Zombie Dice, a new game from Steve Jackson Games, has us pretty excited here at Dice of Doom. The premise is pretty simple – you are a zombie, hungry and desperately attempting to eat brains whilst trying to avoid the natural enemy of the zombie – the shotgun. While we are all left waiting for the game to be released early next year some time, they have kindly created a Flash Demo of the game to further tease educate us on the way the game is played – and we have to admit – it looks pretty fun. The Flash Demo is worth watching for the pure amusement value – think ‘Zombie narrator’…

Continue reading Zombie Dice from Steve Jackson Games

With the plethora of RPG dice rolling apps out there, I am sure I am not the only person who has though about keeping my character on the iPhone as well. After a quick investigation, it proved to be not as straightforward as you might imagine. Well, I have put some thought into it, and I have a few suggestions about how it could be done.

Continue reading Keeping your role-playing game character on your iPhone

Some of you might remember my previous rant on this topic. Back when the iPhone 2.0 was released, the App Store contained a pretty poor collection of RPG dice rollers. And some were asking extraordinary amounts for them. Well, that sucky state of iPhone Rollers is happily over. There are two examples of a excellent rollers which should meet pretty much everyone’s needs (if not, the developers would probably love to hear from you…).

The basic criteria that I feel is necessary for a dice rolling app on the phone is pretty straight forward:

1. Has to actually illustrate polyhedral dice rolling around
2. Has to have an editor to create custom rolls (for e.g. 3d6+2, etc.)
3. Has to have reasonable physics to the rolling process
4. Should be able to select saved dice roll sets
5. Should have some customisability for looks, etc.

The two stand-out applications available at the moment that address all five of those are Dicenomicon and MachDice.

Update: We have also recently reviewed Pip here.

Dicenomicon

Let me just get out and say it upfront… this is my favourite of the two. The choice of dice available to roll is exhaustive, the formulas that you can type and save is pretty much going to solve everyone’s needs and it has complete customisability in regards to looks.

List of dice supported:

• Standard 7 die set (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100)
• Less Common – d1, d2, d3, d5, d7, d9, d14, d15, d16, d18, d24, d30
• Other – d6a (averaging die), dF (positive or negative), 1/2d6 (effectively a d3, but you can see the original roll), Open Ended rolls and d1000 rolls
• Dice results with text (alignment, weather and hit location)
• Support for the FUDGE system (Freeform Universal Do-It-Yourself Gaming Engine).
• Support for the Storyteller system
• Supports THAC0! And because it supports parameters (meaning input before a roll) it will calculate a hit and miss easily for you.
• Support for the White Wolf system

Where Dicenomicon stands out is in its formula editor. The formula editor even allows you to set up dialog boxes, meaning you can change the number of dice rolled or modifier at roll time. You can very easily and intuitively set up dice rolls that roll 5d6, keeping all rolls over 5 plus the best 4 d10 rolls, adding to that 2d5+7 with a d30*d4 for good measure. Why you would ever need this roll is not the point (no, really…) the fact that you can do it at all is testament to its very versatile system.

Dicenomicon also supports multiple virtual tables that allow you to keep your most used dice rolls separated (and if need be, with different backgrounds, etc…).

My only complaint about Dicenomicon is the occasional sudden burst of energy that some of the dice sometimes display. Having said that, you can change the gravity settings in the app that pretty much put that to rest.

MachDice

MachDice has a better feel to the dice rolling physics. Where Dicenomican can (rarely) spit a die randomly in one direction, this has never happened to me using MachDice. The dice are not as good looking in MachDice, and sometimes you can’t see what the d4 is showing, but the basics are pretty good.

The editor for creating lists is perhaps a little easier to use, but that is largely due to the much smaller list of functions that you can use. It has keep the highest, but not lowest, nor targets, nor many of the others. It currently does not support systems like FUDGE or Storyteller. The application does not support Dice Combination Bookmarks either.

One thing that MachDice does do better – its easier to switch virtual gaming tables.

List of dice supported:

• Standard 7 die set (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100)
• Other – d1 (as a coin)

Summary

Both dice rollers do the basics quite well, but in my opinion, Dicenomicon is the absolute best RPG dice roller out. In terms of functionality and completeness, it stands out from all the others and is certainly worth the extra money.

Dicenomicon: $3.99 | Website | iTunes

MachDice: $0.99 | Website | iTunes

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) has an article by one of their many resident nerds about new games to play using the multitude of Dice Rolling Apps available on the iPhone. Some of these are amusing. I myself, have posted one that you could play with a few of these apps. They go on to link to a multitude of dice games (some with iPhone Apps ready to go, some that you can play with iPhone Dice rollers).

Overall, the state of Dice Rollers has improved immensely, and we will be posting a new review of some of the improved apps that have appeared in the last little while.

Read TUAW’s Guide to Dice Games…

I have to admit it… I have downloaded a LOT of applications from the App Store. And by a lot, I mean, well, lots. I have played the following games that I rate quite highly: Crash Bandicoot, Apple’s Texas Hold ‘em, Shangai Mahjong and MotionX Poker Dice. Of these, MotionX Poker Dice has to be my absolute favourite.

Game play is what you’d probably expect from a game like this on the iPhone, you shake the iPhone to roll the dice an keep what you want, rinse and repeat twice. You play against a computer ‘bank’ which plays the odds very competently.

All of the above is all well and good. You wouldn’t expect a game that just did the above to be as addictive as this game is. It’s the addition if three characteristics that make this game so damn compelling; the animation of the rolling dice, unlocking dice sets, gems and tables and the keeping of statistics.

One of the first things that you will notice is the extraordinarily beautiful animation of the dice rolling. The physics is incredibly realistic and a joy to watch. For me, this is the one stand out feature of the game.

Every time you roll five-of-a-kind, you unlock a new set of dice. These dice are beautiful and the best part is, they all roll slightly differently. Rounded corners roll more than straight edged dice, and each has a slightly different sound when they roll and hit each other. The sets are broken up into two groups – standard (1-6) and poker (9,10,J,Q,K,A). The game keeps records of which dice set you are the most lucky with. As you collect different types of stats (like the 12 types of 5 of a kind), you also unlock gems as rewards. Different tables are also unlocked by getting a higher total in your bank.

MotionX Poker is available on iTunes (iTunes Link) for USD $4.99 (AUD $5.99).

I’m sure we have all been in this situation – playing in a large group with people who think that it should take 20 minutes to roll two dice to attempt to hit something. In a larger group, combats can mean that you are waiting 15-20 minutes to have a turn and do anything fun (which is a natural side-effect of a big group). A while ago when this happened to me, I found myself rolling my polyhedral dice set and keeping pairs and sets – something which I’m sure a lot of people have done. As the games at the time persisted in taking a long time with combat, I started keeping scores. Eventually it turned into a fully fledged game of solitare. Here are my rules for The Waiting Game:

1. Roll a seven die set of polyhedral dice (1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d100, 1d12 and 1d20).
2. Keep any pairs or sets that might have been rolled.
3. You have three rolls to make sets which is restarted every time that you add a die to a set.
4. Once you are done, add up the points as such:

The points are cumulative. If you get two pairs, you score 2 points for the hand.

An obvious point – collect low numbers – a d4 can’t ever contribute to a set of 10’s for example.

Variations

• Ignore the 10’s unit on d20
• Collect only highs or lows (for example, all 1’s and the max number on the die are part of the same set)
• Introduce runs (but you have to come up with your own points system then…)