As the title implies… I’m scavenging for strange dice mechanics other than the classic one. The sub question would be: how many ways are there to use dice?
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I like the “usage” die - not strange or funny, though. Just useful.
Strange: probably the d30 (as in the d30 sandbox companion). I still love it, though.
You’re gonna get a lot of replies about DCC and their 7-sided die…
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Hi Yochai!
Usage die is becoming a classic, and I agree: very very useful (until they drain, pun intended).
I forgot for a moment the existence of DCC and its dice… getting many answers that way, yep.
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Exploding dice come to mind. As I understand it: roll xd6, rerolling sixes and adding new roles to the original result. Or something like that. Can get pretty wild, I’d imagine.
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I’m a big fan of L5R old system of “Roll X d10s, keep Y results”. When leveling up, it was a meaningful choice to select either upgrading the number of dice rolled or the number of results chosen (upgrading dice rolled was cheaper than dice kept). And it had a profound physicality to grab a literal handful of dice to roll for something you were particularly good at.
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I’ve also played ASFALTO, a Spanish indie game in the style of Fast & Furious, that instead of dice used flipping bottlecaps, with special “you control the scene for a minute” when bottlecaps stacked on a roll. It’s a very strange but the one-shot I played was a riot, super fun.
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Which edition? I might have the core book, bought many years ago. Can’t remember resolution details though
The Roll and Keep system was featured in 1st, 3rd, and 4th editions. 2e was d20 based (thanks D&D), and when Fantasy Flight bought the license their 5th Edition has proprietary dice with success, failure, opportunities and strife symbol.
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Over the decades we’ve developed a few House Rules with dice that might seem a bit unusual.
Should a Die or Dice leave the Playing Surface: Automatically treated as the most unfavorable Result (I’ve stepped on far too many caltrops in my time! Plus it can kinda ruin tension/pacing to have to stop everything to go hunting for that stray roller)
Gambling: Useful for things like Initial Hit Points. You roll your Hit Die, I will roll the same die behind my Screen. You can either pick yours or mine (sight unseen.) Just a fun way to potentially let the Player take a little risk.
Overloading: I have some examples of this on my blog, but basically taking dice that are already being rolled for other things and using metadata from them: Whether it’s a die drop table (where the dice physically land working as an axis) or reading them in a different way (a common one would be rolling 2d6 to obtain a total, but also reading them like a d66 (something that I use with my Wilderness Vignettes. I enjoy when a roll can perform this kind of double-duty.
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I wouldn’t necessarily call these strange, but definitely out of the typical roll one die + mod to hit TN wheelhouse and it’s cousins.
Genesys gets an obligatory mention here, plus I think there’s a WFRP edition that uses similar sigil dice?
Not super strange, but it does catch some folks off guard: the step dice version of the Year Zero Engine.
Cortex prime for variable pools sizes of step dice.
I used a real weird step dice mechanic in my one-pager Hangry where you want to be rolling smaller dice because 1 is the target number for a ‘clean success’.
I’ll post more if candidates come to me haha.
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I’m trying to inject a similar mechanics with 3d6 in my own system. Sum, but also success count or hit location. I thought this was hardly something new, really, and I’m glad to find out someone already is using it!
Hangry seems interesting! I know 2400 where you want to roll high with increasing dice size. This looks like in that field but with a twist
I’m sorry, but I now have to tell you the main resolution mechanic of Germany’s most popular RPG, “The Dark Eye”, in place almost unchanged since 1989.
Every skill is based on up to three core abilities, with the possibility of one being used twice for emphasis/weighting. So you might think someone just created a bonus or starting value based on that (like e.g RuneQuest or HârnMaster do). But no, that’s not German Engineering enough for us now.
So we roll 3 d20 for every. frigging. skill. check.
Your attributes range from 8 to 20, your skill value basically from -20 to 20 (it’s complicated, depending on edition and skill type). So three times you have to roll under your core ability, and for each point you went over, you subtracted one from your skill value. If you made it through all with some skill points left, you made the check. The leftover points sometimes were used to judge the quality, especially in the magic system of the fourth edition.
So let’s say we’re playing the second edition that introduced this check. I’m playing a mage and want to bring my shadow to life to fight beside me. This means I have to do my “Ecliptifactus” skill check (every spell is a skill). This started at a skill value of -6, as it’s somewhat rare black magic, but my PC trained it up over the levels to a glorious 9, almost achieving “mastery”. I roll against Courage, Cleverness and Strength, where I have values of 13, 15 and 11 respectively. I grab 3d20, and roll: 14, 17, 10. 14 is 1 higher than my Courage of 13, so I have 8 skill points left. With an Cleverness roll of 17 I have to deduct two further points, but at least I made my Strength roll. I’m left with 9 -1 -2 = 6 skill points, I made it! My shadow rises to vanquish my foes!
Note that you had to do this with every skill roll, and TDE is skill-heavy, especially in official adventures. Every Perception roll, every Climb roll just to get up a rope or tree, every Religious Lore roll to know to which old God that temple ruin you entered belonged to…
(Combat was/is a single d20, though)
It’s not Weapons of the Gods’ weird “Rivers” system (the only RPG book I ever returned), but the ludicrous thing is that this is the German system, and this rule survived three edition updates basically unchanged.
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Cyborg Commando’s D10xD10 roll. Interesting set of results.
Meaning no disrespect, it sounds very German-y. Even though there’s a kind of mechanical beauty to it! Thank for pointing it out!
So you roll a d10 and compare it against another d10? Did I get it right? Stylish!
Hey @yochaigal, no DCC mention so far! People here are skewing our expectations! 
I shouldn’t have said anything!
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I think the most German thing about this is that people are sticking with this for 35 years…
Does “roll regular dice, but then look the real result up on a logarithmic table” count as a dice mechanic or as a resolution mechanic?
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I really like the resolution table from the old marvel super heroes rpg. Overall the game is way too crunchy for me but I like how this single chart is used for every roll. It kinda takes a big clunky mess of a game and makes into something that is pretty easy to play. I think my favorite element is the potential for unexpected consequences for rolling too high. Perhaps you’re trying to use super strength to punch a hole in a wall but you roll 99 and accidentally knock the whole building. It fits the super hero theme really well.
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