gave the Sharpie extra fine markers another try, and they worked great. Less messy than the paint pens, and the paint pens seem to dry out very quickly when stored after first use.

When the prototype is too good

In general, a prototype isn’t nearly as nice as a finished product. That may end up not being the case for Rocket Dice. The prototypes shown in the Kickstarter promotions were 3D printed, which produces a much more consistent product than most dice manufacturing processes. Which Game Salute seems only now to be discovering.

There are more consistent dice manufacturing methods. They’re used for Casino dice and precision Backgammon dice. Those come only in six-siders and lack the fanciful shape of the Rocket Dice. They are also very expensive. Gamescience makes precision polyhedral dice, but they’re also more expensive than other polyhedrals. Especially when inked, because they have to be inked by hand. Game Salute says they are committed to deliver the “best dice possible”, but that’s likely to be a lot more expensive than they bargained for.

One thing in Rocket Dice’s favor is that the spur from the molding process could be located in a less obtrusive place than on Gamescience dice.

It will to be interesting to see what happens.

Cheap custom dice

A trip to Office Depot and Walgreen yielded...

the raw material

I might’ve been able to get it all at Walgreens, but I figured Office Depot was likely to have a wider selection of labels. The only ones they had in this size were orange.

I might have heard of Sicherman dice before, but noisms recently posted about them. So, those were first on the agenda.

Sicherman dice

Then I made a 36-sided die. One die is relabeled 0, 6, 12, 18, 24, & 30. Roll it with a normal die, and they’re equivalent to 1d36.

1d36

A third die could make it 1d216!

Then I created some binary dice. They’re numbered...

1. 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1
2. 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2
3. 0, 0, 0, 4, 4, 4
4. 0, 0, 0, 8, 8, 8

1d16 - 1

The can be used as 1d2-1, 1d4-1, 1d8-1, or 1d16-1. And, of course, we could keep adding binary digits.

T&T attributes

At NTRPGC this year, I got to play Tunnels & Trolls with its creator, Ken St. Andre. My only experience of T&T before this was a few runs through solitaire adventures. It seems that we were the first people to play the T&T Free RPG Day adventure. Ken was an enjoyable GM, and we got a sneak peek at the Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls changes.

Perhaps my one apprehension about T&T has been its highly abstract combat system. It seemed to work much better in play than I’d anticipated, though. It seems to smooth out the kinds of imbalances between characters that T&T doesn’t avoid. The “weakest” character still contributed to combat and the “stronger” characters could protect them by soaking up the damage. It also played very quick and got us back to exploring and parlaying with the NPCs.

But, on to the topic at hand: Like D&D, T&T characters have a number of attributes that are generated by rolling 3d6. Ken had us reroll attributes below nine. Since there is an almost 26% chance of rolling < 9, though, that meant a fair amount of rerolling. So, that got me to thinking about ways to do it without rerolling.

My first thought was to use 6+2d6 instead. That would mean the minimum was 8 instead of 9, but...close enough. It does greatly change the probabilities, though. At least it is simple.

Next I considered 6 + (3d6 drop the highest). I was surprised by how close this was to the original 3d6 reroll < 9. It seems perhaps “too fiddly” for T&T, but it seems to get the job done.

This AnyDice plot shows the probabilities for 3d6, 3d6 reroll < 9, 6+2d6, and 6+3d6 drop the highest. Switch it to “graph” and then check out the “normal” and “at least” views.

Note that this ignores the TARO rule: If you roll triples, you get to roll three more dice and add their results. It’d also be interesting to work out the chances of qualifying to be a paragon (all attributes ≥ 12) would be for the different methods.

Whichever method might be used, one question arises: Should the reroll < 9 rule apply before or after kindred (i.e. race) modifiers? I’m thinking: Before.

(Another question about kindred modifiers is whether a character qualifies for a type (i.e. class) before or after kindred modifiers. But Ken said that in dT&T, only human characters have types.)

The reciprocal mechanic

For an RPG resolution mechanic, I like coin pools. I like that it is open-ended on the high end. i.e. There’s no upper limit on the scores that determine how many coins are in the pool. I like that it has diminishing returns. i.e. Each coin added to the pool increases the probability of success by a smaller increment than the previous coin.

What I don’t like is that the increments still seem a bit too big.

To get smaller increments, what if the chance of failure equals the reciprocal of the score? e.g. A score of 4 would grant a 1/4th chance of failure. Thus, a 3/4 chance of success.

OK. I like those numbers better, but how do we do this with dice?

One way is to roll a die with a number of sides equal to the score being used. Anything except a 1 means success.

And you thought people complained a lot about DCC using d3, d5, d7, etc.

It’s really not that bad, though. Just choose the next bigger die you have and reroll results higher than the score. e.g. For a score of 5, roll a d6. 1 = failure; 2 to 5 = success; 6 = reroll.

It gets a bit annoying for scores between 12 and 20. At 13, if you’re rolling a d20 and rerolling 14s and above, you’ll be rerolling 35% of the time. Having a d14 and d16 helps out. A d24 and a d30 help for scores over 20. Over 30 starts calling for some creative solutions. At 30, though, we’re up to a 96.7% chance of success, and 2 to 30 is a decent range for scores. Probably more than is really needed.

Alternatively, you could use drawing chits or cards or stones. Put a number of stones equal to the score in a bag. One of them should be a different color than the rest. Draw out the odd stone and it’s a failure.

Any other method?

Of dice and dice trays

Behold! My collection of d20+ dice has grown.

Vide

• “My favorite die”
• “The Ads of Dragon: 20 Plus”

Gamescience has said that they do still have the tool for making these, so go buy a few through Amazon or Gamestation and then tell Gamescience how much you’d like some d20+ dice in their newer colors.

Here they are hanging out in my new dice tray.

During the first session of my Skylands campaign, I found myself wanting a dice tray. A quick search turned up the “Quest for the Perfect Dice Tray”. A trip to Hobby Lobby turned up the same tray Aryk had found. I used sticky-back felt (also from Hobby Lobby) rather than foam in this one.

Behold my dice inking supplies!

Not pictured are...

• The paint pens I destroyed by pushing the tip too hard whilst priming them
• The piece of cardboard I use to test the paint pens
• The mechanical pencil I’ve been using (with lead retracted) to try and remove the crayon from dice before reïnking them with the paint pens

The paint remover pen looks like it is going to be really handy for cleaning up inking mistakes, but I haven’t quite mastered its use yet.

I really appreciate the work that goes into inking dice now. So the last two sets I bought, I bought inked. Behold my blue opal and jasper dice!

After seeing a couple of d7 at the North Texas RPG Con this year, I finally gave in an ordered a couple myself. Which you can also see in the picture above.

The colors of the blue opal dice are subtle and the photos don’t do them justice. Here’s a close-up as an attempt, though...

Finally, behold the other dice tray I made!

This one used foam secured with foam glue. It also has a lid, which is nice. I’m not sure why, but I don’t like it quite as much as the other one.

Coin pools

I’ve heard a few game designers say that, as a base line, dice rolls should succeed at least half the time. That got me to thinking... What if we start with a base 50% chance and each increase moves it half-way towards 100%? Is there a simple dice mechanic for that?

Yes, there is, and it was already sitting on my RPG shelf. Prince Valiant, The Story Telling Game (1989) by Greg Stafford uses coin pools. The player flips a number of coins and, if any come up heads, it’s a success. (Sometimes you want more than one heads, but let’s ignore that for now.) The higher the character trait being tested, the more coins the player tosses.

(Since I usually have more dice than coins these days, I just use dice and “even” counts as “heads”. Don’t grab those odd dice—d3, d5, d7—though. Loan them to your opponent.)

It’s a nice, simple mechanic. It is open-ended (on the “high” end), which can be nice. And the probability increments start course and only get finer as you need it to.

More zero dice

So, this was written last year. (16 June 2010) as a follow-up to “My favorite die”. Seems I never got around to publishing it...

I have some six-sided dice marked zero to five.

I believe I got these out of the bin of dice at Kaleidoscope Toys.

The only game I know of that uses such dice is a “WWII space combat” game called Hard Vacuum. (Which I haven’t played.)

They create some nice ranges. Two yields 0–10. Three, 0–15. Four, 0–20. (Keeping in mind, of course, that summing multiple dice doesn’t give linear results.) Use one which a d10 (or d20+) to emulate a d60.

Dice with a zero are also nice for open-ended rolls, as it means you don’t have numbers that can’t be rolled.

And, if you don’t have any 0–5 dice, just roll a normal d6 and read 6 as zero.

d20+ redux

I was a little surprised when I realized how few dice I’ve had out for the current WotC D&D 3e campaign.

With more d20+ dice, I’ve put my ten-siders, my “tens” dice (ten-siders numbered 00–90), and regular twenty-siders in storage. That really lightens up my “in use” bag and the number of dice on the table.

I’ve also swapped all my Gamescience six-siders in favor of my casino-style sixers.

Now I’m thinking that I want to acquire some of those d30s numbered -0 to -9, 0 to 9, and +0 to +9. (d30±) Like these from Kevin Cook’s collection.

My favorite die

I like the d10. For anyone unfamiliar with the “polyhedral dice” and dice nomenclature of Dungeons & Dragons, this is a die with ten sides. I like that...

• It has a zero. The sides are numbered zero to nine instead of one to ten like you might expect. (Although the zero is often treated as ten in play.)
• You can use multiple d10s to simulate a d100, d1000, etc.

What I don’t care for is the shape, which is termed a pentagonal trapezohedron.

If I had to pick a favorite from among my dice, it might well be this one:

It is the d20—twenty-sided die—from my second set of polyhedral dice. Things I like about it:

• It’s a precision die from Gamescience, which I find aesthetically pleasing.
• Like almost all d20s, it is a regular icosahedron, one of the platonic solids, which I find aesthetically pleasing.
• Unlike almost all d20s made today, it is numbered from zero to nine twice, so it can be used as a d10 and shares all the things I like about d10s.
• Unlike the earliest d20s, which were numbered in the same fashion, half of the faces have a plus sign, so it can be used as a d20 without using a second die or using two different colors for the numbers.

It was unique among my dice. Well, almost. I also have a “diamond” (i.e. clear plastic) one purchased at the same time, but it is hard to read no matter what color you use for the numbers.

I’m not sure if they still make these. The newer Gamescience dice sets I have bought have come with 1–20 d20s. It turns out, however, that Gamestation does sell some of these “d20+” dice, which I suspect are NOS. So, I ordered some. My favorite die now has some competition.

See also: “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I gotta say—I’m pretty much through with ten sided dice.”