In tonights session (Frozen Convict Post-Apoc) we had a little conundrum, no one me included remembered to bring dice or cards or any kind of decent randomizer
I suppose I could have made chits but that was more trouble than it was worth. We tried coin tosses to but the odds were too hard to compute.
What I did is use number guessing. I'd pick some numbers between 1 and 10, one for every ten percent chance of success and if you guessed my number you succeeded. This worked like a virtual D10.
All in all the players got it quickly and found it pretty workable. Its n substitute for actual dice but it was more or less (probably less) random, fair and fun which is all we could ask for,
Trail of Cthulhu 2e and Broken Empires
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4 weeks ago
Pretty odd situation to find yourselves in, I must admit. But well done for getting round that one obstacle. Sometimes the dice rolling becomes almost vestigial to the game itself, depending on the situation, where instead, the GM's common sense and neutrality decides the outcome of a given moment. I know that sounds contrived by removing the random aspect of success or failure in tems of 'fate', but I have seen it at work first hand, and if applied intelligently and without bias, can be very effective.
ReplyDeleteKind regards
Mark
If I were in that situation, I'd beg somebody's mobile phone off them (or use mine, if I'd remembered it), bring up the calculator function (this is assuming nobody has a calculator handy)and key in a random number, then hit the square root button. The final two digits on the right hand side would be taken as a percentile roll.
ReplyDeletethere are online dice rollers out there and you can even write a super simple one in about 10 minutes with some of the crude programming packages out there with smartphones. I used that last trick not too long ago while on a trip.
ReplyDeleteOr just have the GM count to themselves silently and have the player concerned say 'stop' - obviously the GM would vary the speed of the count so no anticipating should occur, and if they've counted to the max number, e.g. 12 or 20, then the GM begins the count all over again. Simples! ;)
ReplyDeleteMy players are fairly new to gaming and I think only one has any dice other than d6's ( probably pilfered from board games) for their usual game, GURPS.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the player with the gaming dice was the absent one.
Now I do have plenty, lower than average for someone who has been gaming since Holmes but still plenty.
However I was in a hurry since I didn't expect to game this week .
As for Internet, we only have one cellphone that I know of with apps (owned by the absent guy of course) and some other older ones that have few functions.
Oh we have a couple of laptops, the absent guys and an older than dirt laptop that can just barely manage MP3's. I am pretty sure we could manage a die roller on it or scavenge another laptop but why bother?
The clubhouse has we like to use is perfect (big table, friendly people, kitchen, fridge with ice and a few diversions, books and a pool table if anyone is late but it has no Internet.
Thanks goodness. Thats one less distraction.
So yeah I guess were gaming like its 1999 or something.
Fine by me.