Dice Roller

Nathan H.'s picture

Please explain this dice roller to me?
Do I have to comment to find out what is rolled, then edit my comment to reflect the roll?
What am I not getting?

webtech's picture

The dice roller works by injecting the roll into a comment. In most games this might work something like this:

GM: "The orc is bearing down on you. What do you do?"
In the COMMENT field, the Player types something like "Ok I have a +1 with my sword, so I am swinging at him" AND types "1d20+1" into the dice roller, then hits SAVE. The comment and the roll will appear together, allowing everyone to see whether the swing was successful.

Note: while the comment body itself will be editable, the dice roll is not. (This prevents cheating.)

In other cases, however (like our game of Cobralingus), it is necessary to roll the dice first, before saying anything. That's what you describe above. In such a case, the Player simply types some placeholder text in the COMMENT field (for example: "rolling"), and types the dice roll in, and hits SAVE, but then after seeing the result of the roll they EDIT the comment. The word "rolling" basically acts as a placeholder, "saving their place in line" so nobody comes along and takes a turn before the current turn is concluded.

ETA: For example, over in the Cobralingus game you rolled 11, and the image you uploaded is currently standing in as a placeholder. The game is now ready for you to edit the post. Since an 11 == "PLAY GAME," the function of your filter is defined as "Mischief maker. Encourages craziness. Results may surprise the user."

Nathan H.'s picture

Yes, I understand. So, what I did in the case of the Cobralingus game was go "hmm... I can only see the results of the roll after I write something. Gee, that's dumb. I'll just use a random number generator from the internet. Searches Google for "random number from 1-17". Finds link. Link tells me number is 7. Tab back to forum, with this random number.

There should be a better way to generate random numbers. Why not a way to generate them before you write something, that's not prone too much tampering. Like have someone else give you a random number, or use the random number generated in the previous comment.

Like, to start it off Tod get's a random number for himself, and once he hits Save, another random number is automatically generated?
It's a pain in the ass using this for Fortune-in-the-Beginning.

I mean, I still appreciate you, but it's still a pain in the ass. It's no rectal examine, but you get what I'm saying.

Paul T.'s picture

The obvious solution, if that bothers you, seems to be to make two posts: one with the roll, and a second with your text.