Dice Rolling on Play@YSDC

[carnage_lee]

We have a dice roller 'add in' installed on the site, unfortunately official modifications (MOD) for dice rollers for phpBB are very scarce. This particular MOD wasn't officially released and development on it is sporadic at best - really it's an abandoned project - luckily it works well enough to have it installed on our site.

Here's a quick overview:

Important: Do not 'cut and paste' and examples given into your own post - examples of BBCode rendered here include 'non-printable' characters that stop them being interpreted by the rendering engine.

The Dice Roller is accessed via two new BBCodes, the BBCode is parsed when you make a post and the result is lodged in the database - when the post is viewed the roll is retrieved and presented in the text. Dice rolls can't be edited once the post is submitted - Keepers can remove the rolls if they wish (as Moderators). One of the features available is the ability to see representations of the dice making up the roll, as in-line images.

They way the MOD has been written means that access to it's workings is not automatic - it has to be selected as an option for each Forum as required - this being the case the Dice Roller will only be active on game boards where the Keeper for that game requests it.

How to Roll some Dice:

The BBCode supports the following syntax - 'the number of rolls, the dice type =/- modifiers' (this follows standard RPG dice rolling)

So three six sided dice plus 2 becomes : 3d6 +2
To roll this you would do this:
[­dice]3d6+2[­/dice]
And that renders in the post like this:
[dice]0[/dice]

This is the same as using he modes 'string' and 'total' together. We've chosen this as the default setting as it's the most useful when representing a dice roll.


There are some additional 'modes' that you can access:
total, string and quote (usage of these is straight forward - but quote does not actually do what it implies ) - here are the details:

[­dice=total]3d6+2[­/dice] looks like this:
[dice=total]1[/dice]
This just gives the total... the end result.

[­dice=string]3d6+2[­/dice] looks like this:
[dice=string]2[/dice]
'string' lists the dice rolled... it also has the total listed.


[­dice=string,total]3d6+2[­/dice] looks like this:
[dice=string,total]3[/dice]
'string and total' - same as the first roll example as we've made the default methods list both the roll and the total.

[­dice=quote]3[­dice] looks like this:
[dice=quote]3[/dice]
Quote: Actually quotes the referenced roll in the same post - counting starts at zero so this quotes the 4th dice roll in this message - which is the roll above. This is the only way to reference the dice roll in the same post (as the roll is made once posted).


Limitations:
The math support is pretty basic - best to keep to simple + and - amounts.
There is no support for multiple dice type in the same roll - so no 2d6+1d4 types of roll.
There is no handy direct way to tag what the roll is for.
There's no support for 'keep best three' types of roll.
As dice rolls are not made until you post the message you can't know the outcome until you post the message and once that's done you can't change it.
20 Dice rolls per post, no more than that - don't try it.... seriously bad things could happen and not even your elder sign will protect you!

[carnage_lee]

The 'dice' BBCode can be combined with other BBCodes. Once of the most used is combining the 'dice' tag with the 'Spoiler-Button' tag.

[­Spoiler-Button]Harvey Spot Hidden:30, [­dice]1d100[­/dice][­/Spoiler-Button]

Harvey - Spot Hidden: 35,[dice]0[/dice]

The above details the character (Harvey), the reason (Spot Hidden) and target (30) - the dice roll is displayed upon 'clicking' the button. In this case poor old Harvey has failed the roll.