Tweener
We’ve all felt the pain and the heartbreak. It’s a pivotal moment. The dice fall. They strike the supple leather of your rolling tray, circle like Lady’s Luck’s own roulette wheel, teeter just so… And come to rest leaning against the side.
“It’s a 20!”
“No, it’s cocked!”
“Maybe we should just bump the table?”
“That would be a tilt! If it’s not good enough for pinball it’s not good enough for D&D. Reroll!”
“It’s a nat-freaking-20! No way am I rerolling!”
And more than the oh-so-relatable feeling of inconsiderate dice acting like the sordid little teases they are, it’s the resolution of the conundrum that interests me today. When the dice are questionable and it’s unclear which way is up, you can run with a few different policies.
- Always Reroll — This one is simple. If it’s even a little bit questionable, you always reroll. Only perfectly flat dice are acceptable, and the leaners nerve count.
- Players Favor — It’s a friendly game. Why not call the close ones in the party’s favor? If the dice are leaning, the better result becomes the result.
- Roll for Honor — Similar to the above, the dice can go in the player’s favor. It’s just that the rolling players is the one who gets to choose. And if they can bare to look the rest of the team in the eye, even the most egregious tweeners are theirs to call.
- GM Fiat — Rule Zero applies. There’s an impartial referee for a reason, and they calls ’em like they sees ’em.
- The Balance Test — The most esoteric of the methods, this one turns RPGs into dexterity games. If you can balance another die on top of the tweener, you get to keep it. (Steady hands… Steady…!)
What about you denizens of Handbook-World? Does your table favor one or more of the above? Or is is there a tweener resolution mechanic that I haven’t listed? Whatever resolution mechanic you favor, tell us all about those pesky seagulls crying COCKED! at your table.
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I mostly play online these days, which means it never comes up.
What, your app never spits out a 2 / 20?
Nope. Shitty roles sometimes, but never cocked.
Methinks this is a failure in HCI. 😛
Sometimes a player accidentally types “1d2” instead of “1d20”. Does that count?
No, that’s just a reroll.
I love it when dudes accidentally roll 1d200. Cracks me up every time.
“Does a 137 hit?” XD
It’s even better when they do that and STILL roll below what they needed.
“Seagulls, MMH, stop it now!”
Hm ha hm hm hm ha
For unclear dice we often use a quick table consensus “is this die croocked?” the roller asks in cases of doubt. “nah” or “yeah” someone says and then the result is used/rerolled as appropriate.
Balance tests are pretty popular as a secondary option too when I’m in the war gaming side of the local gaming club where they use nice stable D6’s. Trying to do the same with a d20 would seem silly to me
Always cracked me up that “ability to estimate distance” was an essential skill in wargaming. Why not add “hands of a surgeon” to the list? 😛
Nowadays we play premeasure systems, but back when I started I remember that those with “the eyes of a carpenter” had a distinct advantage. I don’t really miss that, but losing the random scattering artillery templates was a genuine loss.
A steady hand is already a big advantage for a wargamer far beyond dice stacking through.
Gots to paint those tiny mans you know.
If only I had time to paint my tinymans. Busy busy busy!
I got started in tabletop via Games Workshop LotR strategy battles and amongst the wargamers the balance test was the definitive method of resolution, so it stuck with me so much it has never occurred to me it wasn’t the ubiquitous standard
Was the balance thing written in a rulebook somewhere? It was a pure gamer culture thing for me. I’ve never actually seen it in print.
Yeah, mostly playing online in recent years, so not rolling physical dice much. But when face to face, “table consensus” would be the best way to put it, same as Vegetalssfour said. That doesn’t significantly bias for or against the players, since if it’s not genuinely unclear, the result stands, whether it’s a 1 or a 20…
There should be a gameshow similar to “Is It Chocolate?”
My group is a fully online group, but we use a mixed media dice rule (digital and real at home with the trust of everyone involved), but the number of times anyone has claimed a cocked dice is zero.
For the digital dice, we all just see the little number pop up on DnDBeyond and there is no mechanic in that system for dice to “not count”.
For the physical dice, well, there have been a few times one of us has tossed the dice, and the almost instant exclamation of “Damnit! It flew out of my hand” might occur. Or the alternate exclaim of joy at a nat 20 or pain at a nat 1 occurs. But hearing the tell tale sound of someone’s dice hitting their prefered surface (rolling trays for all of us, a couple also have the clackity clack of a dice tower too), no one ever says, “Oh… uh… cocked dice.”
You could argue that if it occurs in this altered realty space we play in, that we just don’t hear about it, but also we don’t hear anyone re-roll a die, and having watched Critical Roll and D20 a lot, one aspect I will argue about the relative frequency those two shows exclaim “Cocked… ” is a universal one…
Have you seen their frickin dice trays?! They must have a hundred dice in those spaces where they “roll” the dice (Sam drops, that is another pet peeve of mine… tho he almost never claims a cocked dice either). Of course they are going to be squaking COCKED COCKED COCKED all the time, their dice have almost no where to roll properly and end up hitting other dice and coming to rest.
CLEAN DICE ROLLING SPACE!!!
If it ain’t clean, it ain’t count!
Most BS call I ever had to make involved a dice tower. Dude rolled a nat 20, but it had balanced ON TOP of the dice tower rather than rolling through to the bottom.
I’m sitting there like, “Bruh.”
My general principle is basically “always reroll,” with the additional principles that you reroll any die that touched anybody’s body – except the GM’s, who is allowed to interposed a hand to keep a die on the table – as part of the roll and any die that went on the floor, even if they land flat. I’m not quite as religious about them as I used to be, but I find that with moderately strict enforcement they avoid any doubt without causing much trouble.
Oh geeze, how could I forget the all-important “interference” rule?
Cats and dogs are proven as being stronger then the Dice Gods when they jump on the table.
My little pewter dude isn’t fighting that thing:
https://i.redd.it/ufopt5ka06941.jpg
Always reroll. Never been an argument in any game I’ve been in. Also reroll any that leave the playing surface. Also any that get smacked by the cat as it’s rolling. Any that land on top of other dice when rolling multiples. Any that you pick up before I, as DM, can see what the number was. I’ll fudge the last one if the other players verify it.
Oh hey! The bit about the cat reminded me of this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/roll-hard
Forgot we’d done that. XD
😀
we re-roll always.
and dice only count when they stop on the table.
How about interference rules? What if it bumps Bob’s arm on the way to rest?
somehow such a thing never happened.
I fully expect that seagull to become a recurring nemesis / fulfiller of Thief’s bad luck. Just showing up at the worst times inexplicably. Like that one flying dinosaur for Dr. Mcninja.
I only just got to the bit about Shithead:
https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Shithead
He may have been an influence.
Could have been worse, thief – at least it’s not a horrible goose.
In one of my groups, our party went through a short adventure being shrunken. After bypassing some ants, we were confronted by a titanic beast – a goose. After our attempt at hiding failed, we went on the offensive, scaring it off with a gunpowder explosion that left it with a burnt, scarred eye.
From then on, it became an in-joke that the goose was now our nemesis and would enact its revenge. And the DM would oblige with it showing up every now and then.
Makes sense to me… I regularly see dogs chase ducks and I see dogs chase pigeons, but I’ve never seen a dog chase geese *twice*. I’ve seen a few small children learn that lesson the hard way too.
What is a goose’s breath weapon? Honk deals sonic damage?
Probably a fear effect rather than damage-dealing.
Ah, cocked dice. I play a lot on a tiled kitchen table these days, so this one comes up a lot.
Usually you’ve just got to be honest about it and roll again when a die is cocked. I haven’t really seen anybody trying to insist on keeping a cocked roll.
Grats on your tile table. Also on player maturity. 🙂
You know it’s bad when you see her eyes.
If it’s cocked reroll. If it’s off the table reroll.
Bangs: Chill.
Eyes: Not chill.
I have people roll in a box with a flat bottom surface, cocked can only be called if it’s butted into the edge of the box or dice are somehow piled together, which I’ve honestly never seen happen except rare instances of critical sneak attacks/smite rolls with dozens of dice rolled at once.
Even then, it’s usually easier to just lightly drum the table with your fists next to the box. Pinball aside, the dice will usually naturally settle to whichever side they were most firmly on to begin with.
If the roll is seriously bad and the dice is CLEARLY cocked (practically on edge) then I might allow them to reroll (if it’s particularly perilous situation or they’ve been having a run of bad luck) but I’ll generally insist on drumming and letting the dice settle.
If players try to abuse this to bang the table and make dice jump, then they’ll be banned from this option and I will do the drumming and judging myself.
Really though, I barely ever have a chance to play IRL, so most of this is purely hypothetical.
I really want to get back to IRL gaming. I love that I get to keep my friends long-distance, but holy shit do I prefer non-mediated banter.
So yeah. “Tilt” seems like a good option, provided it isn’t abused.
We go by “mostly X” as in on side is more flat than any other, and go in the player’s favour if it’s unclear.
This algorithm seems to reduce the problems.
It’s always harder in wargames where you’re playing a competitive game. Kind of makes me wonder what to official 40K tourney rules are for this biz.
Cocked die? That’s a paddlin… I mean a reroll.
In fact, in some games “if it’s out of the dice tray, it’s a reroll”. And for some Players I’ve even taken to implementing a dice tower to roll for them…
I may not take too many things seriously when I game, but rolling is a sacred ritual, a sacrament of the game that shall not be besmirched!
Besmirchin the sacred rituals? You better believe that’s a paddlin…
I love me a dice tower, but I hate when the occasional die manages to jump out anyway. It’s like, “You had one job! What am I paying you for!?”
Our groups challenge for cocked device is if you set other dice on top of what you think is the top side without the base one shifting or the tower falling over
Nice variation on “The Balance Test.” I appreciate the added specificity. That mess avoids arguments.