Dice Tower

 

I downloaded bainite's Three Path Dice Tower from Thingiverse. It comes in five parts: three sections for the tower, and the two side stairs, all held together by magnets (though you could just glue it all together I suppose).

In general, I find dice towers more a novelty than a necessity, though they can be handy if you're dealing with massive handfuls of dice. They do take up a bit of space on the game table, and I doubt that I'll use it very much, but what the heck. What's the point of having a 3d printer if you don't use it to make pointless crap for yourself?

The original design has a very shallow parapet, and I was finding that unless a degree of care was taken with putting the dice into it, they had a tendency to skip out. So I whipped up an add-on crenelated parapet to deepen the loading well and glued it on top.

I also remixed the whole top floor of the original model, adding the deeper parapet and larger funnel-mouths at the entry of each chute, so there's less flat space on top for dice to inadvertently rest on.

That's also now on Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5814665

d4 that I can pick up

 

I got tired of trying to pick up frictionless little tetrahedrons whenever I want to throw a bunch of four-sided dice, so I made some that are a bit easier to manipulate.

The shape is basically a squared football based on a distorted 16mm cube, so that they can only come to rest on four of the faces, and they're not much bigger than the six-siders I use.

The resin I use in my 3d printer is pretty soft, so it would probably not be a great idea to throw them around too much on a hard surface, but then again they don't have any hard edges to chip away. I'll just have to see how they last, and after all, I can always print more.

There are much harder-wearing ABS-like printing resins, but I don't have any.

My First Proper Dice

 

These were the first dice I ever bought for playing AD&D with, back in 1981. The red ones came with a yellow crayon to rub into the numbers; I don't remember what colour the yellow ones came with as I coloured them with a Rotring pen instead.

The green-numbered yellow d4, the red d10, and one of the red d12s aren't my originals. I don't know what happened to my original d10, nor where this one came from.

They've stayed in reasonably good condition, considering the shitty soft plastic they're made from. That's mostly because as soon as I could (still in 1981) I got myself some harder, sharper, much more expensive Gamescience dice to use, and put these ones aside.

That d20 is actually a d10 — it's marked 0 to 9 twice, and it's always been my favourite style of d20. I marked one set in black and the other in red, using the reds as 11 to 20; I once had a second one as well, and I have no idea where it has got to. I didn't bother buying an expensive Gamescience d6, since they were so readily available just about anywhere.

I used these dice for years and years before I started expanding my dice collection, which is now reaching the point of being a bit excessive.

Alea iacta est (the die is cast)

This is the first attempt at casting a d10 in one of the moulds I bought recently. The resin is a two-part thin clear pouring epoxy, and it's been coloured with acrylic paint.

It rolls okay, but because the resin was not degassed before pouring, or the mould set in a pressure pot to cure, the surfaces are covered in bubbles. Especially the upper surfaces (the 1, 5 and 9 faces — the 1 face is the topmost when the mould is at rest).

Here's the second attempt at casting a d10. This time I tried 'wetting' the mould first, but it had no beneficial effect on bubble formation at all; in fact, the upper surfaces (the 5, 1 and 9 faces) are even worse than on the first one.

I don't think there's much point in trying this again until I can rig up a pressure pot. I really like the colour though. This time it was coloured with brown spirit ink.

Note: although it looks all scungy and mildewy, that doesn't seem to affect the die's functionality at all. It rolls just fine; it just looks like shit.

DIY Dice

 

I ordered a set of silicone dice moulds from Bangood, and they just arrived, two weeks earlier than their estimated ETA, which is nice.

The basic set of seven moulds was relatively cheap — they ended up costing me $NZ23.00 after shipping and everything — but still more expensive than just buying a set of dice. There are more extensive sets of moulds available that include some of the weirder die types, like d7 and d16, but I thought I'd start small.

Now I suppose I'd better get myself some casting resin and try them out. Because, apparently, I don't have enough dice.

CoC Dice Tray — in the flesh

I've got my record-keeping dice tray for Chain of Command printed now in PLA. It took about 24 hours all up, for the tray, pegs and morale dice.

On the left, and turning a corner to run across the top, is the Morale Track. In this instance, the force has 11 morale, one peg for each level of morale. Immediately below the last five morale pegs are recesses for dice indicating the effect of falling below that level of morale: loss of a Command Die (the 5-spot icon), loss of a Jump-Off Point (the letter J), or loss of a special Red Command Die (the red square).

Immediately below that is the rack for the command dice, designed to accommodate up to eight 12mm dice (though most forces will only need five). In this instance, there are five regular command dice and one special red die.

To the right of the Morale track is the Chain of Command track. Every time a five is rolled on a Command Die, a red peg is added to the CoC track. When six fives have been rolled, add a gold Chain of Command peg and remove all the red pegs from their holes — there is space for up to three CoC pegs, though it's unlikely that anyone would collect that many before using any.

To the right of the CoC track is a cavity to keep CoC pegs and any other spare bits and pieces in.

And at the bottom, of course, is the dice tray itself. I'll probably end up covering the bottom with felt or a thin sheet of closed-cell foam to cut down on the clatter.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.

The STLs for all the components are available for free download at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3567059

Star-Crossed

Here's a thing I made. Which I'm sure will come in handy. Though I don't quite know for what.

It's a 20mm d6 with stars on three faces and balkenkreuz on the other three.

The STL is downloadable from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3474568 for anyone who can think of a use for it.

I was thinking that maybe it could be used as a turn initiative randomizer for WWII wargames, but I don't know if that would make for a more enjoyable game, or just a more frustrating one. Or if nothing else, it could just be used as a d2.

Magic Missile d4

Here's another design for a 4-sided die, this time marked from 2 – 5 for use with the D&D Magic Missile spell.

The file is on Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3115258

Romanesque D4

These are some 4-sided dice I designed a while ago and just got around to printing. I've stripped them off their supports, but haven't done any more cleanup than that so far.

I wanted them to look Roman-ish, so apart from using Roman numerals, I've tried to echo elements of Roman architecture in their shape.

They seem to roll adequately randomly, from what I've seen so far. I'm working now on refining some "baked in" supports (see below) so that I don't have to rely on Cura's occasionally inexplicable support placement.

They're a fraction more foot-friendly than the caltrop-tetrahedral d4s, but they've still got some pretty stabby points on them

There's a printable STL file available for download at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3115170 . The fin-like structures at the bottom are supports which will need to be stripped away after printing. I had to enable "Print thin walls" in Cura as they're only 0.4mm thick, and with my 0.4mm nozzle Cura wouldn't slice them reliably without that setting enabled.

New! Improved! Now with added synergy!

Get it here!

Get it even more here!

Do YOU have a need to randomly determine integers from 1 to 4?

Are YOU sick of impaling your bare feet on caltrop-shaped 4-sided dice in the dark?

THEN YOU NEED THIS NEW AND IMPROVED d4!!!

Now you can throw dice that will be the envy of all your peers. [gender] will want you, [otherGender] will want to BE you!

Coming now for an unlimited time to a Shapeways printery near you!

The dice are 10mm sort-of-cubes — the lugs sticking out on two sides are so that they will come to rest square on the table, and not sit half-cocked on the roundy-bit.

Home-made D4

To fill some empty time today, I made myself a "brazil nut" d4 out of some pink birch and poplar dowel. It seems to be successful as a die, so I shall probably make some more. I've just eyeballed the proportions, and haven't employed any great precision in manufacture, but it seems to roll pretty randomly nevertheless.

It's about 18 x 30 mm. I wouldn't want to go any bigger than that, but it wouldn't hurt to be a bit smaller. That would make manufacturing them trickier though.

I tried out this design too, but it didn't roll as well — it had a tendency to end up lying on one of the curved sides (and thus not showing any of the pip faces), especially when rolled on a soft fabric surface.

Also, the pips are too small and indistinct for easy reading.

Dice Nostalgia

I started playing roleplaying games in 1981 with some friends from university. We tinkered with various systems — EPT, Traveller, Space Opera, C&S, Runequest, and more — but the system we played the most was AD&D. We played almost every day, for a while.

The only shop in Palmerston North that stocked any D&D stuff at all was Bennett's University Book Shop, and the range of stuff available was pitifully small. They did, however, have a few sets of dice available, and these were the very first non-six-sided dice I ever bought.

The red ones came in a D&D-branded blister, along with a yellow crayon to fill in the numbers with. They're made of some sort of plastic about the hardness and consistency of hard, dry cheese. I don't think the set included any kind of d10, which would explain why I bought the two shown here, a couple of pale blue Gamescience (?) dice. I used them for about six months before getting some much better dice — some more of Lou Zocchi's earlyish products, I think — and the Crumbly Ones went into honourable retirement, which is why they're still identifiable as dice.

Even in the short time they were in use, their edges started crumbling away. I've seen some of the same brand of dice belonging to friends in much, much worse condition — a d20 that has practically been reduced to a sphere, for example.

It's plain how little I ever used the d4 — it still has points.

Dice! Dice! Dice!

The dice of FUDGE,
plus the set of polyhedrals
that came with the D&D5e Starter Set

I stepped out on to my front porch this morning to find a little package waiting for me — a couple of blisters of FUDGE dice that I ordered from Evil Hat Productions.

Each blister cost $15, for three sets of four dice (so, $1.25 per die). That's not too bad for speciality dice; not the cheapest ever, but not overly expensive considering what a niche product they are.

I really like FUDGE conceptually, but I have to confess that I've never actually run a game myself. I played in one brief game that I enjoyed, but that's it. Therefore, these dice aren't really likely to see much day-to-day use.

But now I am PREPARED.

More adventures in laser-cutting

I designed, and had cut for me, this dice tower. It's cut from 2mm MDF, and it all slots together very straightforwardly, which is gratifying.

Those are 12mm six-siders in there, ten of them. The collection tray caters quite easily to ten or twelve dice at a time, but any more than sixteen and it gets seriously crowded. It would be easy enough to enlarge the tray, but I wanted to keep its footprint on the gaming table as small as possible.

The walls of the collection tray could probably be lower and still stop dice from cascading all over the table; I might experiment with taking them down to about 6mm high, which would make retrieving dice from the tray a bit simpler.

It's a bit noisy in use, but that could be easily ameliorated by gluing some felt or something to the inside surfaces*. It's probably not ever going to be a huge issue though.

Something this size would be easy to disguise as a piece of tabletop terrain — a pele tower, or grain elevator or something. I shall experiment and see what can be done.

---

Follow-up:

I did glue some felt to the baffles and to the floor of the collection tray, and it did cut down the noise, but it had the unexpected side-effect of bouncing the dice out into the tray much more vigorously than before, so they bounced over the walls quite frequently.

I could make the walls of the tray higher, but that would make retrieving the dice more troublesome.

Perhaps the felt isn't all that necessary anyway. After all, the noise isn't all that objectionable.

I needed it, I tell you!

I believe I've revealed, from time to time, my love of Stupid Dice.

This d100 is not as stupid as some, but it's certainly reasonably stupid, and I am proud to own one at long last.

Somehow I doubt that it will see much use in the real world, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

Hey! Where's my missing numbers?

While re-inking it for enhanced readability, I just discovered that a Gamescience d10 I thought was a d10 is not actually a d10 at all, but a d5. It's a 10-sided die all right, but marked 1-5/1-5.

That could kind of explain why my percentile rolls are so shitty. Then again, it might just be because I can't roll dice for toffee except when I'm the GM, in which case I'll get nothing but the best scores, constantly.

This is one of the dice I ordered from frpgames.com, and I wasn't that impressed with their service even before I knew they'd sent me a d5 instead of the d10 I asked for.

Dices Make Throg Brane Hurting

I'd quite like some of these dice. I have no idea who makes them, or where to get them, but if I ever find out, I'll buy some. If they're not too expensive, because they're really just a novelty, and novelty wears off, so I don't want to drop too much loot on something that I won't care about after playing with them for a couple of hours.

I'd really like to see someone trying to play one of those massive dice-pool games with these. That's something that would amuse me... for a little while.

Characteristic Saves

I use CHAR (characteristic) saves a lot in my games; I like to get as much mileage out of the characters' stats as possible. For success, I require that the player roll below their relevant stat score — for example, if you have an INT of 15, for a successful (unmodified) INT save you'd have to roll 14 or less.

Where success in a situation is a matter of luck, or the grace (or anger) of the gods, I use the standard level-based character save mechanism with a d20, but where it's a matter of the character's own physical or mental abilities, a CHAR save is more appropriate.

I've vacillated between using 3d6 and 1d20, but I've decided to stick permanently with 3d6 from now on. The graph shown here (which, as usual, you can clickupon to bloatify) describes the result curves for each.

The d20 curve is perfectly straight. You're as likely to roll a 1 or 20 as you are to roll any other number. It's simple, but that's about all it has going for it, and it doesn't reflect the distribution of stat scores as rolled. Compared with the 3d6 curve, it markedly benefits those with very low stats, and markedly penalizes those with very high stats.

With 3d6, on the other hand, your chance of success in a simple, unmodified CHAR save better reflects the rarity of exceptional (or pathetic) stat scores, and positive or negative modifiers can become significant much faster than in the linear d20 scale — for example, if you have an INT of 9 and you make a CHAR save at +2, on d20 that gives you +10% chance of success, while on 3d6 it means +25%. If you're making the save at -2 on the other hand, while on the d20 scale it's just -10%, on the 3d6 curve it's actually -16.6%, and those penalties or benefits flatten out a lot at either end of the curve.

What I haven't quite figured out just yet is how to accommodate CHAR scores beyond the 3-18 range, especially in CHAR-vs-CHAR contests. I have an idea or two, but I think I need to do some more maths to see whether they'll work as I hope they will.

Anyway, BELL CURVES RULE! LINEAR SCALES DROOL! YEAH!

Addendum:

Difficulty	No. of dice	Range	Average Roll
Very easy	1d6	1-6	3.5
Easy	2d6	2-12	7
Average	3d6	3-18	10.5
Difficult	4d6	4-24	14
Heroic	5d6	5-30	17.5
Superheroic	6d6	6-36	21
Legendary	7d6	7-42	24.5
Mythic	8d6	8-48	28

As mentioned in the comments, those with stats over 18 could be assumed to automatically pass any unmodified CHAR save, and very difficult unopposed tests could just require more dice — 4, 5, 6 or more d6, with the players (or monsters) still required to roll below their relevant stat. All that would be required on my part would be to formulate a rational scale of difficulty, probably a FUDGE-like descriptive scale would be most useful, methinks.

As far as opposed CHAR-vs-CHAR rolls go, I'm tending towards a dice-pool system in which you get 1d6 for every 3 points in the relevant stat, and then do a roll-off. The opponent who rolls the highest score wins the contest.

Lots of eyes, lots of muscles

Inevitably, there comes a time when, convinced that there's something there to find, the whole party all search the same place to make sure that somebody picks up something that everyone else has missed, or all try to open the same stuck door, or pick the same lock, or find the same traps, or whatever. Apart from the fact that it takes up valuable time, and thus increases the chance of being mutilated by some treasure-less wandering monster, it can certainly help swell the party's coffers.

Assuming there really is anything to be found, that is.

Of course you can always throw a die for each individual searcher (I like to use a different coloured d6 for each character so I know who has and hasn't succeeded, just in case they want to keep the news to themselves or something, the sneaky bastards).

However, if you want to skip over all that and get the show on the road, you can always convert all those individual rolls into one combined d100 roll.

The formula for finding the probability from a whole bunch of d6 (or any other die type) is this:

1 - [(chance of NOT showing the desired pips) to the power of (the total number of dice)]

Assuming that you might just want to know the numbers and not have to do a whole lot of tedious maths to find out, here are some I prepared earlier:

Number of d6	Chance of at least one 6 showing on a handful of d6: 1 - [(5/6)^N]	Chance of at least one 1 OR 2 showing on a handful of d6: 1 - [(2/3)^N]
1d6	16.7%	33.3%
2d6	30.6%	55.6%
3d6	42.1%	70.4%
4d6	51.8%	80.2%
5d6	59.8%	86.8%
6d6	66.5%	91.2%
7d6	72.1%	94.1%
8d6	76.7%	96.0%
9d6	80.6%	97.4%
10d6	83.9%	98.2%
11d6	86.5%	98.8%
12d6	88.7%	99.2%
13d6	90.6%	99.4%
14d6	92.2%	99.6%
15d6	93.5%	99.7%
16d6	94.6%	99.8%
17d6	95.4%	99.89%
18d6	96.2%	99.93%
19d6	96.9%	99.95%
20d6	97.4%	99.96%

In praise of the Dice of Fudge

Minus one. Slight bummer.

Once upon a time, a chap called Steffan O'Sullivan instigated a process that ended up with the creation of a generic roleplaying game system which he called FUDGE.

I really like FUDGE conceptually, but it requires a lot of work from the GM to build a campaign. There's a reasonable amount of stuff available for it, already built by people like us with an unreasonable obsession with playing make-believe games — for example, there was a pretty complete port of AD&D to FUDGE built by a guy called Peter Mikelsons some years ago (it, and he, appears to have dropped entirely off the internet). But if you want to build something from the ground up, expect to put in some pretty hard slog.

Anyway. About the dice.

FUDGE's core resolution dynamic rests on rolling a number — often, but not always, three or four — of d3 marked with a plus sign, a minus sign, and blank face (there are two of each on a d6, like those in the picture). You can buy dedicated FUDGE dice like those shown here, or you can just use ordinary six-siders, counting 1-2 as a minus, 3-4 as blank, and 5-6 as a plus. The pluses and minuses are tallied against each other, with blanks being neutral, so scores from -4 to +4 are possible on 4dF (though there's only a 1:1,296 chance of getting either of those results on any given throw). The higher your plus result, the better the outcome. The lower the minus result, the worse things turn out.

What I like about them is that the results conform statistically to a bell-curve, where things are most likely to be only averagely good or bad, but with the (small) possibility of astounding wonderfulness or horrifying horribleness. You can easily modify the degree of potential wonderfulness/horribleness by adjusting the number of dice thrown. I like to use them as Luck Dice, in situations when things could go either way and the outcome rests in the laps of the gods. They fulfil a similar role to a d20 saving throw, but without the linear result curve, and without any level-based modification.

Of course there's no reason why I couldn't just use regular six-siders. But as may have become apparent, I really do like special dice.