[Help me Brainstorm] Dice faces for Paranoia setting?

komradebob's picture
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In one of many back-burnered pojects, I'd had an idea for a game set in the Paranoia RPG setting that didn't use more standard dice techniques.

My concept had been to get blank dice and hand players, Session 0, sheets of stickers for their faces with various symbols, rather than numbers on them. The players would be allowed to put whatever they wanted on their dice, having multiples of symbols as they choose and perhaps even leaving some faces blank, possibly to be filled in later ( hey, early stage of development here!).

And, naturally, if the dice end up a bit mis-weighted and don't always give evenly distributed results...enh, more is the better for this specific setting, right?

So, what I'm looking for are ideas for symbols to use on the dice, and what they mean, as well as suggestions for simple symbols to use, remembering that these faces are going to be about 0.5" or 10mm-ish

My initial thoughts about symbols are mostly about how/why a character succeeds, such as

Computer Monitor= Success if what you're doing would make Friend Computer happy
Hammer and Sickle= Succeed if what you're doing is with treasonous intent or by treasonous means
Sparkle/Star= Succeed if your trying to accomplish goal by use of Mutant Power
Embedded Dagger= Succeed if attempt involves abject betrayal
Wrench= Succeed if your stereotypical Service Group skills ae the main factor
Bomb [old school style lit-fuse grenade]= Success if the main method involved is over-the-top, cartoonish violence
Vacuum Cleaner= Success is based on use of highly experimental or specialist gear
Spy face silhouette= Success through Secret Society derived means, gear, or skills
Eye= Succeed, but pick up a Treason Point
Star[s]= Succeed if higher status/security level is the main factor
Begging hands[?]= Success by abject groveling
Boots and ash-pile= Fail. Pick up a treason point If you already have 10 treason points, alert goes out that you've been declared a Traitor and are fair game.
Blank= Current High Programmer ( GM player for scene) does whatever the heck they want.

Just initial thoughts. Any ideas appreciated. Icon concepts or sketches also appreciated.

Right now, I think the idea is going to be that the players create dice, but they give them to other players when the other player is called upon to make a roll.

As you might imagine, this is not told to the players at the time they are making the dice.

Paul T.'s picture

This is a pretty fascinating take, and could have real promise. Figuring out who gets to put on stickers when and who decides which dice roll would be tricky but likely fruitful.

komradebob's picture

I got side-tracked from that concept by looking into both Lasers & Treason ( Lasers and Feelings hack) and Rangers of Shadow Deep for possible reskinning.

Anyway, turns out that blank dice aren't terribly expensive, especially plain d6s without an inset face, so this starts to be pretty reasonable price wise as a concept. It also allows for potentially changing the dice faces over time.