Roll A Character All At Once

Awhile back, I proposed a Boggle character rolling method.  Here's another one.

I made a "funnel" out of cardboard and I put it into a locking "tupperware" box.  You can shake the dice and wiggle them and eventually they will fall into 7 rows of 4d6.  Pick the top 3d6 in each row and arrange to taste.

This is not very "old school," but it is the way that my new DM wants to roll up characters.  (PS: It's one of my favorite methods too, truth be told.)

Here are some pics --

14, 14, 12, 14, 16, 17, 10 -- not bad...

 It's a little fiddly and you do kind of have to wiggle the dice while you are looking at them.  I suppose if I made the "hole" a bit larger, the dice might fall into the frame a bit easier and you would be able to roll by "feel."

Boggle Adventure Hook Generator

I went to Goodwill the other day and I found this game for $1.99.  I'm always on the lookout for games that have funky dice or some other interesting feature --

It's called "Quip Qubes" and it's like Scrabble, but with words instead of letters.  I don't know if it is playable.  There is a score pad in with the game.  One sheet has been used (it's still attached.)  I don't know if that means that the owners just gave up or that they never played again for some other reason.

So, I went through the dice and I picked out 16 of the best "words" to suggest action and/or adventure. There are other dice that are suitable too -- this is just one possible set.

I put them in the Boggle case I have and I gave them a shake.  Here's the result --

So, taking a look and trying to make connections --

Somewhere in town, lives a smart dog.  Not your average smart dog, a REALLY smart dog.  Maybe a former familiar or perhaps a fey dog.  It has seen a devil.  A small, one-foot-tall devil that is part duck (or at least it looks that way.)  The devil knows about the dog and it hates it.  It knows that the dog will be trying to find a way to destroy it, if it can find a way.  It's only a matter of time... 

Not bad.  I could work with that.

These dice might do better if I refine the set and include a few Rory's Story Cubes to help flesh them out.  I'll try that sometime.

OSR Dragonbone

Years and years ago, I saw this ad in The Dragon...

I always wanted one, but I never did buy one.  Too expensive for my high school student budget.  Of course, I could use my programmable calculator to generate random numbers as well, so...

This past weekend, I was at the Dollar Store and I saw this:

It's a large, plastic "take your pill" reminder case.  I had an idea...

You can put a set of dice in there just fine.  There's plenty of room to shake them around.

You can see the dice very easily through the clear bottom of the container.  I plan to make one with 7d20 (of different colors) in it to rapidly generate "to hit" and "saving throws" for multiple monsters at once -- or to roll multiple attacks at once.

I'll let you know how it turns out!

Design Features Dice

Back in May, Talysman over at 9and30kingdoms wrote up a series of posts about alternate design features for walls, ceilings and floors.  Check them out if you haven't seen them.

In each of those posts (as you know, cuz you've seen them) he made six little square pictures to represent his ideas.

I must be honest, six little square pictures SCREAMS to be made into a d6 and I have these wooden cubes, 3/4" on an edge, so what was stopping me?

Well, procrastination, I guess.  I printed out copies of each little pic back in May, but they've been sitting in a folder since then.  I made each set a different color --

• Black = ceiling features
• Red = floor features
• Blue = wall features

I just got around to making the dice yesterday.

I figure I'll leave them in among my DM stuff and from time to time, as dungeon dressing, I'll randomly grab 1 or 2 of them and I'll mix things up.

Thank you to Talysman for the great posts and the inspiration!

Custom d10's

A few weeks ago, I got a wild idea and I contacted Dice Creator to make me a dozen custom dice.

They arrived in the mail on Friday.

Dice Creator was extremely helpful and is a very nice guy.  He kept me in the loop throughout the process and he sent me pictures of some demo dice he made.

Awesome experience!

In short, if you want some special dice made, drop him an email.  You won't be disappointed at all!

Here's a pic --

The logo is in place of the "10" and is the symbol of The Questians, the legendary group of adventurers from my longest running Queston campaign.

Zocchi Dice AS SPREADSHEET

Oh, Google Docs, is there nothing you cannot do?

To me, the real "trouble" with the new Zocchi dice are the d7, d14 and d16.  These dice, if you try to use something like a d8 or d20, can cause you to re-roll results over their max.

That's bad.

All the other "weird" dice like d3, d5, d16, d24 can be easily simulated by rolling and halving or rolling with a "control die."

So, here's a spreadsheet that I threw together.  It's got a bunch of RANDBETWEENS in it.  Just print it off  anew each session (refresh the calculations) and use the numbers in order as the rolls are called for.  Easy enough for a game.

http://tinyurl.com/zocchi

DungeonMorph Dice

You've probably seen this elsewhere, but just in case you missed it -- behold the wonder that is/are RANDOM GEOMORPH DUNGEON DICE!

Joe at Inkwell Ideas has a Kickstarter going.  He's trying to get pledges to get these dice made.

I'm already a supporter.  If you're a gamer, these dice are TOO COOL not to have them in your bag.  If you're an Old School DM, you MUST own these dice -- how could you not?

Go over and check out the Kickstarter.  Pledge if you can.  We've got to get these dice made!

d6 Only Weapons

In my current "Castle of the Mad Archmage" campaign, I am using d6 only weapons.  Mostly.

Small weapons like darts and daggers do a d4 and 2-handers add 2 pts. of damage, but I like this idea better, I think.

Found it over at Nine and Thirty Kingdoms:

Some old-schoolers use a simple three-damage system: roll 1d6 for average-sized weapons, roll 2d6 for others -- if the weapon is small, drop the highest roll, and if the weapon is large, drop the lowest.

I think I will be trying this out.  Has a certain flair and symmetry.  Gives daggers and darts the *chance* to do some real damage.

I currently give 2 handed weapons a damage "bonus" because the player sacrifices the opportunity to use a shield, and that has its own advantages in my games.  I have been using the 2d6 drop the low with characters who use two weapons.  They also lose the shield advantages.

Darts and daggers have a rate of fire (when thrown) of three.  I think I will now allow them to roll based upon how many darts hit a single target:

1 dart hits = 2d6 keep the low; 2 darts hit = 3d6 keep the middle; 3 darts hit = 2d6 keep the high. 

I'll let you know how it goes.

Old School d6 rolls, meet iPad

One of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Reints, talks about using "Big Red" to randomly determine various outcomes behind his DM Screen.

I too, roll a lot of d6's to determine many different things.  Sometimes I adjudicate "odds" in my head; other times the chances of success and failure are well known or are found on a simple chart.

This weekend, I found an app for my iPad called "Make Dice" that allows you to create custom d6's.  It's awesome and it's 99 cents.

Here are some screen shots.  They speak for themselves.

Here's a list of some of the dice I created

Here's the interface where you change the text on the die faces

A random roll of the dice...

Another one...

...and another.  :)

Multi-ability Checks (somewhat simple)

First, over at Eiglophian Press, G. Benedicto made a great post about ability checks using d6.  Then Cyclopeatron added to the discussion by proposing a system for rolling against two ability scores.

I think these posts are great, but I'm just going to chime in with my own system, based upon their systems.  :)

I would propose the following:

	One Ability	Two Abilities (summed)
(E) Easy	Roll 2d6	Roll 4d6
(S) Standard	Roll 3d6	Roll 6d6
(D) Difficult	Roll 4d6	Roll 8d6
(V) Very Difficult	Roll 5d6	Roll 10d6
(A) Arduous	Roll 6d6	Roll 12d6
(N) Nigh-Impossible	Roll 7d6	Roll 14d6

My reason for using only d6 instead of the d12s that Cyclopeatron proposes is this.  Each attribute should generate at least one point of result on the roll.  If you use d12s there is a possibility of rolling a "1" and that makes skill checks using two attributes a bit easier than rolling against only one attribute.

Adding the dice up might be too arduous (I haven't used this yet -- so I'm just in "theory mode" right now) so I'm thinking about how I could create a dice pool slash count successes system.  Stay tuned!

One-Roll Attack Table (part 3)

B/X Blackrazor had a great idea to eliminate attack rolls altogether from his game.  In short, his thesis is that HPs are often defined as luck or dodging or deftly avoiding blows -- why roll to hit at all?

From p. 34 of the AD&D 1st Ed. PHB

Each character has a varying number of hit points just as monsters do.  These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained.  The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors.

B/X Blackrazor set up his table by "level".  Thus, characters and monsters of a given level would roll a certain die to cause damage.  Magical "plusses" have the effect of "shifting" the column so that the player will roll a better die for damage.  There are a lot of shifts in his system (and its a good one BTW), but I thought I could make it simpler.

In my system you calculate your "total to hit bonus".  Add whatever bonus your level gives you to whatever bonus your strength or magical weapon gives you and find a number.

I'm talking Whitebox S&W now --

Angmar is a 3rd level fighter.  He has a STR of 17 and a +1 magical sword.  His total "to hit" bonus is +4 (+2 for his level, +1 for his STR and +1 for his magic sword).

You take this number and you cross-reference it with the AAC of your target.

Angmar is attacking a bugbear AAC 14.  He'll roll a d6.

That's all there is to it.

In my system, there's always a chance that you might take damage, even if you have a tremendous armor class.  I can see a peasant throwing a rock at a terrifying death knight bristling with magical armor and getting lucky.  It could happen.

Here's the chart:

I have not playtested this chart yet (but I plan to soon).  I think I *will* adopt B/X Blackrazors system of subtracting 1 pt. of damage per range increment for missile weapons, so that a miss is a possibility sometimes.  My grandson is just starting to play RPGs and I think this system will be easier for him to learn.

My chart does treat the "Normal Man" as a special case.  Weak creatures or adventurers with a zero "to hit bonus" are better, but not much. 

I hope you enjoy the chart.  My humble thanks to B/X Blackrazor and his idea.  Let me know if you try it and how it goes.