Dice or generated dice rolls

[rick krebs]

Do you or would you allow yourself or your players to use a computer generated dice roller (laptop or Ipad) in your games ?

[Falconer]

No. Dice-rolling is a sacred channeling of the will of the Great God Gygax. Dice can be primed to roll high or low by rubbing them across his signature or (if you were so lucky) asking him to personally handle them. (You could also have dared touch the die to him without his permission, but he would have surely felt the good luck flowing from him and probably turned around and cursed the die, or the roller!) Anyway, the physical look, feel, and sound of real dice adds great pleasure to the game, and a little superstition only increases the fun.

[fnast]

The idea of a computer at the gaming table just doesn't sit well with me. Not that I'm a Luddite, but we all could use an occassional escape from the 21st century.

I might allow a Dragonbone, though. ;D

[tombowings]

I've run playtest games where I wanted exactly what was a lucky streak of die rolls and what wasn't and made players use a electronic die roller for the built-in recording system. Other than that, only real dice at my table.

[waysoftheearth]

I can recall playing in a tournament game sometime in the 80s where the referee had a long list of die results printed out (dot matrix print outs on punch feeder paper no less!), to be used from the top down. The idea was that consecutive groups playing the same "competition" adventure had exactly the same die rolls.

I can also remember using the "rand" function on a scientific calculator to generate die rolls before I owned a set of those impossible to find polyhedral dice, and also later when trying to play at homes that didn't have polyhedral dice. But even decades on I can still remember it being enormously frustrating.

Nowadays rolling dice is a big part of the charm -- it wouldn't be the same game without it ;D

[coffee]

I saw one guy in one of Kesher's games who didn't have any dice. So he downloaded a dice app for his iPhone -- had the sound effects and all.

He liked it, but as for myself, there's something tactile about the dice that I don't want to ever give up.

[Mike]

Real players should roll real dice!

Virtual dice-rollers for online games are cool though.

[chicagowiz]

One thing I've done is pregenerate rolls and print them out - like a ton of 3d6 rolls, d8 rolls, d20 rolls, etc. - not sure where I picked this up at. Then I just cross them off as I use them.

[barrataria]

Sept 20, 2010 9:19:12 GMT -6 rick krebs said:

Do you or would you allow yourself or your players to use a computer generated dice roller (laptop or Ipad) in your games ?

In a pinch where I've forgotten or lost dice I'd certainly use one to run a game. But since I carry dice everywhere I go, that can't happen anyway (and I know for a fact I'm not the only poster on this board that does so )

I don't have an ideological problem with it at all, although I'd certainly prefer the aesthetics of dice and the rolling thereof. BUT I definitely dislike the distractions of reboots, spotty wireless connections, and all the other possible glitches that would distract players from the game itself, whether from the interruption in play or just trying to help "fix" whatever technology hath wrought on that particular game table.

[teramis]

In a face-to-face game I do dice only.

In PBEM games, I use a dice roller utility or dice for the GM rolls (depends on my mood). I also let players (in PBEM) pregenerate a batch of dice rolls on their own (which they roll up by hand), then I work through their list to resolve PC actions as needed. It works out pretty well that way.