Do you need or prefer physical dice when playing?

[Marc Radle]

Physical dice!!

I can’t even begin to imagine playing without physical dice.

 

[payn]

Physical dice!!

I can’t even begin to imagine playing without physical dice.

I stared pre-Covid with a roller as GM. Saved me boat loads of time. Didn’t get into it as a player until after Covid hit.

 

[TwoSix]

Voted Option 3. While I don't HAVE to use physical dice, I strongly prefer to.

 

[Corinnguard]

I have been using the virtual dice on D&D Beyond since January 2023.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I stared pre-Covid with a roller as GM. Saved me boat loads of time. Didn’t get into it as a player until after Covid hit.

Out of curiosity, do you play much with games that may require different polyhedra in one roll? Like I said, that's where I've found rollers clumsy (its not an issue with the 13th Age game I'm running much because they don't tend to roll different dice in one roll much).

 

[Blue]

So, I've been gaming since the early 80s, and the quality of dice has greatly improved. I mention this because I started with the Moldvay Red Box, and the dice in that. You can't buy dice that ... boring anymore. As a matter of fact, I can get multiple sets at a time off Amazon for $2-$2.50 a set that would have been $20+ dice sets in the 90s. But now we have even more wonderous luxury dice, from metal and other exotic materials to fluid filled with things floating, LED lights, and all sorts of goodness.

I mention all of that in that my whole gaming life, there has always been nicer dice than I have available. It was a thing to collect them. I completely emphasize with @Clint_L 's point you quoted.

If I'm at an in-person game without dice, I'll borrow from someone else rather than use my phone. Not revultion, but it literally wouldn't even cross my mind.

As an aside, I play a lot of boardgames. Several friends have this nifty little app where everyone puts a finger on the screen, and then it picks who is going first. I have no problems using it. But in my physical-touch-the-pieces boardgame space, I don't want it myself.

On the other hand, when I play boardgames on BGA, I've got no problems letting it do it. And that translates directly back to my online experience with RPGs - not only want to roll my dice but figure all the correct modifiers and total everything up for me? Go right ahead.

With one online GM whom per-pandemic I used to play in-person, he doesn't mind if people roll their own dice and just tells him the result. I've done that some, but if the "figure it all out for me" is one click away in the interface I'm using, I still usually go for that instead. Plus it keeps everyone from fudging.

But none of that translates back to in-person. Some other people use DnDBeyond or some other App for their character and rolls, but I want to feel those dice in my hand and epically cast them onto the battlemap.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I play online and still use real dice. We could use dice rollers. But I find it unsatisfying to use those so I just stick with real dice and the honor system

 

[payn]

Out of curiosity, do you play much with games that may require different polyhedra in one roll? Like I said, that's where I've found rollers clumsy (its not an issue with the 13th Age game I'm running much because they don't tend to roll different dice in one roll much).

Back when I was GMing pf1 I used the roller in situations I had numerous monsters, especially those with different saves. It was usually only D20 but I had to roll so many times.

Since moving online with foundry, I can build macros for whatever I need no matter the combination.

 

[John R Davis]

And just to add.....

No metal dice
Taking an average on 12 dice is fine.

In Shadowrun last week I rolled 38 d6, and managed just one 6. ( This was 19 dice I then rerolled by burning Karma), so got somewhat wounded in game

 

[aco175]

The only way I would play digital dice is if I played online, or if the rolling sound could duplicate 90s internet connection sounds instead of just dice sounds.