Magic Roller

Automated Roll for the Busy Gamer!

By Carl Davis

Available for Windows (32-bit)

Overview

Magic Roller is a simple utility designed to help the "busy" Game Master or player by providing hands-free dice rolling. Magic Roller gives gamers the ability to keep a particular die rolling every eighth to two seconds. I find it useful when I need continuously need random numbers, but don't want to fumble for a die to do so every time.

Some possible uses:

Game Master can use it for secret rolls. We all know the rolling dice behind a screen tips characters off that something's afoot. Using Magic Roller you can keep them guessing all the time. When you decide it's time to see if something bad is about the happen, just glance at the current roll!
Players in the heat of battle. Attacking fast and furious, just glance at Magic Roller each time you need to get a new D20 roll!
Random encounters. Keep Magic Roller generating numbers, just glance over and decide what appears in front of the characters!

Magic Roller is a dice rolling program designed for Fantasy Role-playing Gamers (FRPG). RPG games (like Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons and Dragons ) use a number of different kinds of dice during an adventure. For example, to determine if a character hits, a 20-sided die is rolled. If you still don't have a clue as to what I'm discussing, then you probably don't need this tool!!

Magic Roller complements the capabilities of Slicer and Dicer. Some of the nice features are:

Has one-click access to most of the "standard" RPG die types
Allows the time between rolls to be from 1/8 second to 2 seconds in time
About as simple as a program can get!!!!

Learning the MdN system

If you've been around RPG's for a while you've seen the terms like "d6" and "5d8" many times and know what they mean. For those who don't, here is a quick primer.

The number and kind of dice to roll can be easily expressed using the format "MdN". In this phased "M" represents the number of dice to roll and "N" represents the number of sides the die should have. For example, "3d6" represents roll three six-sided die and adding the values together (which gives a range between 3 and 18).

Using the Program

The figure below shows the main screen. Each element on the screen is also described.

d4 through d100	Rolls that particular kind of die.
Roll	This field holds the last roll generated. It's based on the currently selected die (as showing in the caption.
Roll Pause	The time the computer waits between each roll.

Licensing

This version (1.0) is available to all to download and non-commercial use without cost. However, I retain the copyright and may offer an enhanced retail version later. Until that time, you are welcome to share this version. However, if you maintain a website, I'd prefer you provide a link to my site for users to obtain the latest program.