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

We have covered a lot of different dice rolling applications for role-playing games that are available in Apple’s App Store on this site. Over the past year that the app store has been around, these apps have started to fall into two main groups, namely, the Simulation group and the Random Number Generator group.

The Simulation group of apps seek to re-create the look and feel of rolling polyhedral dice. They often have beautiful graphics and sounds and can be quite fully features. The Random Number Generator group, by and large, are only interested in presenting the user with the calculated number of an equation.

We, in our gaming group, have players who prefer one or the other from the various groups, so we are going to do four of each.

Continue reading List of the Best 8 iPhone RPG Dice Rolling Apps

Long promised on their home page, Chessex (our favorite dice people…) have finally released their gaming dice jewelry.  As of writing their website still says they are coming soon, but order numbers and pictures are available in their catalog (link opens a PDF). The jewelry is specially designed by jewelers Siltoys not to ruin the dice in any way, and to be customizable (to a point). According to their catalog only their dice will fit (which might be a bit sad if you have that special lucky die you want to wear around the place…) but at least it is a custom die color only available with their pendants.

Continue reading Custom Nerd Jewelry – Chessex Polyhedral Dice Pendants

Just today our ‘office’ made an order at Geeky Clean for their Zom-B-Gone soap. Apparently this soap will help repel zombies and we think that that is awesome. We, of course, want to make sure that this claims actually hold up. Once the soap arrives I’ll be using it everyday for a week to test the soap’s ability to repel zombies.

Continue reading Upcoming post – Zombie Repellent Soap Roadtest

I just have to say, anyone can buy me this anytime… You know, normally when you receive soap as a present you’re all like “what are you trying to say dude?” And they’re all like “your eau de dirty sock isn’t really working out…” (or perhaps more to the point “dude, we TOTALLY didn’t know what to get you…”). Well, this is completely awesome – it’s soap with d20’s in them. That’s right. I’ll just let that sink in a bit…

Continue reading Staying clean the nerdy way – d20 soap

One of the great perks of writing for the Dice of Doom blog is getting asked to play with loads of iPhone dice rollers. We get a few gentle requests to try a new one out, and generally speaking we try to cover as many as we can. A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would like to try out dynamicDice, a new entrant into the Dice Simulation category (as opposed to the Number Generation category). Like Pip, Dicenomicon and MachDice before it, this RPG Dice Rolling app is designed to give you the feel of actually rolling dice in front of you without having to carry a dice bag around.

When reviewing a dice simulator, obviously the realism of the dice rolling is paramount. Using a true 3d engine, dynamicDice does this really well, although it currently suffers from some memory issues (which the developer assures me they are currently fixing and a free update will be upcoming) and sometimes the roll seems a little choppy (Pip on the other hand is very smooth). The quality of the graphics is extraordinary with reflections and shadows and is certainly on a par with Pip.

Dice are added to the table from the dice selection page by clicking on the die desired repeatedly (which actually works a lot better than many of the alternatives) and the entire dice selection can be erased easily by clicking the trash can. There are no adding of modifiers or adding of dice in the roll, keeping everything simple, much like Pip does. The ease in which dice are added to the table view is one of the things that dynamicDice does really well.

dynamicDice allows you to set up 5 tables with 5 differently themed dice sets, and has included d6 with round corners in both pips and numbers as well. The application comes with 20 table themes and 20 dice themes and they are all very attractive and are a nice touch addition to the app.

There is one thing about dynamicDice that I actually really like and sets it apart from some other apps, and that is its 3d perspective. You can move your iPhone around to get a complete 3d view of the dice sitting on the table. This is also supported in landscape mode.

All in all, this is a very good entrant into the dice simulation category and we look forward seeing what else this company puts out.

• dynamicDice $2.99 (iTunes Link)
• Dynamic Realms website

The regular 4E D&D sheet is too limited for use without other accessories.

Some time ago, I wrote about the choosing of the best D&D 4E character sheet. That was when I was creating my very first 4E character: now that I’ve actually played the game, and have had some experience, I decided to revisit the subject.

As I’ve gained experience with the game, I’ve learnt an important lesson: even if you can remember your powers (I can), you are going to get items which have lots of details, and a single line entry on the character sheet just doesn’t cut it. Ideally, you need plenty of room. Then means that, unless you’re using other cards and the like, the standard D&D 4E character sheet simply doesn’t work. It also has very small (and poor) sections for writing mundane equipment.

I have been using this sheet and, frankly, I’m disappointed. I suppose during playtesting they were drunk or something, because there’s no way you can fit all the required information onto the sheet. I mean, honestly, the AC doesn’t separate armour and ability bonus: annoying for anyone using light armour, such as my Wizard.

Update: Previously, I had recommended Ema’s Charsheets as neat new-player-friendly dynamic sheets. However, Wizards of the Coast recently asked for the site to be taken down, possibly because the dynamic sheets put in a bit more rules information than they liked, so these sheets are unfortunately no longer available.

Shado's sheets are beautiful, and fit everything quite nicely.

Alternatively, there’s Shado’s Character Sheets, shown left. They’re gorgeous landscape sheets, and sport plenty of room for absolutely everything, including an acceptable amount of space for equipment. The power sheet is very well designed, and means you don’t have to worry about power cards if that’s not your thing. The sheer prettiness of them is fantastic.

Shado’s Character sheets definately get the award for the prettiest ones: they’re what the official 4E sheets should have looked like. They use the same style and colours that the rulebooks use, which helps in quickly identifying various elements.

Download Shado’s Character Sheets.

However, whichever you choose, the amounts of text associated with the powers and items, you may have to resort to using cards. Specially made Power Cards are quite popular. After a bit of searching, I must agree with Google: the best power cards I can find are Ander00’s, found here. You should check that link for the current version, or may download the complete set as a pdf here, although it may not be up to date. There are also cards that can be used for items, and other such things.

Of course, if you don’t want to fuss around proper Power Cards, there’s the ultimate D&D player’s tool: The index card. Buy a pack of them at the newsagent, and they’ll serve you well.

A few days ago the developers of iPhone polyhedral dice rolling application ‘Pip’ (Mystery Coconut) sent me a request to look at their application and offer my thoughts. Well, we have had a play around with it and we have to say that we are quite enamoured with this new entry into the Dice Roller club. Their design philosophy is quite different from other iPhone Dice Rollers like Diceonomicon and MachDice – instead of trying to cram everything into one application, they have concentrated on keeping the whole thing simple.

What you won’t get is a log of dice rolls or a formula editor, a stack of different backgrounds or dice colours. Instead, they have concentrated on making a very realistic physics engine (comparable to MotionX) and beautiful graphics. The result is quite refreshing – it is really really really simple to use.

If you are not playing games using the FUDGE system of White Wolf system, this is probably the best dice roller for you. We found having to type in formulas to be a bit of distraction in the end, it proved much simpler to just roll the damn dice and not worry about it. Pip allows you to just add the dice you need and roll them – all you need in the majority of your games.

A few things we’d like to see in future versions include a way to re-roll the dice that doesn’t require us to shake the iPhone, and perhaps a selection of different dice skins. Overall though, a very polished app, and we feel, well worth the cost of purchase.

Features:

• Full set of dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d10 (alt colour), d12, d20)
• Multiple pages – save pre-set rolls
• Hold dice to prevent re-rolling
• Highly polished physics engine

Pip USD 2.99 | AUD 3.99 (iTunes Link)

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…