{"id":1854,"date":"2015-08-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.d20radio.com\/main?p=1854&preview_id=1854"},"modified":"2015-08-11T16:17:38","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T21:17:38","slug":"untitled-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.d20radio.com\/main\/untitled-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Rules Lawyer- Numbered Dice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to throw out a guess that the vast majority of people reading this blog are the proud owners of a large collection of dice. Maybe they\u2019re in a bag. Maybe you need a bucket<\/em>. And I say proud, because we gamers love our dice. We have personal rituals and superstitions about how they should be stored, or displayed, or rolling techniques, or what needs to be done when a die seems to be continually rolling poorly. We have way more dice than we\u2019ll ever actually need. There is a percentage of you reading this who have d20 in your pocket right now. Some of you have dice tattoos.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re gamers, and dice facilitate the game.<\/p>\n

Recently there\u2019s been a trend in RPG design to incorporate mechanics requiring custom dice. While Fate<\/em> and FFG\u2019s Star Wars Roleplaying Game<\/em> are perfectly fine games, I can\u2019t help but feel the custom dice are there to make things more complex than needed. It\u2019s difficult to overlook the obvious advantages of numerical dice.<\/p>\n

Simplicity<\/strong><\/p>\n

We start learning numbers at an early age. Before children are able to walk and talk they\u2019re given toys with featuring bright, colourful numerals. We grow-up with an instant recognition of these symbols, and what they represent, and how they relate to one another.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the case for the sorts of symbols you find on custom dice. Even if the symbols are familiar \u2013 let\u2019s say, the suits in a deck of playing cards \u2013 there doesn\u2019t exist an instant recognition of how they interact. We know without having to think about it that 14 is greater than six; we don\u2019t have a built in understanding of how clubs and diamonds relate to one another.<\/p>\n

To say nothing of custom symbols, which have neither understanding nor recognition.<\/p>\n

Versatility<\/strong><\/p>\n

The familiarity of numbers also means that they can also be associated with other meanings beyond their simple numerical value. Every Dungeons & Dragons<\/em> player\u2019s eyes light up when that die stops rolling and it shows a 20. A 20 isn\u2019t just as 20, it\u2019s a critical hit. In D&D<\/em> and a lot of other games, rolling an unmodified 20 means something special. Sure, a custom die could have a symbol that appears on only one face and has similar results, but if you\u2019re doing that, why not just use numerical dice?<\/p>\n

What meaning a numerical die has for any given roll can also change given the circumstances within the game. For one roll of a die, the player might be looking to exceed a specific value to succeed. The next roll of that same dice could be compared to a chart where the individual values indicate different results. Heck, if you have some means of telling two dice apart \u2013 colour for example — you could have one that indicates success or fail, the other that gets compared to a success chart or fail chart, as appropriate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve yet to see any game with custom dice where the symbols have different meanings in different contexts.<\/p>\n

Predictability<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, I don\u2019t think it can be overstated just how valuable it is when designing an adventure to be able to figure out the likelihood of any given die roll in advance. Even for those of us who aren\u2019t particularly good at math or statistics have access to calculators, and can figure out without too much difficulty a basic idea of how difficult it\u2019s going to be to succeed or fail on a check, and we can plan accordingly.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not quite so easy with custom dice. When putting together an adventure, it can be a simple thing to make the encounters too difficult or \u2013 perhaps worse \u2013 too easy. You hear phrases like, \u201cIt\u2019s more art than science,\u201d getting thrown about, but that rings hollow to me. Adventure design is always going to be a mix of the two, and a clear understanding of how likely a roll is to succeed at any time is a valuable tool for game masters.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Numbered dice have been found in Mesopotamian tombs, dating back to the 24th<\/sup> century BCE. While I\u2019m not normally one to advocate for tradition, it seems to me that humanity got this dice thing figured out pretty early. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m opposed to game with non-numerical dice; far be it from me to tell anyone what they should or should not be playing. However, there are a lot of good reasons numerical dice will always be the standard in game design.<\/p>\n

Besides, no one has a tattoo of d20 showing a \u201ctriumph.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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