Friday, May 22, 2009

Tabletop Gaming and the D6

Tabletop gaming in the Philippines can have the most surprising barriers.

In addition to finding a gaming group, there's also the problem of travel (the Philippine Traffic Gods are seldom merciful), the problem of venue, the problem of coordinating schedules, and so on.

Another barrier for tabletop gaming: dice!

Granted, most of these tabletop games come with their own dice (which is good if they use the funky d4s, d8s, d10s, or d12s or d20s), but do you ever have enough? And what if your lose your dice? Polyhedrals cost around P50 per die right now!

Solution 1: play games that use D6s!

That means playing RPGs that use the HERO System, GURPS, or Silhouette Core. Precis Intermedia came out with the Genre Division series of games, which also use D6s.

It also means playing wargames like Starmada (relatively inexpensive) or Warhammer (okay, if you can afford this as a hobby, you probably don't care about the price of dice). Yeah, I don't know too many wargames and what dice they use, so lets move on.

Solution 2: play all games but use D6s instead!

This means finding a way to substitute your trusty and cheap D6s for the standard dice in your game of choice. For the White Wolf fanatics, substituting D6s for D10s may be a bit hairy, even if you adjust for the probabilities. For D20 players, you can try using Unearthed Arcana's recommendations for converting to 3d6 use instead of the trusty D20 for task resolution. True20 and Mutants and Masterminds also have recommendations for tweaking the game to allow for a 3d6 bell curve.

Solution 3: Make the dice you need yourself!

Er, nah.