Dice Roll Editor Screencast

June 17, 2010

One of my goals for EpicTable is to allow you to play pretty much any RPG you want to play. Part of meeting that goal is supporting rich dice mechanics. If you’re rolling 3d6 or 1d20+5, you can just type that, but many games out there have some pretty interesting dice mechanics that really aren’t practical to enter as text.

Enter the Dice Roll Editor. This editor allows you to build a really wide variety of complex dice rolls. You can save these for easy access later, and ultimately, I’ll integrate the Dice Roll Editor with the Character Sheet Editor, and then you’ll really see something cool. But for now, I’d like to show you how to build a dice roll using the editor.

Actually, I’ll show you how to build several interesting rolls. Here’s a quick catalog:

  1. D&D attack roll (simple sum with modifier)
  2. D&D stat creation roll (“keep 3″ and “reroll 1s”)
  3. World of Darkness “9-again” roll (spawning and success counting)
  4. Don’t Rest Your Head, Discipline/Exhaustion/Madness roll (multiple dice pools of different color, success counting)
  5. My Life with Master roll to “resist the master” with Desperation (multiple dice pools of different die types, “drop 4s”)

I spent some time gathering screenshots, but while a picture may be worth a thousand words, in this case, a video is worth a thousand pictures. So, rather than a horde of screenshots, I have a screencast for you. Let me know what you think. Also, let me know what you think about the length of the screencast too. This one is just over 13 minutes. I have a feeling it should be a little shorter, so some of the later screencasts are apt to be more bite-sized–in the 2-5 minute range.

Credits and Sources: Die images and music by Brennen Reece.

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development  

Tabletop Surface Integration, Dice Panel, etc.

June 4, 2009

Just a couple quick updates on development status. There’s been a good bit of work done since the demos during FUMcon. My focus continues to be integrating and testing. I’m working hard at getting an alpha release ready with a beta to follow shortly, and I wanted to give you an update on what’s been happening. Special thanks goes to Brennen Reece for design advice on some of the visual improvements since the demo.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Blog, EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Dice and Dogs in the Vineyard

November 30, 2008

Last time, I discussed EpicTable’s support for game pieces on a tabletop surface. This post is similar in that it too involves moving objects around on the tabletop—only this time, the objects are dice. Dogs in the Vineyard is a prime example of a game that involves doing more with dice than just rolling them. Lets look at how EpicTable supports this functionality. Read more

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Fudge Dice in the Chat Window

October 29, 2008

A quick addendum to my last post, about dice rolls in the chat window: I’ve got Fudge dice working.

In case you’re not familiar with Fudge dice, they’re six-sided dice with two “+”, two “-”, and two blank sides. Rolling four Fudge dice gives you a range from -4 to +4. Fudge is a “rules-light” game system originating in the 1990s. A number of game systems draw upon Fudge in one way or another. For instance, Spirit of the Century, a popular pulp RPG, traces its lineage back to Fudge via FATE.

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Dice Rolls in the Chat Window

October 27, 2008

Recently, I discussed EpicTable’s Dice Cup Designer. Since that post, I’ve integrated a lot of technology from the Dice Cup Designer into the chat window. Dice rolls have been working in the chat window for a long time, but the chat window used to use a canned set of dice I’d shot with a digital camera. Functional, but not very pretty. It also used to lack support for some of the more interesting dice rolls that the Dice Cup Designer can create. Now, the chat window uses Brennen’s oh-so-much-prettier dice, it preserves the color scheme of the dice, and it visualizes features of the dice cup, such as summing the dice and dropping dice. Read more

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Don’t Rest Your Head: Initial Thoughts

October 16, 2008

As part of developing EpicTable, I’m always on the lookout for interesting dice mechanics. I’d heard that Don’t Rest Your Head, from Evil Hat Productions, had some interesting mechanics, so I picked up a copy…and promptly lost several hours to reading and to the sudden compulsion to build white, black, and red dice pools for EpicTable. Read more

Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Blog  

EpicTable Dice Cup Designer

October 13, 2008

One of my goals for EpicTable is to support many different roleplaying games. In a previous post, I discussed my efforts to implement dice rolls found in a wide variety of RPGs. In this post, I examine dice rolls from a slightly different angle—that of composing complicated dice rolls—and I’ll give you a preview of EpicTable’s “Dice Cup Designer“.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development, Screenshots  

Dice Rolls in EpicTable

September 25, 2008

Dice rolls are a key feature of any virtual tabletop. Dice mechanics can vary quite a bit across game systems, so I’ve been reading just about everything I can get my hands on, in an effort to compile a list of the kinds of rolls that are important.
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Posted by John Lammers | Filed Under EpicTable Development