My first night without dice

For some time now I’ve been using my laptop at the gaming table – primarily as a reference tool. I’ve got a copy of the SRD available on it, keep my characters in a spreadsheet and of course it gives me the opportunity to pull information from the web during the game.

One of the things I’ve been looking for is a dice program – I know there are a lot of them out there but I couldn’t seem to find one that I liked or that fit what I wanted. My two biggest considerations were that I could have the program apply the modifiers I wanted easily, that I could group dice together and name them. Last week I came across a program called Virtual Dice Tray which I used at my gaming group’s last session and it would appear that I may not be using dice at the table again.

In the current campaign I play in I run two characters – a Duskblade and a Dragon Shaman – what the Virtual Dice Tray allowed me to do is create a “tray” that had all the dice laid out ahead of time (click the thumbnail to see the “dice tray” I set up). Now it was just a matter of double clicking on a die or group of dice and the roll is made. If I want to roll damage at the same time as an attack roll I can select both dice and then roll. The results seemed to be pretty random and using the program did seem to speed things up for me as a player and I can see where this would greatly speed things up for a GM, some ideas:

• Create a “tray” for each planned encounter – everything is ready to go and at your finger tips
• Create a “tray” for the misc. checks you normally make – spot, listen, search, etc.
• Create a “tray” with common dice groupings setup (3d6, 4d6, etc.)

It’s only been one session so I’m not about to throw away my dice quite yet but I can say that I am going to give this program a good trial as it seems to fit the bill.

Are you using a dice rolling program? Why or why not? If you are using one, which one and why do you like it?

May your dice (analog or digital) roll well.