Bringing fun to RPG's in a new way (maybe).

[Adam Dray]

One of my design choices for Verge was to figure out a way to roll a giant pile of dice without it bogging down play. It's fun. My method lets you roll like 10d6 or more, do no math, and quickly figure out what the result is. Whee!

I also want to design a d20 for D&D that makes a triumphant sound whenever you roll a 20. That would rock. This idea originated when a player in my D&D game rolled a natch 20 right as his cell phone rang (and played a ringtone that was this triumphant trumpet flare). We couldn't believe he hadn't planned it that way. It was a moment made of sweet victory.

[Callan S.]

If you had a chip (like the ones you find in greeting cards) that plays music, and that sound file has a short pause at the start, then the only other thing you'd need is perhaps a reed switch or just a small metal weight that when a twenty is at the top, the metal weight drops to a metal surface below. This connects the circuit and makes the sound file play (the sound being a trumpet). The small pause is for the short periods that the twenty is at or near the top whilst in mid roll, because since it's a breif time, the music will play, but if there's a pause before the trumpet, you wont hear anything. Not until the die sits properly on a twenty. I imagine it'd be easy to drill out the twenty (or the one) and insert it, then replace the number.

You might even be able to get a flashing LED under the twenty - how bling would that be! LOL

[David Artman]

I can never find enough of the particular color, and then I feel like I'm losing out on something. Plus, it can get confusing when you're supposed to roll 4 green and 2 black dice and I have 2 green dice, a purple dice, a speckled red dice, and 2 wooden dice...

One easy solution is to roll them into different places: roll your "greens" into a small box lid (Carcassone-expansion-sized) and roll the "blacks" outside of it. More colors just means more boxes. You could also use transparent card boxes, I suppose.

That said, a brick of 36 12mm d6s is, what, $8? Frex, Mechaton takes five colors of dice, some colors of which sit on the playing field for a whole turn. And yet I got all I'd ever need for even unreasonably-sized armies for less than $35. Talk to your FLGS--they can do bulk deals, sometimes. And on that note: go to a con, find the Chessex booth, and do the Pitcher Full O' Dice. Their "blems" are usually just bad color mixes, not actual broken dice, and I think a random beer pitcher full of them goes for $12 or $15. I figure at least 200 dice in such a scoop, and they're happy to let you mound them. Believe it or not, you'll get a LOT of matching dice--I did just a coffee mug for Dread TFBOP d12s, and hand-picked, and I got about five matching sets of six for (IIRC) $5. Took me and a cute girl also hand-picking (she wanted blank transparents, for gems in LARP or cosplay) maybe thirty minutes, though.
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I also want to design a d20 for D&D that makes a triumphant sound whenever you roll a 20.

That's gonna take some real engineering, to keep the die balanced, provide a means to change batteries, and not have it give false positives (which I think Callan's idea would do, as numbers around the 20 would likely let the ball drop).

My little notion involved a rather largish d20 that had the battery door built into the 1-side, with a VERY small pressure switch in that face. No false positives, if you try to sense that the 1-side is bearing weight (albeit very little weight) than if you try to sense that the 20-side is fully upright, I should think.

The whole idea isn't impossible, but it would take a Chessex or Koplow to afford the R&D. Or a Hasbro.
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More brainstorm, since folks are sidetracking a bit it seems:
* I'm into LARP, boffer in particular... and I know they sell foam dice. Hehe... To Hit THROWS, with the hit location being where you beaned your buddy, and the die face when it comes to rest on the floor or table shows the damage. Should be safe enough, I reckon.

* Dice juggling to reduce incoming damage--juggle a number of tosses equal to the Skill level of the attacker (i.e. if he's got a 5, then I have to toss every die over five times, for a total of fifteen tosses). The total die result when you drop one or more (or all!) is the damage you take (so different dice could be used, for different weapon types or whatever). AND you can handicap actual jugglers--either make them do four or five or six dice... or you could even let the attacker try to snatch one out of the air from his arm's length away: he grabs it, it's a "crit" on the juggler/defender (max die value); he drops it, he takes counter-attack damage equal to the die result when it comes to rest on the ground or table.
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C'mon, folks--I know there's some creative types on this site! STRETCH the boundaries a bit; gamers gone wild, here! That's what brainstorming is all about: fifty wonky ideas to get one gem....

[whiteknife]

And on that note: go to a con, find the Chessex booth, and do the Pitcher Full O' Dice. Their "blems" are usually just bad color mixes, not actual broken dice, and I think a random beer pitcher full of them goes for $12 or $15. I figure at least 200 dice in such a scoop, and they're happy to let you mound them.

I've done that before, about three times. It doesn't always give you matching dice, although that may be because I didn't pay extra to hand pick them.

The idea of rolling in different loactions is a good one, but it's still kind of annoying.

I'll have to look into the chessex dice bricks though, that sounds like a pretty good deal.

[David Berg]

When die color means something, it could be fun to precede rolls with blind grabs into a bag holding dice of various colors.

[David Artman]

When die color means something, it could be fun to precede rolls with blind grabs into a bag holding dice of various colors.

Good idea--maybe the dice colors indicate the way one must narrate one actions before rolling success:
Red = violence
Blue = sadness
Green = manipulation
etc...

Might be cool for a game which explores impulsiveness, or which is about folks with multiple personalities?

[JoyWriter]

If you do go with the scrabble bag idea, why keep all the dice with the same faces? You could add some old games workshop "sustained fire dice". If I remember correctly they have 1-3 and an explosion as their faces. I'm sure there are other dice you could chuck in.

Maybe that's randomisation to the extreme, but it could be cool to pick out 4 random dice and have to narrate based on their various scores. Say like the PIE system.