Why are Wargames Rules so Complicated ... ?

[flamingpig0]

and there is a Brian May gang with highly decorative waistcoats - and a bunch of 'filthy' Mexicans you get the idea.

Badgers? we don't need no stinking Badgers

[DecemDave]

Make your dice fear you! Punish the bad ones with a visit from the sledgehammer! Make sure all of the others witness this!

My dice wish to surrender to you now, Great Lord.

[steve_holmes_11]

Don't even get me started on dice.

Having dipped a toe in the world of Role Playing Games (RPGs), I receive a tremendous amount of hobby spam.
I'm fascinated by the volume of "Dice kickstarters" - hopeful entrepreneurs who expect to make their millions by selling D&D dice.

I'm more intrigued by the low priority given to readability in these designs.
* Dice with the numbers written in elvish script.
* Transparent dice with little dragon figures inside.
* Transparent with reversed numbers so you read the result form the bottom face.

Roleplaying combat (essentially fencing) is already incredibly slow moving.
The last thing we need are dice that take an age to read.

Rant over...

[Steve J]

Good old white dice with black numerals work for me! The odd use of other coloured dice for certain situations may occur, but 99% of the time these are perfect.

[FierceKitty]

Useful to have contrasting colours for competing rolls.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Useful to have contrasting colours for competing rolls.

Warlord's Erwon requires it.

[mmcv]

Useful to have contrasting colours for competing rolls.

Helps with solo play too, so you can tell the sides apart more easily when rolling for all. Picked up a multi-pack of packs of coloured dice when I started getting into the hobby (black, white, green, red, etc) with black or white pips which does the job for most things.

I do have an assortment of "rpg" style dice (d10s, d20s etc) where again I just went with a cheap multipack, though some of those have a mottled effect rather than solid colours, unfortunately. But they still have big white numbers on them so easy enough to read. I can understand people wanting dice with a bit more weight and heft to them, and feel good in the hand and to roll, particularly with rpg gamers, but certainly some of the designs are a bit mad and obscure.

The only "hard to read" dice I have is a set of small mottled green dice with yellow pips, intentionally so to act as subtle markers for ammo/casualties.

[John Cook]

There is a solution to all this dice stuff - don't use the damned things.

[mmcv]

There is a solution to all this dice stuff - don't use the damned things.

But that's half the fun! If you take away the tactile aspects of the game you may as well just be playing a video game. I played plenty of strategy computer games in the past (and spend most of my day on a computer screen these days) so it's nice to get away from screens and play a game with some more physical objects like models and dice or cards.

[Ithoriel]

Dice are the avatars of the Elder Chaos Gods and must be propitiated with prayers, supplications and libations of appropriate alcoholic or caffeinated beverages!

[toxicpixie]

As long as you can read them quickly and easily, I don't care

But feel free to send any beer related sacrifices my way, ta

[Orcs]

I just want dice like Sunjesters.

On a D6 If you want high rolls 90% of the time you get 5 or 6 , if you need low rolls (0% of the time you get 1 or 2.

Don't ask me how it works - If you borrow his dice they do the exact opposite!

[John Cook]

But that's half the fun! If you take away the tactile aspects of the game you may as well just be playing a video game. I played plenty of strategy computer games in the past.

If throwing dice is really "half the fun", try Snakes and Ladders, it is much cheaper that wargaming:D  There are many more tacticle aspects to conventional wargaming than dice I'd say and other means of generating random numbers, or chance, which is all dice do.  To each their own but, for me, the angst that dice seem to generate make them more trouble than they are worth.

[Ithoriel]

The frustration is not the dice but the apparent partiality of results ... which is the same whatever random method you use, in my experience. At times it feels as though the gods of the RNG are against you.

But the alternative is the sterility of games like chess or draughts.

I'll live with the frustration, thanks.

[jimduncanuk]

The frustration is not the dice but the apparent partiality of results ... which is the same whatever random method you use, in my experience. At times it feels as though the gods of the RNG are against you.

You've made me feel very old Mike.

I remember my early days in computing trying to make a wargames program. There was no such thing as a RNG option so I had to create my own. I took the least significant number of the system clock, turned it into an integer, recycled it if it was less than 1 or greater than 6 and voila you have a dice result.

This would have been sometime in July-December 1968.

Jim