DM Tool: Dice Roll Lists

For those that are old-time fans of Dungeoneering, this set will look more than a little familiar.

Way back when (before this was Dungeoneering.net and was a Geocities site) one of the most popular downloads were dice roll lists. What are dice roll lists? Let me explain.

Back in the good old days of my hardcore GMing sessions, I found that (due to lack of space) throwing dice could be a bit of a pain, when I wanted to keep them secret. These were the days when laptops where mind-blowingly expensive and I was on a student budget. Also, a lot of my gaming prep was done during lulls in lectures, during lunch, etc.

So I hit upon an idea: Instead of throwing dice, I just make myself lists of random numbers based on die rolls (D4, D6, D8, etc) and use those. When I use a number, just scratch it off. No rattling dice, no indication I even made a roll. It merely looked to my players that I had scribbled something on my notes.

The original sheets were done using QBASIC and Word Perfect 5.2 (to give you an indication of just how old we’re talking). These new sheets are a lot nicer will a lot more numbers (over 1100 per die). Each PDF has two pages for two-sided printing to save you some paper and some time (each side has a different set of random numbers).

Also, the D10 and D100 sheets come in two flavors. One starts numbering at one. The other starts numbering at zero. I know some of you are picky on this point, so I gave you some flexibility on this point.

• [download#105]
• [download#106]
• [download#107]
• [download#108]
• [download#109]
• [download#110]
• [download#111]
• [download#112]
• [download#113]

There is one more thing I should touch on: Trust. Using these may cause paranoid players to freak out. If you’ve got this issue, just show them your sheet before you game, make sure they understand it’s completely random. If they worry you’re memorizing the sheet (or sheets), inform them that if you could memorize several sheets of 1100 numbers each, the last thing you’d be doing would be playing RPGs and would currently reside in a small palace in Las Vegas.