Dice rolling mechanics in PbP RPGs

Is there a way to utilize a dice rolling mechanic in the forums?

If not, what have you seen used when a die roll was necessary to a RP Gs gameplay?

When we've needed to use dice in some of the RPs I've been in, most of the time those games had a Skype chat as well, so I just rolled things using a dice roller plugin there. For cases where things have to be all secret, I use either random.org or that Wizards roller.

Thanks for the tip man.

Really appreciate it.

Here's an idea. What about a system where the game's 'dice' is based on the time you made your post rather then a roll?

see up here the last digit on the clock, It doesn't matter which time zone you are in, the final digit on the clock appears the same for everybody on the site. So how about using that as a d10?

Players get a raing out of 1 out of 10 for their abilities and skills. A score of 1 is awful, a score of 10 is fantastic. If player wants to say bake a cake. They simply make a post saying so and then compare the last digit of when made the post to their score number.

If the number on the clock is under their score then they succeeded. If it's higher then they waited too long and they failed.

edited 1st Aug '13 7:42:37 PM by joeyjojo

The problem with that one is that someone with a good enough connection could probably time it to always get high rolls.

That is true but you'll need some pretty good timing and reflexes to post at the exact moment.

With forum hiccups and bad connections, I can't see how posting in itself would help.

However, it's quite easy to implement dice-rolling as long as you have some kind of program to do so. Chat Rooms, Messengers, other sites, and so on.

Keep in mind that it's somewhat easier for all the players to be able to see the dice being rolled, though, so it's harder to do than offline gaming.(or gaming in a literal chat room, etc.)

Obvious it's a quick and dirty system. But the advantage of using a clock is the numbers are right there in the open on the forum.

But using the time stamps alone don't help all that much with tons of internet problems and such. As open as it looks, it doesn't work all that well.

It's understandable for the player/gm to post their results in spoilers(assuming the game doesn't break the fourth wall and know about regular dice rolls) at least.

I've got my own reasons for not liking using the timestamp, but why would internet problems not make using the timestamp viable? I have no idea how it couldn't possibly work. If there's a forum problem, you can't post anyway so it's not like you're gonna post and not have a roll, and any sort of hiccup means that it's harder for people to cheat. So at bare minimum, it's a more honest system than just having everyone say they've rolled natural 10's.

But I prefer using dice to a timestamp anyway due to how you can game the timestamp, and how you can only use it as a d10. Of what I've used, if people really don't have Skype and you need a more public solution, Invisiblecastle is what I prefer, since you just assign a campaign name, and then every time you roll you assign it to that campaign and make it public.