Random Number Generators

[Himoura]

Has anybody seen anything like a random dice rolling generator that will do those 10D6 fireballs and do all the math?

I'm personally pretty terrible at math, so it can take me a little while sometimes to do the math involved in adding all the numbers up, lucky I only have 5 d6 atm so its not to bad but that will eventually get larger so i was wondering has anybody seen something that will do this?

And a more debatable question, would you allow one in your games? hopefully my DM will see this and give me an opinion on it.

 

[Xer0]

Irony Games Dice Server

I use these guys all the time for character generation.

As a GM, I don't allow anything other than dice at my table for my games.

 

[greywulf]

Our gaming is a strict pencil, paper and dice thing, though an occassional calculator might surface for the more complex math.

When away from the table though, computers are used a lot to create NPCs, characters, scenarios, etc. That's where random number generators can be useful too, for a variety or purposes:

- I tend to randomly put wandering monsters in place in advance, just to speed up in-game play. If they get used, great! If not, I've a few spare critters to toss in later.
- rolling Hit Dice
- treasure!
- etc.

As a Linux geek, I've got the following in my .bashrc:

alias d10='perl -le "print int(randl()*10)+1"'
alias d100='perl -le "print int(rand()*100)+1"'
alias d12='perl -le "print int(rand()*12)+1"'
alias d20='perl -le "print int(rand()*20)+1"'
alias d4='perl -le "print int(rand()*4)+1"'
alias d6='perl -le "print int(rand()*6)+1"'
alias d8='perl -le "print int(rand()*8)+1"'
alias 3d6='perl -le "print int(rand()*6 + rand()*6 + rand()*6)+3"'

(with apologies to the non-Linux geeks here).

These let me "roll dice" straight from the command line. Which is cool.

I've also got:

alias stats='for i in STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA; do s=`3d6`; echo "$i $s"; done'

I can type /stats/ and get a random statblock. That's useful to give me a little inspiration when working out what an NPC will look and act like.

Hey, it might not be pretty, but anything that combines D&D, shell scripting and Perl has to be good

 

[Steve Jung]

http://invisiblecastle.com

 

[Delta]

I wrote a random-number generator in raw assembly code to see how small I could make it. Result is a Windows program that's just 221 bytes. Use it on the command line, aka "roll 10d6" and so forth (it's so small that the zip file actually comes out 50% larger, but that's the only way I could attach it here).

 

[Asmor]

I highly reccomend this dice roller, of course I'm a bit biased since I wrote it. It's nice to use during a game because you can create a few different custom rolls to be used a lot, and even give them labels (optional) which help you remember what's what.

Try putting some of these examples in:

fireball:10d6
frost worm attack:1d20+21
frost worm damage:3d8+12

 

[mhensley]

http://www.hackslash.net/?page_id=43

 

[Wil]

At the table I use dice but I'm very partial to this die roller: http://www.fnordistan.com/smallroller.html

 

[helium3]

I wrote up an executeable that you can use. I'll email it to you if you like. It's pretty nifty. Even allows you to do stuff like 1d10 + 1d6 + 8.

 

[Feldspar]

The way I handle adding up large groups of dice is to pull dice out of the big pile in groups that add up to ten. When you can't anymore, you count the tens and then add in the left overs.

For example, say I rolled 10d6 and came up with the following:
2 5 5 6 1 6 4 4 4 4

The first thing I'm doing is pulling out the two 5's to make the first group of 10:
2 X X 6 1 6 4 4 4 4
5 5

Then I start making more groups starting by combining the 6's and 4's:
2 X X X 1 X X X 4 4
5 5
6 4
6 4

And so on:
X X X X 1 X X X X X
5 5
6 4
6 4
4 4 2

4 groups equals 40, plus 1 for 41.