Dice odds without dice

[Dalin]

Situation: Road trip with the kids who ask if we can play DFRPG in the car. They remember their characters' key stats pretty well. I'm pretty good at making up scenarios on the fly. We have no dice and no digital tech.

What's the most elegant solution for determining success/failure without dice? I was thinking that if I knew the probabilities of success on three dice (e.g., from the table on the back cover of Adventurers), I could select a random number from 1 to 100. Then split the probability of success on both sides of the secret target and have the kids guess a number. So, for example, with skill 10, they have a 50% chance of success. If I picked 50 as the target, they would have to guess a number between 25 and 75 to succeed. If criticals mattered, I could say 49-50 is a critical success and 1 and 100 would be critical failures. Similarly, I could measure the degree of success or failure easily enough in percentage terms.

The scale would have to wrap around for this to work. So if I chose 90 as the secret target, with 50% odds, they would need to choose from 65-100 or 1-15 to succeed. 16-64 would be a failure, with 40/41 being a critical failure.

Does this make mathematical sense? Any wrinkles I'm missing? One concern was how could I pick target numbers "randomly." That's hard, obviously, but maybe I could use the tenths digit on the odometer combined, perhaps, with license plate numbers or passing signs to help me stay reasonably unpredictable.

[ericbsmith]

Buy a prize out of a gumball machine. Buy three dice that will fit inside of it, with one of the dice being an off-color. Instant 1d-2d-3d shaker.

Or, you can buy these at Walmart or Amazon.

[thrash]

Steffan O'Sullivan (who wrote GURPS Swashbucklers, among other things) created the Sherpa RPG for (something like) this situation. He uses the last digit on a running stopwatch as a randomizer. An early version of the game is available online from the website linked.

[Tom H.]

A possible option is to investigate the success mechanic in the RPG Cavemaster by Jeff Dee and Talzhemir Mrr.

http://unigames.us/shop/

I played this with the authors at a convention several years ago.

From what I remember, the player competes with the GM in which each separates and hides a number of skill stones between their hands. By randomly choosing the opponents' hands, a quantity of stones is revealed to determine a winner (and margin?) of the contest.

It may be possible to convert the mechanic to fit other random number generations.

Since it is supposed to be simple enough for our ancestors to play in a cave, it may be possible to adapt it to car travel. I guess it could be a bit hazardous for a driver to fiddle with sets of stones if he doesn't have an assistant . . . and may be hard to steer with fistfuls ;-)

Maybe you could somehow designate a number of "stones" in your virtual hands.

[Bruno]

Dice cups can also help, as well as using the lid of a game box (or other small box) to roll into. The box stops the die from escaping under a seat, and the dice cup helps everyone feel good about how random the roll is even though the box could be on a wonky angle.

[evileeyore]

Smart phone or tablet with a dice roller app? Anyone?

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Buy a prize out of a gumball machine. Buy three dice that will fit inside of it, with one of the dice being an off-color. Instant 1d-2d-3d shaker.

On this note, I bought a ton of 12mm dice a while ago, intending to put them to another use which I never got around to doing, so they've just been sitting around. I got a brick of Chessex 36d6 and I also picked five set of dice, with 6d6 per color. After this conversation I started poking around and found these "slime storage containers" which look to be reasonably sturdy and that should hold 6d6 with enough room to allow them to shake quite nicely. At less than $3 for a set of 15 containers I decided to order them (I've spent $3 on far worse things than 15 small storage containers I can use for all sorts of things). If anyone wants to do this they could buy loose dice from their FLGS, or online somewhere, or they could get three bricks of 12mm Chessex dice in three different colors. Then you put 3d6 of one color, 2d6 of a second color, and 1d6 of a third color in a small container like those slime containers and you have an instant 1d6-6d6 dice shaker.

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Situation: Road trip with the kids who ask if we can play DFRPG in the car. They remember their characters' key stats pretty well. I'm pretty good at making up scenarios on the fly. We have no dice and no digital tech.

What's the most elegant solution for determining success/failure without dice?

Do you have pencils and paper?

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Stripe

Do you have pencils and paper?

Usually, yes. Though it should be noted that I was the driver. My son, however, could work with pencil and paper.

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Usually, yes. Though it should be noted that I was the driver. My son, however, could work with pencil and paper.

In that case, I would use the Lone Wolf game book method. Draw a grid of squares on a piece of paper. Write numbers randomly in the squares. The person who's "rolling" closes his or her eyes and selects a number by pointing it with a pencil. That's the general idea; you get the picture. I'd recommend doing the same as the books and having multiple dice sheets.

This method is a real hit with children. For some reason, they seem to like it more than dice. As a kid, I know I loved this method. It's how we "played" D&D in church during the Satanic Panic even though we probably could have gotten away with dice.


EDIT: I just remembered that's how two of my friends and I played GURPS in the car when I was in the eighth grade. Their dad played along as a "ghost adviser". It was awesome. Made the 14-hour drive one of the best parts of the trip, and that's really saying something!