D&D General Playing D&D Without Dice?

[CleverNickName]

Over the holiday weekend, my group of friends decided to play a little impromptu game of D&D...a quick one-shot adventure, downloaded off of DriveThruRPG. We had a copy of the Player's Handbook, and we had a few pre-generated characters that came with the adventure, but there was a small problem: nobody had any dice! Of course we weren't going to let that stop us. We thought about ways we could resolve this problem, and we ended up using this method:

• All players, and the DM, get a sheet of paper and number it from 1 to 20.
• Any time you would roll a d20, you pick the number you want and cross it off your list.
• You can't pick that number again until the whole stack is used.
• When you have used all twenty numbers, your stack refreshes and you get a new set of 20 numbers.

For d12 rolls, use the same method but number the stack from 1 to 12. Same process for d10s, d8s, the rest of the dice bag.

It worked surprisingly well, especially when players could use Advantage/Disadvantage to "burn" lower numbers out of the stack. "Roll with Advantage" meant you could safely eliminate your low numbers, for example. It wasn't perfect, I wouldn't want to permanently switch to using a stack of numbers. But for a one-shot, beer-and-pretzels game with a few friends, it was surprisingly fun.

Do you have any "diceless D&D" hacks?

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

In American prisons where gambling is banned, inmates use spinner discs to replicate dice for D&D.

Why wardens think that guys inveterate gamblers won't bet on the result of a sorry spinner is beyond me, but American puritanism often equates vices with physical totems, so for the prison the cubic d6 is far more dangerous than gambling itself.

EDIT: I naughty word love this quote.
“Pariahdog119” offers the following advice: “If the prison bans D&D, play Pathfinder. They’re pretty stupid and won’t know it’s the same thing. Never have a six sided dice. Use a d12 numbered 1-6 twice.”

 

[jayoungr]

Knights of the Dinner Table had a storyline recently featuring an oldschool grognard GM who insisted everyone draw numbered chits from a cup as a randomizer instead of rolling dice.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Knights of the Dinner Table had a storyline recently featuring an oldschool grognard GM who insisted everyone draw numbered chits from a cup as a randomizer instead of rolling dice.

Yeah my first thought would have been chits. Tear up paper, write #s on each. Flip them over and mix it up. Draw as needed.

 

[Bravesteel25]

At worst case you can also use one of the numerous dice rollers on the web.

 

[Charlaquin]

In American prisons where gambling is banned, inmates use spinner discs to replicate dice for D&D.

Why wardens think that guys inveterate gamblers won't bet on the result of a sorry spinner is beyond me, but American puritanism often equates vices with physical totems, so for the prison the cubic d6 is far more dangerous than gambling itself.

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Because it’s not really about preventing gambling, it’s about exercising control.

 

[Charlaquin]

At worst case you can also use one of the numerous dice rollers on the web.

Yeah, this. Just google the words “dice roller” and you get an in-browser roller with all the standard polyhedrals.