I got my new dice in the mail a few days ago and I’ve been showing them off. I haven’t gotten to game with them yet though. Let me introduce my creation, the d20x5 and then I’ll show you the other dice I picked up. Stick around till the end to get in on a dice contest!
The d20x5 is my first foray into the custom dice world. A little wobbly, a little novice but all mine! Here is a die that can give me an approximately percentile experience wrapped in a d20. Just rolling this die feels comfortable to me. No diverging d10s to find as one rolls under the table, no “Which die is the tens?”, no finding one die of my favorite set and not finding the other.
I do have to admit that this big guy is pretty cool too. It’s a nice little package for rolling a d100. Everyone that rolls it intuitively says the outer shell is the tens place and the inner is the ones. That’s pretty cool.
It can be a little tricky though. Sometimes the inner die doesn’t quite land flat. That’s pretty easy to fix, a light tap settles the inner dice to the side you pretty much figure it would land on. It sometimes does take some craning of the neck to see past the outer number though. The sound of the shell dice is a bit odd to my ear but I’m getting used to it. It’s the little things.
All in all though, I’ll be using this dice pretty often.
I’m not sure why I got this hit location die other than it’s cool. It’s a fast way to pull up where something lands on a person. It eliminates looking up the location on a chart. It does however give you a 4 in 12 chance of hitting a hand or a foot. So 1 in 3 hits will strike the smallest segments of the body. We were talking about it and figured that it could make sense in hand to hand situations.
I also picked up some FUDGE dice. We have a new project that we’re going to use the FUDGE system for. I thought about using FATE but it has a lot of baggage like FATE points and compels that I don’t really need. Yeah, I know, with FATE Core and FATE Accelerated all the rage now it would be a popular choice but FUDGE is just more straightforward for what I want.
Now, the contest. Here’s where you come in. Come up with something cool to put on a d20. The sides of these puppies are small so I can only fit one to two characters on them. That means that if your die needs a cheat sheet to be used that’s okay. For instance Y could be a “yes” while Yb is “yes but”.
Come up with something cool, something that will fit on one of these puppies and I’ll do my best to make that die. I’m not using a laser to etch the die, don’t expect perfection but I should be able to produce usable and legible.
Write up your submission in the comments below or if you’re super secret, you can email your super secret submission to submissions@theartifact.net
You’ll be judged based on the following criteria.
Does it fit on a d20? That’s an important one.
How universal is this concept? Could everyone enjoy this die?
How revolutionary is this concept? Does it blow us away?
Does it solve a practical need?
Winner get’s me hacking at a poor white die twenty to make that will get mailed to your (the winner’s) address and a copy of The Artifact third edition.
2nd place gets me making their die with the same novice skill and mailing it to your (the 2nd place winner’s) address.
Contest ends September 30th. Judging ends and winners announced Friday October 4.
Do you have what it takes? What does it take? I guess we’ll find out October 4th!
The Free RPG Blog
Here’s my entry: (roughly) 4 Fudge dice on a single d20! 4dF makes a slightly nicer bell curve, but 1dF20 (what I’m calling this) is so much easier to roll. Plus, the difference between +/-2 and +/-3 isn’t necessarily that drastic, and could inject some flavor in your Fudge/Fate games.
1 | -4
2 | -3
3 | -3
4 | -2
5 | -2
6 | -1
7 | -1
8 | -1
9 | 0
10 | 0
11 | 0
12 | 0
13 | +1
14 | +1
15 | +1
16 | +2
17 | +2
18 | +3
19 | +3
20 | +4
You can see how it lines up with an actual set of 4dF here:
http://anydice.com/
Enter the following code (between the —‘s) and click “calculate” to get nice bargraphs:
—
F: {-1, 0, 1}
FTWENTY: {-4, -3, -3, -2, -2, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4}
output 4dF named “4dF”
output 1dFTWENTY named “1dF20”
—
I think I might end up using this…
For the anydice code, you have to retype the quote marks after you paste it – anydice doesn’t like curly quotes.
Huh, nevermind pasting the code… just found out anydice makes links for you:
http://anydice.com/program/28bb
There you go!
Cool submission Jake!
The submissions are already starting to trickle in. Five already are in, keep it coming!
You could make a d20 that roughly mimics a roll of 2d6 (for settlers, monopoly, etc)
Sides would be: 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 2/12
The 2/12 is the only trick part as you would then need to determine which it was (by coin flip, re-rolling etc.). You could also color one each of 4, 6, 8, 10 and the 2/12 differently to show that it was a doubles roll for games in which doubles matter.
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Old school random dungeon generator:
2x == (Hall continues)
3x =+ (Side passage)
3x [ ] (Door)
2x ={ (Opens into chamber)
4x ā„/ā¦ (2 each of Passage Turns right/left)
1x X (Dead end)
1x ā„ (Stairs)
1x N (NPC)
1x ? (Trick/Trap)
1x M (Wandering monster)
1x =:: (Building type changes)
Include small 1-20 so that dice can still be used for table lookups
I don’t think I can fit the small 1-20. That would be cool if I could though.
Other than that, cool!
I suppose I could bring along a normal D20, too š
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