13 thoughts on “So I’m DMing my first game soon, and my players and I don’t have any polyhedral dice. Does a RNG feel as authentic?”

  1. For me the answer is no, because “authentic” die rolling to me means the concrete feeling of holding your fate in your hands. RNGs do the job of randomizing numbers just fine, though. If you and your players have no aesthetic objections, there’s no problem.

  2. Have you got a smart phone? There are loads of free apps for 3D dice rolling that can feel kinda cool. But as long as you have some regular dice, the experience is left intact, you know.

    The 2d6 rolls are sort of the important ones.

  3. No. Watching an app does feel nothing like holding dice in your hands and rolling them. A set has more or less the price of a pizza, and (hopefully) you will use them for years, so unless you’re really on budget they’re worth the price fully.

  4. When I was a kid and we had that first magical boxed set, we had to pull numbers out of cups. Different cups for different dice. Screw nostalgia, it sucked. This day and age, there is no reason to do this – dice are readily available, go get some!

  5. For the purposes of determining random numbers, a RNG is fine. But there’s something about the act of throwing dice which feels better. I’d recommend hitting up Amazon or your local gaming shop for a handful.

    Also, with real dice there’s less temptation to wonder if the coding’s right when it spits out nothing higher than 7 (on a d20) all session. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

  6. Go to Amazon.

    Search for “Pound of Dice”

    Best $20 you ever spent.

    Holy crap, dude. I can SEND you some dice, if you’re in the US. There’s something wrong (to me) with using RNGs for RPGs (if you’re playing in person). It feels weird somehow.

  7. Do not Ye suffer the user of polyhedral dice to live, for they are an Abomination in the eyes of men and the gods.

    BURN all dice that depart from cubic perfection…yea, and also those dice with numbers, for they merely coddle those soft-cocks who cannot count.

    Here endeth the lesson.

  8. I wouldn’t say it feels “authentic,” but the only issues with it are purely aesthetic, so I’d say go ahead and use one until you can get your collective hands on a set of dice. I’ll second the Chessex Pound O’ Dice; mine even came with a full set of polyhedrals in addition to the random ones.

  9. The Chessex Pound O’ Dice rocks. They’re factory seconds, but almost all usable and many without noticeable defects.

    I was able to issue the RPGers in my school games club a set each, save several extra sets for specific games and still have a pile left over.

    All for the price of, maybe, 2 or 3 sets of polyhedrals?

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