"A Dice Question For the "Old Timers"" Topic

Many of the older rules sets like "1776" or "Minuteman" called for 20-sided dice that were actually each numbered 0-9 twice. I am not finding these available anywhere and lost mine long ago. What do you do if you play a set that required the roll of two such dice for percentages, just use the newer 10-sided dice? Thanks!

Bill
Sir William the Aged

You can do that, or just consider 11 – 20 as rolling 1 – 10, or 0 – 9 (not sure how 1776 works).

The also sell dice with 10, 20, 30, etc., so you can pair one of those with a 1 – 10 die, to get the D100 as well.

I think I saw some 20 sided dice at my FLGS just the other day. Believe some of the role playing systems need them.

Percentage dice – just roll two different colored D10's. One color (let's say 'red') represents the "tens" and the other color (let's say 'white') is the "ones". So if you roll a red '6' and a white '7', the result is '67'.

called for 20-sided dice that were actually each numbered 0-9 twice

Only because they were the only ones that existed.

We had percentage dice – roll a red for tens and a black for units, and they were 20-sided marked 0-9 twice.

These also gave a range 1-10 if you treated 0 as 10 so were used as D10s.

If you then want the range 1-20 if you mark 1 occurance of 0-9 in some way (paint in the number for example) then say unpainted 0 is 10, painted in numbers have 10 added to them gives the range 1-20.

There were no D20's with 1-20 on them, there were no D10s. There were no D100s. It wasn't hard at all. If D10's had existed probably the rule writers would have used them, it makes no odds (pardon pun).

We have them – bottom of this page:
link

Doug

D10s – less liable to roll under a chair than a D20

What 20thmaine said!

Use 2, d10's; they roll up more accurately. As 20th maine states we had to force wax crayons into the numbers to make them readable at a distance.

Since all it's doing is generating a number from 0-9, I just use a ten-sider. And yes, for percentage dice, they actually make ten-siders that are numbered 0-9 on one die and 0-90 by tens on the other.

For people who can't work out that one colour of dice is the tens and the other the units?

Though I did once come across someone who tried to change the colours around during a game. He got short shrift.

I've always enforced a rule in any games I've run that the tens are red. If players don't have a red D10 I do.

"For people who can't work out that one colour of dice is the tens and the other the units?"

Or people who are going to forget? Some of us out here can't recall things said to us five minutes ago. Certainly when under pressure…

I've always enforced a rule in any games I've run …

If anyone would ask me which TMPer would say that with no other hint, do you think I could guess it?

My son (4) was playing with his D20 marked 0-9 twice last night, and then I read this post weird huh?

You can still get them, apparently although I don't remember buying it for him.

If it wasn't a Greek solid, by golly it shouldn't be considered a die …

I had to read your question a couple times to understand it. You're asking how to generate percentage when you can't find two dice numbered 0-9?

Most 7-dice polyhedral sets nowadys have a "tens" D10 die numbered 00-90. You can also get these separately. We roll this with a regular D10 numbered 1-10. If we get a 10 on the D10, we read it as zero. (Mind you some rulesets nowadays call for a 1-100 result not 0-99; in that case we just read the 10 as it lies.)

This is just the reverse of, and certainly no harder than, what we used to do with the dice you describe that were numbered 0-9; when we needed a 1-10 result, we read the 0 as 10.

Harder was using those "D20" dice to generate a 1-20 and we did that so often we learned to do it unconsciously. With a "D20" actually numbered 0-9 twice, we tried coloring half the die but not everyone did it consistently which confused DMs to have different players doing it different ways, so the practice never caught on. We rolled a D6 along with the "D20" and on a D6 result of 4+, we added 10 to the 0-9 result. Plus we read the 0 as 10. (Some players used an "evens add 10, odds add 0" read on the D6 which is statistically just as valid; in our groups though we tended to discourage this as "higher is better" is easier to teach.)

Folks,

OK, perhaps my question should have been phrased differently. I obviously (to me at least) know how to convert other dice and to generate a number between 1 and 100 (or 0 and 99). And yes, we have done this many times when the "proper" dice were not available.

My question was more to the point of "If the old-style double 0-9's were not available, would anyone have a problem with simply using the current 10-sided dice?" I don't, but then I haven't played at a Con, a tourney, or even anyone else's house in almost 20 years. Apparently, no one (at least on TMP) has a problem with using the newer dice, so I will also.

My apologies if you found the post confusing, although some of the responses have been enlightening. My first pair of 20's were from Lou, but I never heard of "pressing crayon" into them. I simply used a spotting brush with white acrylic to fill in the black die and my Rapidiograph drafting pen and India ink to fill in the red die. Later, I picked up a white one and filled it in with the pen as well; simple enough that even I could figure it out.

Bill
Sir William the Aged

One system I've seen used is you take your d10/20(0-9) and another die (whatever one ya have to hand, say a d6 for this post.) Roll 'em both. Whatever you get on the d10/20 either has 0 or 10 added depending on whether the d6 was 1-3:+0 4-6:+10.

That gives you the expected range of 1-20 :)

I have some old D20 dice – they are numbered 0-9 twice, but one set of numbers have a dimple next to the number. I also have a D100, that I got from another gamer years ago. Problem with most of these, is in a number range of say 0 to 10 there are 11 numbers. The D100 actually had 101 faces, never worked very well.

You can also get pair of "precentile" dice. The "tens" digit is marked 0-9, the "ones" is marked "00-09"

I have two very old sets of these dice, must have played Angriff! with them in the good old days.

They roll much better than 10 sided dice.

I bought 20 of them from my FLGS a few months ago. I prefer them to the d10s.

The pair of d20s I got with my first D&D boxed set is still around somewhere. The plastic was crap, and the corners wore out quickly, to the point where using them was like rolling a little golf ball!!

How many wargamers can dance on the top of a d20…?

Why did I read this thread!