Do you need or prefer physical dice when playing?

[DrunkonDuty]

Not only do I prefer physical dice for gaming. I prefer physical dice in my pockets so that I can fidget with something throughout the day.

I was going to make a joke about cutting holes in my pockets for similar results. But I shall restrain myself.

Rolling masses of d8s or d6es is fine. But... in our Pathfinder campaign my sorcerer has gained the ability to turn into a dragon. This includes brass dragons, with a breath weapon dealing 15d4 damage. The designer did not think that one through.

Oh this hits home. I have vague recollections of rolling something like that for a white dragon back in AD&D days. So awkward. Or more recent memories of being unable to pick the slippery little buggers up. Hate the d4.

 

[Ulfgeir]

When playing where all players ar physically there, then only physical dice will do. When playing over Discord, then we use an apporpriate dicebot.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have used both and some where I have a DragonBone (old electronic dice wand) BUT...

 

[kronovan]

Physical dice are a must have feature for me when I play IRL around a table. The same is true most of the time if I solo, although if I the solo RPG also is on one of my VTT rulesets, I'll sometimes use the VTT dice. For the most part, digital dice are something I only use when playing or hosting via VTT.

 

[timbannock]

For me, it's physical dice all the way. I've got gobs of them, plus a cool dice arena tray from Forged Dice Co., so why not roll them?

When I play online, I don't care what my fellow players/GMs do: digital, physical, whatever. I still vastly prefer rolling my physical dice, but if the VTT setup we use makes it extremely easy for me to do complex calculations and/or the GM tells me to use the integrated dice roller, then I'll grudgingly use it. But it's never my first choice, and I'm moving away from both running and playing games with complex mechanics/modifiers as much as possible.

 

[SteveC]

I love me rolling some physical dice. But I'm stuck playing through a VTT for the foreseeable future, so I have to use virtual dice. I do love VTT mods that let me customize the dice.

And I wanted to point out that there are dice out there that connect to your PC via Bluetooth and you can then roll them in a VTT. I have some. Unfortunately I have never been able to get them to work consistently. So it's "Dice So Nice" for me.

 

[Umbran]

I have a preference for physical dice, but I recognize digital dice are more appropriate for VTT play.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To your point about the tactile and other pleasures of dice...hmmm. Hard to separate nature and nurture in this regard. My first instinct is to talk about collectibility, sensation, etc. but I have been conditioned to value particular forms of these things. I notice that when I play with new students who have no experience of D&D they are absolutely fine with rolling on DnDBeyond (plus it does the math for them). I offer to lend them dice, and about half are not interested. I don't think there is necessarily anything inherent to the human species that makes physical dice objectively more attractive than virtual dice, but I would love to see a study.

I think the issue here is that Clint_L is offering them dice, not getting them to play with real dice for say, two sessions, then making a decision.

So he is incorrect to attempt to draw conclusions re: "objectively" or "inherently" more attractive, he can only say that with people who have never rolled polyhedrals, there's only a 50% uptake rate (which is still really high, frankly).

Personally I strongly prefer physical dice, but I have some players who are absolutely fine with virtual despite, being 40-something ancients and having used dice for years.

So I think it's more like a lot of people prefer physical dice, given the opportunity and experience, but not everyone.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I have no problem with using digital randomizers. At the very least, I have been using them in some way, shape or form since the dawn of computer games. One buddy of mine made results generators for various war games we played.

But I greatly prefer the audio, visual and tactile sensations of using physical dice when I have that option. And I’ll sometimes have dice to fidget with even when we’re using RNGs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but while I have a mild natural preference for physical dice on aesthetic grounds, on utility grounds it tends to turn on certain system elements. Most dice pool systems I just find it easier to just tell a roller how many and to count them up (in whatever fashion "counting them up" functions). With polyhedra its more complicated, because often the number and type of dice you're using varies somewhat, and I find picking them out faster manually. If there's a limited number of combos you're going to use and you can set up macros for same, that moves it back to the roller being more attractive.