What are your thoughts on TTRPGs with non-standard dice?

[Lanefan]

I don't like using dice like DCC - most of them look similar to existing dice. For example, you might accidentally pick up a d24 instead of a d20.

Colour coding can be your friend there - only get green d24s, for example, yellow d16s, and so on. I don't at all mind dice of different numbers than the usual six (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20).

For any dice of any shape, though, they have to be able to pass a chi-squared test without being given the answers; and I've seen some non-standard dice (d5s in particular) that failed this step miserably.

EDIT to add: if your game is going to use non-standard dice they'd better be included in the box. Not everyone has easy access to getting them otherwise.

I also don't like dice without numbers, like the Star Wars dice. It requires remembering strange runes and patterns that have no bearing in real life. "That comet means you get a special success, but two squiggles means you get two complications that are better than failure and worse than Despair - which is represented by the circle with a line through it on the yellow die."

I also generally don't like symbols on dice that replace numbers. If the die is entirely symbols and is used often enough in play that everyone soon comes to know what the symbols mean, then fine; otherwise no thanks.

Even worse are promo dice of regular shapes (d6, d20, etc.) where one of the numbers has been replaced by a logo, as there's no historical consistency as to whether it's the highest number or the '1' that has been replaced.

As for cards, I'm not a fan of them as a full-time resolution mechanic but once in a while (e.g. if a D&D party meets a Deck of Many Things) they can be great.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

By non-standard, of course I mean other than the regular d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. In this week's podcast we veered off, as we are wont to do, into a discussion on funky dice. What are your thoughts on them? A barrier to entry, an additional cost, a gimmick, or a useful new tool?

Personally funky dice are a hard red line for me. A couple of reasons for this:

1) No king rules forever, and most don't rule very long at all. I've often played RPGs 10 or more years after they were published, and had a good time, and if a game is designed around funky dice, it makes it that insanely harder to do. Plus, stockists just often don't have the funky dice even for newer games!

I experienced this recently with a game from less than two years ago, which didn't hard-require but strongly suggested funky dice. I thought "What the heck, how much can some dice cost, $10?". Turned out cost wasn't the issue. Literally no-one being able to sell me even a single one of those dice was!

I later found a person on eBay selling a small number of them (not enough to play the game really) for like, 10x as much as normal dice would cost + surprisingly insane shipping + it would take weeks.

2) Most "funky dice" games don't actually need funky dice to do what they're doing, and often are not even more efficient. In the most extreme cases, it's clearly just a way to force people to spend more money and get more locked into their ecosystem (looking at you, FFG). I get that there can be situations where they would theoretically be beneficial, but even then, I think any designer thinking of going that way for non-cynical reasons should stop and ask - "Is it worth it? Will most people buying this RPG thank me for this decision once they play it?". It's definitely a barrier to entry.

Most games at least have a translation table for non-funky dice, but with some it's complicated enough that it's not really worth it, so in a world where there are literally thousands of at least decent RPGs, maybe just play one that's easier to play?

I mind cards a bit less so long as you can get them on PDF, because I've printed and cut cards from cardstock before. It's not great, but it prevents it being a hard red line. Especially if they game doesn't actually need them need them (like 4E and DH don't actually need them, they're just fun).

With weirdly-sized dice i.e. d24s etc. I don't loathe them but it feels like a cheap gimmick to try and get nostalgia points for me. The only odd die my main group really enjoyed in the last ten years was me bringing out non-foot-hurting d4s recently! One of the players said it couldn't be done, and proceeded to stomp barefoot on one before accepting that indeed, these were basically safe!

 

[payn]

Even worse are promo dice of regular shapes (d6, d20, etc.) where one of the numbers has been replaced by a logo, as there's no historical consistency as to whether it's the highest number or the '1' that has been replaced.

Some even have the 3 or 4 replaced with a symbol.

 

[Staffan]

Even worse are promo dice of regular shapes (d6, d20, etc.) where one of the numbers has been replaced by a logo, as there's no historical consistency as to whether it's the highest number or the '1' that has been replaced.

As an aside: if you're planning to make custom d6es as some sort of promo, put your logo on the 6 side. At one point, long ago, I was at an event where a bunch of more-or-less local corps were trying to woo students, in the hopes of eventually recruiting them. One of these companies, Perstorp, had promo dice with their company name on the 1, and I grabbed a few of them. And of course, whenever someone rolled a 1 with them they'd exclaim "Perstorp!" in anger.

As for cards, I'm not a fan of them as a full-time resolution mechanic but once in a while (e.g. if a D&D party meets a Deck of Many Things) they can be great.

Cards can do cool things as a full-time resolution mechanic, but you need to build the system around them in that case, and build the system in such a way that their cardness is relevant. For example, in TSR's SAGA system (used in Dragonlance 5th age and one of their Marvel games), the task resolution was that you'd play a card from your hand and add to your relevant stat in order to beat a difficulty number, and then replace the card you just played with one from the deck. If the card was of the proper suit for the action in question, you'd also add another card from the deck to the action. This has two effects:

• If you have crap cards, you might look for an opportunity to play them in a low-stakes situation in order to fail something without too much consequence, in the hopes of replacing them with higher cards. This emulates a hero initially getting into trouble but eventually winning through gumption.
• You can also take a risk by playing a low card of the right suit and hope to succeed anyway through the luck of the draw, instead of a high card of the wrong suit and playing it safe.

It also turns the task resolution mechanic into a resource management thing, in some ways representing effort. Is it worth playing this high card now or should I save it for later? But that's a general thing with card-based systems, not specific to SAGA.

Does this make for a realistic simulation? No, absolutely not. But it can make for a pretty good way of emulating what's going on in heroic fiction such as comics.

 

[Argyle King]

I have two sets of the physical FFG dice and have held on to the app on my phone.

I also spoke to Edge Studios at Gencon, and while they are definitely working their way through reprinting all the existing books, they don't appear to have any plans to produce new product, even in "hint" form. That is the definition of a game on life support.

That's kinda what I thought, based upon previous news.

It's unfortunate. I was surprised by how much I liked it.

I've borrowed some of the mechanics to use when playing some of the other games I play.

I'm aware that Genesys is the underlying system, but it doesn't seem as good as FFG Star Wars. I didn't like how magic was handled in Genesys. Despite usually preferring classless games, I also missed that career trees from FFG Star Wars; they were a good middle ground between having classes but still being able to pick up things outside your career (for a cost).

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's kinda what I thought, based upon previous news.

It's unfortunate. I was surprised by how much I liked it.

I've borrowed some of the mechanics to use when playing some of the other games I play.

I'm aware that Genesys is the underlying system, but it doesn't seem as good as FFG Star Wars. I didn't like how magic was handled in Genesys. Despite usually preferring classless games, I also missed that career trees from FFG Star Wars; they were a good middle ground between having classes but still being able to pick up things outside your career (for a cost).

At least there's a lot of material for Star Wars.