a substitute for dice

[cavalier973]

I was wondering if anyone had a system for dealing with a situation were no dice were on hand.

What I have come up with is to get 20 small pieces of paper and number them 1 through 20, throw them into a bag, and draw a number to "roll".

Anyone have anything better than that?

 

[KahnyaGnorc]

Playing cards. Standard cards or make your own. Red card A-10 = 1-10, Black card A-10 = 11-20. You can add "specials" to the face cards or simply not use them.

 

[Fridayknight]

you could do this:

two different objects (any)
first pick is deciding 1-10 or 11-20
second narrows again to 1-5,6-10,11-15,16-20
ect.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Playing cards. Standard cards or make your own. Red card A-10 = 1-10, Black card A-10 = 11-20. You can add "specials" to the face cards or simply not use them.

And if ya have a tarot deck, even better!

 

[fba827]

whatever you make should be scalable to whatever types of dice you would need (i.e. not just a d20 but a d8 for weapons, etc - as determined by the game system you're using anyway)

 

[Nytmare]

What I have come up with is to get 20 small pieces of paper and number them 1 through 20, throw them into a bag, and draw a number to "roll".

Funfact: The book that came in ye olde basic blue box had a little plastic sheet full of numbers in the back that you were supposed to cut out and put into a Dixie cup.

"Sherpa" was an old RPG you were able to play "while hiking in the mountains, strolling in a park, walking on the beach, sitting by a pool or lake, floating down a river on a raft, as a passenger in a car or space shuttle, waiting in a long line, etc." It used the stopwatch feature of those fancy new digital watches we all had during the 80s as it's random number generator. You'd keep the stopwatch running, and whenever you needed a number, you'd hit the lap button on your watch and read off the last 1 or 2 numbers.

What we used to do prior to finding Sherpa was to have the DM and player each write down a number (say 1-20 for a d20 roll) and then add them together, mod the die range. So say for a d20 roll, the player and DM might write 16 and 12. Added together, you'd get 28, which would be modded to 8. It was slow, and becomes more of a faux-strategic roshambo-ish kind of game than a true RNG, but it worked well enough for us.

 

[KahnyaGnorc]

What we used to do prior to finding Sherpa was to have the DM and player each write down a number (say 1-20 for a d20 roll) and then add them together, mod the die range. So say for a d20 roll, the player and DM might write 16 and 12. Added together, you'd get 28, which would be modded to 8. It was slow, and becomes more of a faux-strategic roshambo-ish kind of game than a true RNG, but it worked well enough for us.

You could modify it a bit to maintain the pseudo-RNG aspect. Ask each of your players at the beginning of each session to come up with a list of random numbers, each player given a different, and relatively prime (or just prime), number of numbers to come up with (9, 11, 16, and 25 would work, they are relatively prime, but 7, 11, 13, and 17 would as well), then when you add up a group of them, increment each one. Each time you reach the end of a list of numbers, circle back to the first in that list. You won't ever have the same numbers added up unless you have more rolls than the prime/relatively prime numbers multiplied together.

Simple example: 3 players, given 2, 3, and 5:
Player 1: 3 7
Player 2: 6 8 9
Player 3: 1 5 4 2 10

First roll is 3+6+1 (mod n)
Second is 7+8+5 (mod n)
Third is 3+9+4 (mod n)

However, the next time you get 3+6+1 would be the 31st roll. The larger the (relatively) prime numbers, the higher the roll count needs to be before you repeat. (If the players repeat the numbers they come up with, repeats would happen sooner, but those would be unpredictable, esp if they don't know the numbers the others came up with)

ETA: You can skip that player's pre-generated number, and ask them for a number then and there instead (which will give a real-time action, instead of predetermined "rolls")

 

[Firebeetle]

In any group you'e likely to have a cell phone with a spreadsheet program. Y ou may even have a laptop available. A spreadsheet can be used as a dice generator that are better than dice. If you have excel, enter this code into the first six rows:

=randbetween(1,4)
=randbetween(1,6)
=randbetween(1,8)
=randbetween(1,10)
=randbetween(1,12)
=randbetween(1,20)

Now, everytime you click F9, you'll get a dice roll for each category.

You can customize this for different dice rolls. On individual tabs, make a dice set for each player or monster and program it for the dice rolls they need. Label each in the first column, enter the code in the second. Include a basic d20 first, then one for various attacks with damage in the next row. Then trained skills. For example, a fighter is given below. He has a +7 to attacks for 1d10+5 damage. He encounter attack gives him a +9 attack and 2d10+5 damage. His daily is +10 to attack, and 3d10+5 damage. Three trained skills, which +5, +9, and +7 as bonuses.

Tab label (Grok)

d20 =randbetween(1,20)
Basic Attack =randbetween(1,20)+7
Basic Attack Damage =randbetween(1,10)+5
Encounter =randbetween(1,20)+7
Encounter Damage =randbetween(2,20)+5
Daily =randbetween(1,20)+10
Daily Damage =randbetween(3,30)+5
Diplomacy =randbetween(1,20)+5
Athletics =randbetween(1,20)+9
Stealth =randbetween(1,20)+7