Dicenomicon for the PC?

[Otogi]

I'll be honest: Dicenomicon looks freaking sweet. The different kind of dice you can roll is enough for me to want to buy it right this second. Unfortunately, I don't see any links or information about it being the PC, just various iDevices.

So does anyone have any word on it available for Windows? If not, perhaps something similar?

[Tyndmyr]

I know of a wild number of dice rolling apps, but none which completely mirror that. Im going to guess it's not available on PC yet, since porting it would likely be a pain, and apple only supports ipod dev on macs(this is why I never bothered developing for ipod).

I suppose I probably could make such an app for PC/xbox though. I can't imagine it'd be terribly hard, and I *do* have a ridiculous number of dice around to use as models.

[dsmiles]

Eh, I don't care for dice rolling apps. I prefer the feel of real dice (and real books, too). I can see its usefulness for like PbP, and Skype games, and such, but for tabletop? No thanks.

[Swooper]

Eh, I don't care for dice rolling apps. I prefer the feel of real dice (and real books, too). I can see its usefulness for like PbP, and Skype games, and such, but for tabletop? No thanks.

What differentiaties Dicenomicon from other diceroller apps is that it's not just a random number generator, it actually runs on a physics engine, rolling 3d polygon dice on a virtual table. It's hard to argue with the validity of that. I've been using it on my iPad since christmas - not for every roll, but it's great for speeding up complex roll calculations (one of the characters I play has a really complex formula for damage, for example).

[Cartigan]

What differentiaties Dicenomicon from other diceroller apps is that it's not just a random number generator, it actually runs on a physics engine, rolling 3d polygon dice on a virtual table. It's hard to argue with the validity of that. I've been using it on my iPad since christmas - not for every roll, but it's great for speeding up complex roll calculations (one of the characters I play has a really complex formula for damage, for example).

Which is like saying "It has a graphic random number generator!"

[Erom]

So, this is not the first physics based die-roller, but the same problem applies to all of them that I have tried: they just aren't as good as a well-implemented psuedo-random number generator. That is, they generate substantially less random results. It's like rolling a dice at the bottom of a small, narrow shoebox - there isn't enough room to get a good roll on, so the actual roll results end up biased slightly based on whatever die side was face up when you started the roll. If you shake it several times for each dice roll these biases shrink to small enough to be ignorable, but to me it really isn't worth the extra hassle over a simple mersenne twister implementation.

[dsmiles]

What differentiaties Dicenomicon from other diceroller apps is that it's not just a random number generator, it actually runs on a physics engine, rolling 3d polygon dice on a virtual table. It's hard to argue with the validity of that. I've been using it on my iPad since christmas - not for every roll, but it's great for speeding up complex roll calculations (one of the characters I play has a really complex formula for damage, for example).

That really has no effect on my preference for real dice and real books. I'll never understand the obsession with .pdf books and dice rolling programs.

[Mr.Bookworm]

That really has no effect on my preference for real dice and real books. I'll never understand the obsession with .pdf books and dice rolling programs.

Money, dear boy.

The Dark Heresy corebook costs 60$ in print. It costs half that on RPGNow.

A dozen d20s might run you ten bucks. Again, a dice rolling program costs half that. Or you can find one free online (Invisible Castle, the official WotC one, these very boards).

And nowadays, a lot of people take their laptops with them everywhere. It's cheaper and less heavy.

[dsmiles]

Money, dear boy.

The Dark Heresy corebook costs 60$ in print. It costs half that on RPGNow.

A dozen d20s might run you ten bucks. Again, a dice rolling program costs half that. Or you can find one free online (Invisible Castle, the official WotC one, these very boards).

And nowadays, a lot of people take their laptops with them everywhere. It's cheaper and less heavy.

Money? Not too much of a problem. Gaming is my only "bad habit" according to my wife, so she's happy to let me spend money on books, minis, and dice.

As far as less heavy? I'll take books any day. Even over searchable .pdf's. My group has a "no electronics" rule at the table (except for the person taking notes for our campaign journals, who usually uses a pencil and notebook anyways). We're all older, and we like our lawns neat and green. You youngsters need to keep off our lawns!

Seriously, though. I'll take books and dice. It's the way I have fun. I'm not saynig .pdf books and dicerollers are bad, I just don't have fun that way, so I don't really get it, you know?

[Otogi]

That really has no effect on my preference for real dice and real books. I'll never understand the obsession with .pdf books and dice rolling programs.

Ease, portability, versatility, always having a way to access other supplements and other sources and price always do it for me.

EDIT: Forgot ubiquity; I think there's only one place that sells RPG stuff for miles, and that's 4th Edition stuff.

[Erom]

Seriously, though. I'll take books and dice. It's the way I have fun. I'm not saynig .pdf books and dicerollers are bad, I just don't have fun that way, so I don't really get it, you know?

And that's all good and fine, but it really makes me ponder... why are you even responding to this thread then?

[dsmiles]

And that's all good and fine, but it really makes me ponder... why are you even responding to this thread then?

Wanted to see what all the hubub was, bub.

[Otogi]

Wanted to see what all the hubub was, bub.

With dice rollers in general? Well, if you don't have the dice you need, don't have enough or can't afford to add to the normally rather high cost of tabletop RPG's, its something nice to have at least in case (especially since many are free without being lacking in looks). It's also nice if you want to make secret rolls without alerting players, don't want to loose them and if you don't want to leave dents in especially fragile or expensive furniture.

This one in particular, though, is pretty sweet and bypasses a lot the problems in other generators. It also comes with dies that I've never even heard of, like the d24. It also lets you keep track of rolls you use a lot, can let you automatically explodes die's, modify them and comes with PDF readers and character generators, all for about $5 dollars, US. It's a really great tool.

[dsmiles]

Does it come with these dice?

[rayne_dragon]

Does it come with these dice?

Now that's what I was thinking of when I read the title of this thread... although those are a little expensive.

I want them.

[dsmiles]

d3, d5, d7?

I don't care who you are, that's nerd chic!

[Swooper]

Does it come with these dice?

Yep, it does (all but the golfball-die). d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d14, d16, d18, d24 and d30 are the shapes available. You can then customize the sides to show pretty much anything you want, and a few such dice are already added to the app by default (d1, d2 and d3 in particular). Dice colours and textures are customizable as well. You can also create dice scripts with input variables ("How many sneak attack dice?" for example), or cross-reference dice outcomes with tables (for random encounters or something). Really, it's a very handy app to have.

Edit: I noticed that at least the 7-sided die on the link is very unusual, and not "balanced" - two of its sides are different from the rest. That shape is not included in Dicenomicon, but you can make a d7 by customizing a d14.

[rayne_dragon]

d1, d2 and d3 in particular.

d1?

[Swooper]

d1?

...Yeah, it's a d6 with three sides of 1 and three blank sides. No idea what it's used for.

[Andraste]

...Yeah, it's a d6 with three sides of 1 and three blank sides. No idea what it's used for.

That sounds more like a 1d2-1

[tanderson11]

There are only two d1s that I know of, and that is not one of them. They being a sphere and a möbius strip.

[rayne_dragon]

That sounds more like a 1d2-1

Agreed.

A d1 would be a static number and that's not fun; that's math.

I'm not sure I trust any program that tries to convince me that I need to randomly generate a single predefined number.

[Kerrin]

I have the Dicenomicon on my iPad and really like it.

I thought I'd get a lot of use out of the character sheets but I've found the D&D 3.5 sheets have a lot of bugs. For example, some of the stat modifiers are calculated incorrectly, the skills all have no names so you don't know which is which, etc.

So, I've had to go create all the roll formulas for my characters as custom roll formulas myself, and I am very disappointed that one of the features I thought I'd get a lot of use out of is useless.

Has anyone else who has the Dicenomicon run into these issues or is my installation just somehow borked?

[Swooper]

I never tried to use the character sheets in there myself, so I can't tell.

I will add one thing though... the editor for the custom dice formulas is the worst code editor ever. I'm a programmer so I have some experience with stuff like this... but nothing I've ever seen comes even close to being so unintuitive. Took me weeks of trial, error and consulting the guy who wrote Dicenomicon to create the script I wanted (which, to be fair, is rather complex).

[Kerrin]

I never tried to use the character sheets in there myself, so I can't tell.

I will add one thing though... the editor for the custom dice formulas is the worst code editor ever. I'm a programmer so I have some experience with stuff like this... but nothing I've ever seen comes even close to being so unintuitive. Took me weeks of trial, error and consulting the guy who wrote Dicenomicon to create the script I wanted (which, to be fair, is rather complex).

The base UI is easy to use and I find creating simple to moderate formulas alright too, but I agree that both working with character sheets and the formula editor are rather bad.

I think the two major usability issues boil down to ... the workflows weren't designed by someone with expeerience doing so and there isn't complete reference documentation for the formula editor - though I will admit I learned a lot via the available cookbook.

[Kerrin]

Thinking over my couple of posts regarding the Dicenomicon, I realize they may come off as being rather negative.

The negative things I mentioned previously are my only dislikes about the application, and I was highlighting those.

I thoroughly do like the rest of the Dicenomicon app!

[Eloel]

that's not fun; that's math

You are on the wrong track. The former is inclusive of the latter.

[Waldo1984]

Money? Not too much of a problem. Gaming is my only "bad habit" according to my wife, so she's happy to let me spend money on books, minis, and dice.

As far as less heavy? I'll take books any day. Even over searchable .pdf's. My group has a "no electronics" rule at the table (except for the person taking notes for our campaign journals, who usually uses a pencil and notebook anyways). We're all older, and we like our lawns neat and green. You youngsters need to keep off our lawns!

Seriously, though. I'll take books and dice. It's the way I have fun. I'm not saynig .pdf books and dicerollers are bad, I just don't have fun that way, so I don't really get it, you know?

Definitely agree with you there; I'm a big fan of actually rolling the dice and having books at the table, but when your GM is running a d6 Star Wars campaign and you have to add up 15+ dice every time you roll and he's running a custom ruleset that doesn't exist in a "book" format, Dicenomicon and PDFs (or, in this case, a website) are heck of a lot easier. My Young Jedi and another player's assassin droid are the combat monkeys in the group, and I'll tell you that even with multiple attacks, my turn goes a HECK of a lot faster than his, when he's adding up a dozen d6's or more every time he rolls an attack.

Give me Runequest, any day of the week and twice on Sundays! All percentile-based skill rolls.