1d1212

Indulge me, if you may. So lately I wanted to make a game about Orbtech for some time now. This has me thinking about the 12-sided dice because they are one of the most spherical dice out of the platonic solids. I wouldn't want to make a game requiring a player to buy too many specialized dice, which is why most of my games focus on using d6's. The d12 is the one die I would consider worthy of an exception because 12 is a good number. It has many divisors: 2, 3, 4, and 6.

I assume everyone reading this knows how the dice work. 3d12 means three twelve-sided dice, while 1d6 means one six-sided die. There's a peculiar idea within the TTRPG space of a d66 roll table. It doesn't use a special sixty-six-sided die, it's actually a table with 36 results that you get by rolling two d6's without adding the numbers: 11, 12, ..., 16, 21, 22, ... 65, 66. I suspect this type of table was inspired by 1d100 - since most people do not own the singular hundred-sided die that almost looks like a golf ball, most players would roll this type of roll with a 1d10 and a percentile die (which is a 1d10, but with a 0 after every result). This got me thinking... wouldn't this technically make it a 1d1010?

So, these two lines of thought converged yesterday and led me to 1d1212. This abomination of a notation seems to hint at first at a table with 144 elements in it. But unless we distinguish which digits belong to which die, we might get into some complications. Is the row labeled "112" an 11 and 2, or 1 and 12? ... how about both? Don't worry, the only other exception like that is 111, so this table loses only two of its elements.

The only next step beyond this is 1d2020. ... Let's not roll this one, I'm sure plenty of people here still feel off about that number. That being said, ... how about mixing things up? 1d1220, 1d2012, 1d120, 1d200 (technically 1d1210 and 1d2010), and then going into combinations of 3 or more dice.

That's about it for now. Just a silly brief thought I had the other day that I felt like sharing. Maybe I'll actually make a d1212 roll table someday, only time will tell. Until then, it's time for me to get back to my projects. Have a great day!