"exotic dice? like or hate" Topic

When playing a game do you feel that nonstandard dice , not just moving from say d6s to d10s but ones with symbols or system specific icons is something that annoys you or not? Why do you feel that way if it does bother you?

I would much rather have standard dice, that way I can buy them in pretty colours from a number of places.

I like special dice when they assist in gameplay. For example, the dice in Memoir '44 make it completely obvious what types of units would be hit by an attack.

I dislike this new marketing move to use non-standard dice. Annoying

I like the Saga dice b/c they are easy to read and add atmosphere to the game.

OTOH, I hated all the stupid "artsy" symbols used in Confrontation (by Rackham) – they were hard to read and often it was hard to see at a glance what the difference between them was.

Symbol dice are a good way to condense a game mechanic into a fast and easy to use system, yes they can be annoying if they require you to have special ones for ever faction like SAGA, but I think that's more a marketing problem.

No prob. But the symbols/numbers should be easy to see.

I love dice with custom surfaces. I prefer the simpler ones such as Battlelore dice, than the more complex ones such as Descent dice. I really dig that in one roll Battlelore dice handle damage, armor, morale, and special abilities. The moment I roll them I immediately know the results. Instant gratification!

" they can be annoying if they require you to have special ones for ever faction like SAGA, but I think that's more a marketing problem."

Marketing problem? It's a stroke of purest genius. Those guys figured out a way to get gamers who normally bitch about paying five bucks for anything, to drop twenty bucks for a little bag with six dice. Over and over again.

I hope one day to find the magic money-button that gets gamers to pay me thousands for specially-labeled pencils, or measuring tape, or something like that.

And to pull it off with historical gamers, who are usually the first to tell you that they don't need no stinkin' new-fangled dice….

TMP link

Genius, purest genius. Good for them! I'm insanely jealous.

I think he means the marketing problem lies in that a great many refuse to buy those dice as they see it as a rip off.
Such that if it were marketed in a different way it may not put people off.

I could be talking tosh though.

A gamer in our Cleveland based group uses a die that has an Afrika Korps palm tree on it instead of a 1, to great effect. I have seen the dreaded symbol too many times – does anyone know if it is from a particular system?

I dislike them slightly in principle, but not really in practice.

Doug

My next game will feature measurements in quatloos, requiring you to buy a special tape measure. Additionally, using a tape measure without your faction's logo will cost you 100 points on your army list. Each tape measure will be sold separately for $29.99 USD, BUT it will come in a collector's box. There will be 12 unique boxes in total, featuring "The 12 Sexiest Gamers from History."

IMO if it makes the game quicker (i.e. saves looking up) it is good. If it makes the game slower (they are hard to decipher) it is a complete waste of time …

So it is relative and can be quite subjective.

Phil

I like the Richard Borg dice and I think nontransitive dice can really improve drama in games rooted deeply in mathematics. I don't like those novelty dice where the 6 is a skull.

Dice are random number generators, obviously. And if you want numbers from 1-12, you don't roll 2D6s, but a single D12. D10s and D20s for % are essential for many games.

Symbols replacing numbers can be a step-saver in play, which is almost always good. Instead of "a 3 kills a goblin" it's "look, a goblin head, that's the casualty."

Otherwise, it seems to me just cosmetic and so a matter of taste.

If it were required for a game, then I'll probably not play the game. I have scores of dice already. If someone else has them then I might use them. For example the FoW airplane dice. My friend has them. I'd use his but I can figure out how many planes I get with a d6 just as easily.

I like average dice 2,3,3,4,4,5

and wish they were more widely available to the average gamer. They could sit side by side in a lot of D6 systems. Though I do not consider them 'exotic' as such, their rarity in general terms I suppose puts them in the exotic category.

I dislike the move to using non-standard dice. I call it lazy rule-writing.
It's IMHO just a way to get gamers to shell out more money. This is especially true if the dice can only be used in one specific set of rules.

"Marketing problem? It's a stroke of purest genius. Those guys figured out a way to get gamers who normally bitch about paying five bucks for anything, to drop twenty bucks for a little bag with six dice. Over and over again. "

No, real genius would be to sell them as random sets, so that you have to buy dozens of sets to get enough dice for your faction.

As long as there's a chart, like in SAGA, which allows you to convert the numbers into symbols then I'm fine with it.

I definitely like the exotic dice, especially those that have the "odds" built into them, as with the battle dice in the Command and Colors series, Memoir '44, etc. I think more should be done along these lines for miniatures gaming. Kids seem to find it much easier to grasp the rules ("oh, the man symbol hits infantry, tank symbol hits armor, and grenade hits everything").

As long as they don't get overly complicated I don't have a problem with them.

A gamer in our Cleveland based group uses a die that has an Afrika Korps palm tree on it instead of a 1, to great effect. I have seen the dreaded symbol too many times – does anyone know if it is from a particular system?

I think that is a Flames of War dice set. They have various sets for both the Axis and the Allies. There should be a set for the Desert Rats as well.

altfritz

Thanks for the help – now I bring my own to destroy his mojo! Hahahahahahhahahahaha!(evil laugh)

@normsmith

Average dice hard to get? They are readily available via our website:
link
about the 4th item on this page.

Doug

I like normal non-standard dice (D8, D12, D20, etc.) but can't stand custom faced dice. My main complaint is the number of out of print games I play, and how awkward they would be now if they had custom dice. Custom dice are less horrible, I guess, when they're still easily available.

I have never really used them before X-Wing came out. it took some time to get use to but they are great at speeding up the game.

What does bother me more is a game that requires everything from a D1 to D20. The one complaint I have about Force on Force is that you have to have D6, D8, D10 and D12s.

VR
James Mattes

I like the Saga dice when playing with them. They provide atmosphere.

I dislike the cost of buying all the different sets. That said, I paid for them all over a month ago. (Of course, the distributor has not been SUPPLIED with them.)

My rant is making game specific die, and then not producing and distributing them in sufficient guantities to be available. This aspect of the Saga series sucks. Be in business or don't -- but this a little bit in business is very irritating to me.

If the game requires special dice that are hard to replace when they get stolen or lost, then I will pass on that game.

I like whatever dice bring me luck and deliver the results I desire.

Specialized randomizers obscure probabilities and interfere with grasping the underlying mechanics. They are a red flag that tactical play was not a priority for the designer.

"Specialized randomizers obscure probabilities and interfere with grasping the underlying mechanics. They are a red flag that tactical play was not a priority for the designer."

Or it could be an indication that the designer doesn't want his players to turn the game into a predictable math exercise, with players always knowing exactly the odds of doing any given thing.

If the "tactics" of a game come down to just number-crunching the CRT, then that doesn't bear much resemblance to real-world risk or the fog of war.

They are a red flag that tactical play was not a priority for the designer.

link

Do you feel that the above game would have worked better sans the exotic dice and if it has no tactical requirements in game play?

DZT

I generally dislike them but the Richard Borg ones are OK, expect where they are the really silly ones in CnC Ancients.

They could just as easily be marked 'sword', 'helmet', 'flag' and 'hit' with two 'miss' rather then the stupid coloured symbols which bear no relation to actual troop types.

Red square is a chariot. Right.

Like

It was good enough for Kriegsspiel 200 years ago.

TMP link

I prefer it to buckets of dice at least.

Klumpenproletariat: Or it could be an indication that the designer doesn't want . . . players always knowing exactly the odds of doing any given thing.

That's what I said. The designer's priority was to obscure probabilities and make it more difficult for players to play tactically.

If the "tactics" of a game come down to just number-crunching the CRT, then that doesn't bear much resemblance to real-world risk . . .

Are you telling me in the real world commanders have no idea of risk? Everything is blind luck? History shows you are wrong. Some commanders win more consistently than others. This is because they were able to weigh odds, assess risks, and act judiciously.

. . . or the fog of war.

Fog of war can be simulated many ways. A designer who insists his game can't have fog of war without special dice is . . . well he probably has other wacky ideas too. Like maybe he wrote reconnaissance out of his game system because it's "too tactical".

Dropzonetoe: Do you feel that the above game . . .

I tried the link and after the ad it took me to some cute game about weighing probabilities. I didn't go any farther since it's a computer program – there's no way for a player to objectively assess probabilities, so no way to answer your question.

pellen: . . . Kriegsspiel 200 years ago.

Thanks for the link to that terrific discussion. I especially liked this post:

toofatlardies: The dice originally used in the 1824 kriegsspiel had lots of information on them, so much so in fact that it could become quite confusing. The 1824 rules that we publish have the original die illustrated, but for ease of use we have converted all of the data into table format which is MUCH easier to use.

;)

"Are you telling me in the real world commanders have no idea of risk? Everything is blind luck? History shows you are wrong. Some commanders win more consistently than others. This is because they were able to weigh odds, assess risks, and act judiciously."

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to argue. You began by saying that a game designer who was trying to obscure the probabilities was therefore not prioritizing "tactical play."

I'm not entirely sure what "tactical play" is. Every player uses some form of tactics in order to win, and of course smart players read the rules, and try to figure out exactly what they need to do in order to win. If the game's odds for success in various things are so obvious that everybody can figure them out and play accordingly… that's usually a pretty frustrating game. There are many examples of games where players have memorized the odds of doing this or that, which is generally a drag.

Since "Kriegsspiel" keeps coming up, I thought I'd quote von Reisswitz's introduction to that game:

Anyone who has observed the effect of fire-power at the ranges will know that the results achieved can differ considerably, even when circumstances are the same. The difference in performance is likely to be even more pronounced in battle….

If, therefore, we were to give fixed results for fire effect we would arrive at a very unnatural situation. Such unnatural fire results would cause a thousand other mistakes to creep in, and the game would become more like a calculation exercise than a battle study.

Only when the player has the same sort of uncertainty that he would have in the field can we be confident that the Kriegsspiel will give a helpful insight into manoeuvring in the field.

By the way, I'm not really into using special dice; I don't care about them one way or the other.

But anything a game designer can do, to give the players less fore-knowledge and more imperfect understanding of the situation, in my opinion is usually better. Since wargames rarely come close to being able to put the player/commander in that position of moving threats, limited vision, and flawed intelligence, it is usually good if we can come up with ways that are within the realm of game mechanics, to restore some of that to the playing experience.

Rolling dice is inherently risky, within the range of the die results. The question is whether the designer wants players to be able to calculate risk versus reward with precision. If I attack at 1:1 odds (in the old AH boardgames) I know I have 1 chance in 6 of Defender Eliminated but TWO chances in 6 of Attacker Eliminated.

But in reality commanders often have to choose among risks without even knowing what the odds are.

Hmmm. Gives me an idea for PRIDE OF LIONS: you get the desired result on a 1 or a 2; but you don't find out until you've committed to the action whether you are rolling a D4 or D6 or D8 or whatever, up to D20 or D24.

Or a roll-off, high roll wins. Boxes contain a die, from D4 to D24; you pick a box and that's the die you roll against the other guy's pick.

"He either fears his fate too much,
or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."

Montrose

doc mcb: Rolling dice is inherently risky, within the range of the die results.

Exactly.

The question is whether the designer wants players to be able to calculate risk versus reward with precision.

This is a valid design consideration, yes, but as a rationale for using special dice, it is flawed.

But in reality commanders often have to choose among risks without even knowing what the odds are.

I disagree. I believe commanders have a good idea of what they think the odds are. That is the point of training after all, as well as experience, intel, and reconnaisance. It is true sometimes the commanders turn out wrong, or unlucky, but that doesn't mean the commander started by guessing among unknown risks.

But let's assume we aren't dealing with the Alexander or Julius Caesar or Frederick or Napolean or Lee or Winters level of commander we aspire to in our games. Let's assume our game designer wants us to emulate a schmuck, some political appointmentee in over his head but so full of ego he can't see it.

Special dice are still a poor mechanism for simulating uncertain results. Why?

The special dice can be inspected, thereby deducing their results table, and the player who has invested this time can thereafter, as you put it "calculate risk versus reward with precision". So a designer who has hung his game play on this silly mechanism has actually produced a game without any fog of war, or worse, a game with skewed fog of war, where players who have not inspected the special dice are at an unexpected disadvantage over those who have, since the dice inspectors know the range of risk and probability with precision.

A player doesn't even need to blatantly inspect the dice. He can just play the game a few times and deduce the results table that way. Meaning the game has poor staying power -- after it is familiar, the precious uncertainty mechanism no longer exists and thus it is no longer the game the designer intended.

Klumpenproletariat: There are many examples of games where players have memorized the odds of doing this or that, which is generally a drag.

In other words you feel a game can only be fun if the probabilities are unknowable, or at least unknown. Obviously I feel the opposite, that obscure probabilities intefere with a sense of achievement. Might as well flip coins.

I thought I'd quote von Reisswitz:

. . . the results achieved can differ considerably, even when circumstances are the same.

He is not saying the results are mysterious though. In probability terms, artillery distribution is random but within a predictable range. That is, the round may fall short or long or left or right or on target or may be a dud, or may explode in the breech, but it will not go backwards or sideways or around corners.

As a practical matter, an artillery commander has the training and experience to predict that by the time he has fired a certain number of times, his target will be struck. And if 3 weapons are firing, or 6, the hits will be proportionately sooner or more numerous.

That is the essence of applied probability that translates perfectly well to a wargame and is easily simulated with dice. It is an easy tabletop role for a player to grasp. Unless of course the dice have strange symbols on them.

I love specialty dice. They've been used in board games to speed up play by condensing mechanics and allowing the designer to work with a smaller set of numbers that make for simpler calculations.

The only reason I'm not using them for my game was that I thought all wargamers were cantankerous types that would hate the concept without even trying it.

Nice to see I was wrong. I'm beginning to think that the type to pan the entire concept of it probably isn't the type to try a new game anyway.

Specialty dice, done well, should just use a single universal set that speeds up play, allowing for even more niece and tactics in the rules, without adding fiddly calculations and charts. It can help keep more granularity on the results while keeping calculation numbers in single digits. Lastly it helps players quickly interpret more complex results.

Descent is a good example, although as bit complex. X-wing is another that's much simpler.

While writing my game system I was screaming for a set of specialty dice allowing me to combine things like hits and suppression results.

I hate specialty dice.

I'll tolerate D10s but strongly prefer D6s.

Besides specialty dice I strongly dislike having to use lots of different dice (eg D4s,D6s, D8s, D10s, D12s) all in the same game. It costs more and slows things down since modifiers are often expressed in die type anyway which means you still apply modifiers but now you also have to hunt for the correct die.

If games such as Flames of War and 40K can represent everything from a Russian conscripts and weakling gretchins to King Tiger tanks and Uber Demons from the Warp using a d6 then why can't other systems do the same thing?

And with very few exceptions, most specialty dice are merely masking an underlying numbers system using a standard d6 anyway. A few systems actually exploit the statistical advantages of a unique die configuration (eg X-Wing). The vast majority do not and can be easily translated into 5+, 4+, etc.

Using lots of different dice all the time can be annoying.

However, I've never viewed D10s as specialty dice and intrinsically hating a d10 over a d6 does just seem pretty silly. It's just another random number generator with a scale of 1-10 instead of 1-6, that doesn't seem worthy of generic hate and seems to be more just a personal thing.

Of course, it's not worthy of generic like either.

Also, there is actually a problem with Flames of War and 40k, I have played it quite a bit and can honestly tell you that the systems does actually start to break down a bit due to lack of granularity as they're adding more stuff or changing things. It's more due to familiarity than anything that the d6 works.

The D6 isn't some miracle cure for every game, neither is the D10 or any specialty dice.

What I like about specialty dice is when a good game designer puts the whole thing together to make it a better game.

I don't mind speciality dice in game when they come with the game. Space Crusade was one of my favourite. But when you want me to pay stupid prices for fancy D6 and then require one set for each faction it's not going to happen.

I play SAGA and Bolt Action but have not bought their over priced dice, made my own for 19 pence each.

Dice size shifting is an elegant mechanic which i like.
Whacky symbols, not so much.