New Dice

I’m waiting for a set of blank dice to come in the mail.

Why?

Well I’m glad you asked. You see, I’ve always loved the way d20s roll, the way they fit in your hand. My old space opera Galactic Legions (unpublished) used a d20 for resolution. I like how d100 works in a game though and the options it gives because of it’s granular nature.

Okay I like both.

There are some d20s that have 0-9 printed twice on them. These are the really old style d20s. When the two sets of 0-9s are colored differently they can be used as a d10 or a d20. You can then use two of them as a d100. That seems pretty cool, but I have one niggle with that. You’re still rolling two dice, visually tracking them and then figuring out the result. I still want to try it though.

So then I ran across some dice within dice, it’s a clear plastic hollow die with another die of the same kind inside it. I ordered a d10 set and a d20 set (I’m not sure why the d20 other than to have one). That will be interesting to try, maybe it’ll scratch my itch.

I also had the idea to make a d20x5. A regular d20 but each face is an increment of 5 instead of 1. The low side is a 5 and the high side is 100. It’s a d20 that’s very nearly a d100! I have one problem with it for the fraction column system. If you’re rolling for a stat of 30 or less you can’t actually roll the character’s eighth. I’m not worried about that for NPCs but it could rob a PC of a really good roll. I could start out at 0 and go to 95 but rolling 0 would be weird. I could start out at 1 and go to 95, but that would be a non-linear die. Why would that matter? It seems, odd. While I’m at it I could number the sides 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 – 80, 85, 90, 100 but that would give a 10% chance at rolling a 100.

Then I thought about a 0-95 numbered d20 and a 0-5 labeled d6. That would work for a full d100 from 0 to 100 (d101?) but that would introduce a second die to the roll and thus defeat my purpose.

I’m fine with a d20x5 for NPCs, I don’t care if they don’t roll the lowest possible value they can get so I’m going to make one. I’ll post pictures when I get one made.