Dance Contest! oh, sorry, Dice Contest!

[Onix]

I just kicked off a contest in honor of me making my own d20 (oooh! aah!) and I thought it would be fun to get other people in on the excitement of having their own very custom die.

I posted the contest but the rules go like this.

Come up with something cool to put on a d20. The sides of these puppies are small so I can only fit one to two characters on them. That means that if your die needs a cheat sheet to be used that’s okay. For instance Y could be a “yes” while Yb is “yes but”.

Come up with something cool, something that will fit on one of these puppies and I’ll do my best to make that die. I’m not using a laser to etch the die, don’t expect perfection but I should be able to produce usable and legible.

Write up your submission in the comments of the blog post or if you’re super secret, you can email your super secret submission to submissions@theartifact.net

You’ll be judged based on the following criteria.

Does it fit on a d20? That’s an important one.
How universal is this concept? Could everyone enjoy this die?
How revolutionary is this concept? Does it blow us away?
Does it solve a practical need?

Winner get’s me hacking at a poor white die twenty to make that will get mailed to your (the winner’s) address and a copy of The Artifact third edition.

2nd place gets me making their die with the same novice skill and mailing it to your (the 2nd place winner’s) address.

Contest ends September 30th. Judging ends and winners announced Friday October 4.

Do you have what it takes? What does it take? I guess we’ll find out October 4th!

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Interesting question. Rather than trying to cram in small symbols or esoteric two letter pairings, I would just go for groups of colors: Seven Blue, Six Orange, Four Green, Two Yellow, One Black.

Depending on the game, these could be used in a number of ways. "Any non-black or orange is a success" or "This power only activates on a green roll" or "Take damage if a secondary color (Orange/Green) shows", and of course "Black means critical hit to reactor, ship blows up". The above mix means you can can match any number you want to get the right probability - nine out of twenty is Blue and yellow, sixteen is any not green and so on.

Its still technically probability like having numbers, but a bit more graphical and perhaps intuitive to some. Furthermore, its not limited to only one game - an orc vs bugbear die isn't too useful in a modern day reality game, a list of limbs to hit doesn't always map well when working with aliens.

If the sides were a bit bigger or the die was a d12, my other idea would be various aircraft - a few fighters, a few bombers, a bunch of clouds, and at least one black and yellow (ie eject). This would be more closely tied to an air-combat game of course - hit slow craft on bomber or fighter, fast ones on bomber, evading on fighter, miss on cloud and failure to launch in eject. For ease of recognition, I'd for something like a for the bomber and an for the fighter, since you don't get much greater differences in appearance. Perhaps it would be a set or boxed game with say the 1950's die that has a b-52 and a mirage, and the 70's die with an F-4 and F-111 so you could scale different eras and effectiveness (or perhaps an interceptor vs ground attack die?) Of course each alternate d20 would also be cast in a different solid color for those who aren't quite as exceptional at aircraft ID.

I've already had the honor of winning a copy of the Artifact, (Thank you again by the way) so I don't need to keep my die ideas secret.

[Onix]

I like the colors! It would be even nicer if charts or tables had the colors too, it would make looking up die results an almost instant instead of hunting for a number.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I concur, having the associated tables would be nice, though that might depend on the genre of the game. After all, the die is a tool, the game a blueprint to use it with. The old FASERIP color coded chart from the TSR Marvel RPG occurred to me when I was writing out my idea.

Seven, six, four, two, one are 35%. 30%, 20%, 10%, and 5% respectively and then you make combinations. However, may results can be derived more than one way - forty is seven plus one or six plus two so you might need some sort of running theme for the game or go into a roman numeral type system to keep it consistent.

Maybe I'll use the color die for a 24 hour game or the upcoming 1km1kt.net contest, but I'm a little too busy to write a whole game for it right now. I'm moving eight hours North to Wisconsin on 8/28 - at least temporarily.

[Anastylos]

You could even combine the color system with a sign system, having cicles, crosses, triangles and squares. You could then say: Blue and black is a success and blue or black triangles and cicles are a criticat success. And orange is a failure and orange crosses are a critical failure.

You could have a very detailed game mechanic with just one dice.