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Old 08-09-2020, 05:33 AM   #21
RogerBW
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
The d4 I can sympathize with. Those things are obnoxious, unless you are actually using a d8. The d6 feels a little silly.
I've seen "double d4" (d8 with 1-4 twice) and "triple d4" (d12 with 1-4 three times). Of course the extreme case of this is that Gamescience "D-Total", a 24-sider numbered with all the factors that fit in (2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24, and with rerolls you can do 10 too).

But JGD gave me some "double d6" that are d12s dot-faced with 1-6 twice, and while I have no objection to d6s they've become my standard GURPS dice simply for comfort.
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Old 08-09-2020, 07:35 AM   #22
sgtcallistan
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

Fun dice conversation;

'If there's a really random thing I roll a couple of D10s one marked in 10s, one in integers, for a percentage of 100.'
'Do you read them down, left to right, diagonally down and left to right, or what?'
'Tens, then singles...'
'Oh.'

It seems GMs think alike and so unalike at the same time...

Also:
Have seen people refuse to use any dice supplied by the GM or from a game shop, but use some really old ivory-coloured dice with the 'one' in red, as I remember all dice being when I was a boy.
He also refused to play DnD due to the 'funny dice.'
He's fine with GURPS, fortunately.

My own dice ritual is keeping the same set of three I Got (a stroke of luck) at a game convention here in the UK, where a free die is in everyone's 'goody-bag' when welcomed in (SELWG or another that uses part of the Excel centre in London (the place that's currently a huge hospital for the Coronavirus surge)).
- anyway, I got three dice (pure luck) that were the same for that year's convention (it may have been 1991) and I've used them ever after.
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Old 08-09-2020, 10:40 AM   #23
Anders
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

I purchased three sets of metal dice a year ago or so. They have a very nice heft and cool to them.
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Old 08-09-2020, 04:07 PM   #24
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

My old group had a few. There was one particular d20 that one player had that seemed to roll high extremely often (I suspect it was actually not a fair dice, honestly, although whether this was a quirk of manufacture or something the player had done to it after the fact, I'm not certain). When he was GM, he actually avoided using it unless he specifically wanted to make an enemy/NPC more impressive. Similarly, when I purchased a set of miniatures, there was one (a werewolf) that, regardless of who GM'd and what enemy it was used to represent (we had few enough mini's that we'd use completely-unrelated figures, like said werewolf for a zombie), said enemy tended to get really good rolls, and rolls against it tended to go more poorly. When I GM'd I ended up using it to mark the toughest enemy in each encounter, and at one point one of the players actually tried to hide it in hopes of making the fights easier.

Many in the group seemed to think a dice's good luck could be used up by high rolls (and to a lesser extent that bad rolls might be able to charge up the good luck, although dice that seemed to consistently roll poorly tended to get swapped out), and thus would avoid rolling just for the fun of it (and would chastise anyone who was just playing around with rolling their dice, particularly if they happened to get a 20, for "wasting" such a good roll). An exception was made for new dice, which were assumed would roll poorly for a while until enough bad rolls had been made to "charge up" their good luck.

I had something of a reputation for rolling rather poorly, to the extent that there were times the GM wouldn't make me roll, because what I had described my character doing was "too cool to fail," and they were convinced making me roll would result in a botch/critical failure/whatever (depending on system). I tended to contribute more to the party's success through tactical advice and such "gimme" successes than through successful rolls, although as campaigns went on my rolls seemed to get more properly-random rather than consistently-poor. In DnD, they usually let me use someone else's results for character generation, as otherwise my characters tended to have rather lackluster stats.


Finally, more an attempt to cheat than a superstition, I remember one player who would purposefully and repeatedly drop his d20 on a hard surface, with the "1" facing up (and thus the "20" facing down). He felt this would smooth out the edges around the "20," making it less likely the die would stop with that facing down and the "1" facing up. This may also have been related to the "using up good/bad luck" idea from above, as he was essentially forcing the die to "roll" 1's over and over.
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Old 08-09-2020, 11:31 PM   #25
Bengt
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

A guy I regularly played Warhammer with years and years ago insisted on rolling "important" leadership tests (2d6) one die at a time very slowly. It probably didn't add that much time to the game as a whole but it felt really slow so it annoyed me to no end.
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Old 08-10-2020, 03:53 PM   #26
Black Leviathan
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

We had a cooler when we were kid gamers. A player named Pat who could turn the luck in your dice to crap just by touching them. We understood rationally that this was BS but it worked somehow. If someone was just on a tear of critical rolls and massive damage rolls someone would instruct Pat touch the dice and they'd go flat and cold.

Around the same time I we played with a roommate named Gary that was a bit that-guy and he'd punish his dice for misbehavior. Say what you will about living with someone like that, after your dice betray you all night long it is genuinely satisfying in ways you'd never guess to melt them into the patio bricks with a butane torch.
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Old 08-11-2020, 05:28 PM   #27
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: Dice superstitions and rituals

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Originally Posted by Frost View Post
I once spent time gaming with someone who flat out refused to use d4 or d6, because per him 'they didn't roll properly'. Much fiddling and pleading was employed to avoid having to use them, even for one DnD game making someone else roll his hit die for him.

Our attempts to get him to join a GURPS game were... Memorable.
Alternate dice variations in GURPS are common...

one that I've used myself was 1d10+1d8, moving the 3/4/5 specials to the 2/3/4, keeping the 16/17/18 at same. It's a good bit wilder than 3d6...

2d10, moving 3/4/5 to 2/3/4 and 16/17/18 to 18/19/20 has been used by a fairly large number of players

using 3d20 keep middle gets a better bell, but moves 3/4/5 to 1/2/3, and 16/17/18 to 18/19/20, it decreases the odds slightly at typical 15 skill from 92.5% to 84.3%
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