When it comes to rolling dice – just how tangible do you need to be?
Something almost all tabletop games have common is Dice (Of course Malifaux likes to be an exception!). The fact is, board games, role-playing games and tabletop games have used dice to determine results for years and years and despite technology offering alternatives in recent years – we still use the little plastic and resin cubes.
Virtual Dice Rolling
When we talk about virtual dice rolling, people often think of a random number generator. This simple program is exactly what it says – you give it a range and it picks a number. With the high-end dice apps – this is far from what the program does. The really good apps use complex physics engines where the virtual dice actually behave like real dice. It’s not using a random number generator and giving you a visual representation of this – it’s actually rolling a dice and you get an outcome based on the physics engine.
Why the Aversion?
My theory on why so many players don’t like these sorts of apps is simple – tangibility. When an opposing player rolls a dice, you can see it, touch it, pick it up and make sure it’s all above-board. With an app, there is a sense of unease, like the program might have been tampered with and is giving favourable results – compounded if the numbers its rolling are actually favourable. There is a component of the unknown and if you can really trust whats happening
Real Dice Issues
Obviously real dice suffer from the chance at being tampered with as well – in reality I think its even MORE likely that this happens rather than an app being used to cheat results. It’s just simpler for a player looking to cheat to buy the dice and try out their sleight of hand at the table rather than going to the trouble of learning how to change the complex code of an app. In the tabletop community we have had several notorious issues of dice cheating over the last decade, often at major events around the world.
Objective Secured Events and the Virtual Dice Apps
In recent months, especially after First Blood, we have had a number of players asking if they can use the Official Games Workshop app – Assault Dice – when playing at our events. Assault dice is one of the good kind of dice apps – it’s a physics engine rather than a random number generator. Initially we said no, but now – I’m not so sure.
The app can bring a couple of key benefits to games that require high volumes of dice to be rolled. Warhammer 40,000 can see players rolling 100+ dice in a single action with the right units and that becomes a huge issue at the table.
Firstly, I will say that we would expect players to ask their opponents to consent to the app being used at the table and respect their opponents wishes if they decline. Secondly, I would not support the idea of the app replacing all dice rolls. Why? It’s just to time-consuming.
So why use the App then?
Ironically it’s actually to save time – not on the mundane rolls (anything less than 30 is a real dice situation in my mind). If you know you have a unit that can and will require more than a reasonable number of dice – maybe through a stratagem or simply through unit size and weapon load out, the app is a great way of assisting in resolving these situations.
Etiquette
Firstly, you should not be trying to use the app on a phone. A tablet is the way to go – you and your opponent should be able to see the screen clearly and easily. Second, the tablet should be accessible to your opponent when the result is generated and should be able to see what you are inputting to get the results. Third, a player should be prepared to show their opponent in a dummy roll – how you set up the roll, how you can sort the results and so on.
By removing the mystery, and using actual dice for the majority of play, opponents should be much more at ease around the use of the app to assist in the speed of play.
Obviously players should also be aware that an opponent might say no and they should (like any player) be prepared to roll it out manually and have the tools to do so with them (dice, buckets and all!)
Are Virtual Dice the future?
They could be – but for now, for me and many many others, part of the fun with these games is rolling actual dice. There is satisfaction (however misapplied) in rolling those little cubes of plastic or resin and watching the results unfold. Its to easy to blame it on an app – far better to blame the actual cubes when your dice go cold!
Even if the community goes to virtual dice, I will still use physical dice. I find this an integral part of the game that I refuse to let go of (its fun!). I agree around 40+ dice, a simulator with a physics engine is a good time saver and never would stop an opponent using it for that quantity of dice.
Thanks for the article.
Can you explain why simulating the physics of rolling dice would be less error prone than just generating a random number?
To me it just seems like complexity for the sake of it – and more complexity always means more possibility of accidental skew.
The main thing to put a physics engine ahead of random number gen is the later is easy to modify in the back end – complicated physics engines are harder to tamper with, more reliable in actual random number generation and – assuming my information is correct – actually approved by Las Vegas Casinos! Assault dice meets the standards for gambling it seems while a simple random number generator doesnt, mainly because they tend to be anything but random!
What’s funny is that a physical die is way less random then a modern random number generation facility in a computer or even an algorithmic pseudo-random generator. Apps that mimic physical dice somewhat share this flaw.