d% Question

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Gabriel

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I was scrolling through YouTube Shorts when a video about d% came up.

The presenter was showing two percentile d10s. One was showing 00. The other was showing 0.

He was claiming that it was common for people to interpret this roll as a 10.

Buh?

I've been playing RPGs for over 40 years. I've played with people who have seen that roll as 100. I've played with people who have seen that roll as Zero. I have played with people who had extremely odd ideas and perceptions of things. I've played with some extremely dim bulbs.

I have NEVER met anyone who would have interpreted that roll as a 10. I think even the player I had who could not distinguish a d4 from a d20 would have slapped someone for suggesting that combo was a roll of 10.

Is this a real thing out in the world? Are there people who actually interpret a d% roll of 00 and 0 as a 10? Or is the YouTube Creator just making up stupid bullshit?
 
WTF What use is there to interpreting that as 10?
 
No. I’ve never encountered that, and anyone who suggested it would immediately be told they were wrong. It’s 0 (making the range of the roll 0-99) or it’s 100 (making the range 1-100). Interpreting it as 10 (so the range is 1-99 with two 10s) makes no sense whatsoever. It’s just as wrong as when, the first time I rolled a d4 at age 9 I picked it up and tried to add the three numbers on the bottom face together thinking that was the result (though it sure would’ve been nice for my dagger to do 7 points of damage (1+2+4) instead of 3).
 
I can’t actually use d% - I spent so much of my misspent youth rolling two different coloured d10s as a percentile that I try to use the same system with a d% in the roll, and end up rolling 704 on percentile dice, or something. Then I realise what I’ve done, and figure out the right answer. It‘s such an ingrained habit that using two d10s is quicker and easier for me.

Of course, when I learned this there weren’t any d10s either - just d20s numbered 0-9 twice :wink:

Fantasy Grounds (the VTT) handles d100 as d% rolling 0-90 plus a d10 rolling 1-10. Which may be where that came from. Never seen anyone do it that way with actual dice though…
 
The oddest d100 mistake I’ve seen is rolling 1d20 and reading 10-19 as 1… That really sucks in roll high Cold Iron.

I prefer 20 sided d10 over 10 sided but if I was to use 10 sided d10 I wouldn’t mind the 10s digit die.
 
In that case it sounds like it’s Fantasy Grounds’ fault, and also that their method of resolving d% rolls is very dumb.
 
Burnt Jester said:
I've seen it before. They claim a 0 counts as a 10. So a 00 and 0 is a 10, a 10 and 0 is a 20, 50 and 0 is a 60, etc.
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As long as it’s done consistently so that a roll of 30+0 is read as 40 and so on it works mathematically, but it still seems weird and counterintuitive. I wonder how many of the people who read dice this way also insist that THAC0 is impossibly confusing.
 
malc said:
I can’t actually use d% - I spent so much of my misspent youth rolling two different coloured d10s as a percentile that I try to use the same system with a d% in the roll, and end up rolling 704 on percentile dice, or something. Then I realise what I’ve done, and figure out the right answer. It‘s such an ingrained habit that using two d10s is quicker and easier for me.

Of course, when I learned this there weren’t any d10s either - just d20s numbered 0-9 twice :wink:

Fantasy Grounds (the VTT) handles d100 as d% rolling 0-90 plus a d10 rolling 1-10. Which may be where that came from. Never seen anyone do it that way with actual dice though…
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I can see why they did it in FG. It makes the D10 die consistently 1-10 and they just make a special d10's die that is 0-90 in 10 step increments. But it's wierd outside of a programmatic solution.
 
Bunch said:
I can see why they did it in FG. It makes the D10 die consistently 1-10 and they just make a special d10's die that is 0-90 in 10 step increments. But it's wierd outside of a programmatic solution.
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Yeah. (d10 - 1) * 10 + d10 makes perfect sense to a programmer. Not so much to people who have to interpret that every time they roll...
 
malc said:
Yeah. (d10 - 1) * 10 + d10 makes perfect sense to a programmer. Not so much to people who have to interpret that every time they roll...
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It's more that the d1-10 die is handled consistently that I suspect is the motivation.
The d0-90 in ten increments is the oddball but it's always treated consistently as well. Consistency is desirable.
 
Hmm, that does mess up the game systems that overload the 10s die. Or also read the roll with the 10s and 1s die swapped.
 
So what I'm taking away from this now is that this is a relatively new thing because people use VTTs, and in the VTT(s) in question the programmers decided to ignore the universal convention for reading 2d10s rolled as d% and dream up their own because it let them cut a corner.
malc said:
Of course, when I learned this there weren’t any d10s either - just d20s numbered 0-9 twice :wink:
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My original FASA Star Trek Deluxe set came with dice like that. They were uninked Zocchi d20s numbered 0-9 twice. One was blue. One was red. I thought they were dumb at the time, but nostalgia has made me very fond of them. My originals are long gone, and I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what the replacements were called as well as hunting down new ones. Just recently I finally re-assembled by set of red and light blue d20-d10s. i was irrationally happy.
 
ffilz said:
The oddest d100 mistake I’ve seen is rolling 1d20 and reading 10-19 as 1… That really sucks in roll high Cold Iron.

I prefer 20 sided d10 over 10 sided but if I was to use 10 sided d10 I wouldn’t mind the 10s digit die.
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Do they even still make those?
I prefer two d10's numbered 0-9 reading 0 as 10 and 00 as 100. But I've a lot of modern dice with the tens built in.
 
Gabriel said:
He was claiming that it was common for people to interpret this roll as a 10.
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I think the gentleman was confused and giving the rule for interpreting the 0 when rolling a d10 as a d10.
 
Gabriel said:
So what I'm taking away from this now is that this is a relatively new thing because people use VTTs, and in the VTT(s) in question the programmers decided to ignore the universal convention for reading 2d10s rolled as d% and dream up their own because it let them cut a corner.


My original FASA Star Trek Deluxe set came with dice like that. They were uninked Zocchi d20s numbered 0-9 twice. One was blue. One was red. I thought they were dumb at the time, but nostalgia has made me very fond of them. My originals are long gone, and I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what the replacements were called as well as hunting down new ones. Just recently I finally re-assembled by set of red and light blue d20-d10s. i was irrationally happy.
Click to expand...
It's not so much cutting a corner as coming up with an equally valid solution that is more consistent in its dice interpretation. It generates a number from 1-100 with even probability for any one number.

As I recall FG used physics calculations in the pre Unity dice to get them to appear to roll like normal dice. That might be the source of why they picked dice behavior consistency over a more conventional interpretation.
 
Bunch said:
It's not so much cutting a corner as coming up with an equally valid solution that is more consistent in its dice interpretation. It generates a number from 1-100 with even probability for any one number.

As I recall FG used physics calculations in the pre Unity dice to get them to appear to roll like normal dice. That might be the source of why they picked dice behavior consistency over a more conventional interpretation.
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I don’t think it’s that. In FG you don’t really need to look at the dice - it tells you what you rolled (and mostly what it means) in the chat window. So I suspect that it didn’t feel worthwhile handling the special case of 00 on a traditional percentile roll; it was easier just to set up the dice so they fit within the existing framework for handling dice rolls, and produced the correct range of values.
 
I knew someone about twenty years ago who did something like that when rolling with a d10 numbered in tens and a normal d10 and he always wanted to read 00-0 as 10. Since he also insisted that 10-0 was 100 it sort of worked. He handled rolling two differently colored d10s just fine and read that normally but throw a tens die in and it got weird.
 
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Someone will always find a way of turning the most straightforward, obvious, and intuitive way of reading something into a total cluster. There is probably a Murphy's Rule which covers it.
 
Gabriel said:
I was scrolling through YouTube Shorts when a video about d% came up.

The presenter was showing two percentile d10s. One was showing 00. The other was showing 0.

He was claiming that it was common for people to interpret this roll as a 10.

Buh?

I've been playing RPGs for over 40 years. I've played with people who have seen that roll as 100. I've played with people who have seen that roll as Zero. I have played with people who had extremely odd ideas and perceptions of things. I've played with some extremely dim bulbs.

I have NEVER met anyone who would have interpreted that roll as a 10. I think even the player I had who could not distinguish a d4 from a d20 would have slapped someone for suggesting that combo was a roll of 10.

Is this a real thing out in the world? Are there people who actually interpret a d% roll of 00 and 0 as a 10? Or is the YouTube Creator just making up stupid bullshit?
Click to expand...
I've seen it with players used to interpreting the 0-9 die as "1-10". So 0 is a 10, and thus they interpret the percentile die as "one 1-10 die and one die that gives either a 00, or a multiple of 10 from 10 to 90". Then they add those two together:tongue:.
So yes, if you roll 90+10, you have a 100:grin:!

Me? I don't care how they read it. I read it as "0-9 and 00-90, if you get 0-00, you have a 100". But as long as nobody switches it mid-session, I'm fine with them reading it differently, so long as the range is still the right one for the game (00-99 or 1-100:thumbsup:)!
 
The one that gets me is the horrendously named d66, standing for d10x6 + d6. That's not emulating a 66-sided die at all, it's just a re-labelling of 36 possibilities.

d66.png

This is a real d66.
 
thebigh said:
The one that gets me is the horrendously named d66, standing for d10x6 + d6. That's not emulating a 66-sided die at all, it's just a re-labelling of 36 possibilities.

View attachment 60365

This is a real d66.
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Not sure how this thing works, but unless it has 11 sides, no it's not...:grin:

For a d66, roll (1d6-1) and 1d12 rerolling 12 results, then multiply the (1d6-1) result by 11 and add the d12 result:thumbsup:. I wouldn't subject anyone to this procedure, though, not unless I hated him or her!

And yes, the d66 is actually a d36, basically it just turns the different results from the 2d6 into numbers by taking them as ordered results* instead of summing them up. OTOH, it makes each of the 36 results equally likely, losing one of the advantages of the 2d6...:tongue:

*So 1,6 is different from 6,1:shade:.
 
AsenRG said:
Not sure how this thing works, but unless it has 11 sides, no it's not...:grin:

For a d66, roll (1d6-1) and 1d12 rerolling 12 results, then multiply the (1d6-1) result by 11 and add the d12 result:thumbsup:. I wouldn't subject anyone to this procedure, though, not unless I hated him or her!

And yes, the d66 is actually a d36, basically it just turns the different results from the 2d6 into numbers by taking them as ordered results* instead of summing them up. OTOH, it makes each of the 36 results equally likely, losing one of the advantages of the 2d6...:tongue:

*So 1,6 is different from 6,1:shade:.
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I think it is an eleven sided die.
 
malc said:
I don’t think it’s that. In FG you don’t really need to look at the dice - it tells you what you rolled (and mostly what it means) in the chat window. So I suspect that it didn’t feel worthwhile handling the special case of 00 on a traditional percentile roll; it was easier just to set up the dice so they fit within the existing framework for handling dice rolls, and produced the correct range of values.
Click to expand...
I'm a little confused why there is any need to represent the dice at all. I've never used FG, so maybe I'm missing something, but if I roll a d100 in Roll20 it just gives me a number between 1 and 100.
 
SmallbutVicious said:
I'm a little confused why there is any need to represent the dice at all. I've never used FG, so maybe I'm missing something, but if I roll a d100 in Roll20 it just gives me a number between 1 and 100.
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You can turn on dice representation in Roll20 too. I usually do, although the implementation of some systems (inc. 5e) buggers them up.
 
Hey, if you're consistent, whatever floats your boat. :clown: Now I want stunting options based on the to-hit roll formula taking advantage of Polish Notation's backwards entry! And you have to declare your d% roll in a language determined by the difference between the dice! :dice::sun: There'll be pie charts for convenience.

:irritated: "I rolled... 'plus dix a soixante-dix' for... 'quatre-vingt'... and I have a mod of... 'ne plus quinze?' -- fuck it!" :angry: /lunges across the table and swings at GM with their dice bag :evil: "Did I hit?"
 
Reading 2d10s as percentile dice was confusing for me...for about 2 minutes back in 1987 when I started playing rpgs. I'm really not trying to be snarky, but it was one of those things that sounded confusing at first and then it was like "oh, I get it!" The really only confusing part was 00, and even that only took a couple of minutes to wrap my head around. That, and remembering which die was the 10s die and which one was the ones.

Maybe since I started on 2d10 percentiles, it was easier for me to understand. And by "easier for me to understand" I mean it was seamless and took practically no time at all in comprehending that 00 and 0 were 100. I guess that new gimmicky percentile d10 could confuse some new people? If that occurred at my table, I would flip the dice to 10 and 0 and ask them to interpret that. Of course, they'd probably look at it and think "1 and 0 plus another 0 make 100...right?" :grin:

I do acknowledge that some things that I might think are easy to understand are, in fact, not easy for everyone. This was just one of those things that I did not think could be misinterpreted. Not to mention most systems have a snippet in them that mentions dice mechanics and conventions.
 
SmallbutVicious said:
I'm a little confused why there is any need to represent the dice at all. I've never used FG, so maybe I'm missing something, but if I roll a d100 in Roll20 it just gives me a number between 1 and 100.
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I don’t know for sure, but there might be a thing with RPGers and dice? :wink:
 
SmallbutVicious said:
I'm a little confused why there is any need to represent the dice at all. I've never used FG, so maybe I'm missing something, but if I roll a d100 in Roll20 it just gives me a number between 1 and 100.
Click to expand...
There isn't, it puzzles me also. I was already used to generating random numbers in programming before I used d100 dice though, which may have set my thinking that way.
 
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