Die model

Here's a proposed die model; note that this has not been agreed upon, or implemented. I just like the idea of trying to define a die flexibly enough that we can implement most (if not all) of the non-standard things people think of (like dice that are decks of cards, dice that are unfairly weighted coins, etc).

FIXME: This model doesn't handle the interaction of Mighty or Weak with Twin Dice, like they worked on the old site and the new site, in which each sub-die would grow or shrink independently; this model isn't really aware of the idea of "sub-dice". I strongly suspect it would be better to incorporate the idea of a die "type" after all, where the current types are: Normal, Option, Swing, Twin, Wildcard.

In Button Men, a die is an object with the following attributes:

• description: A natural language description of the type of die this is
• skills: A list of what skills the die has
• point-value: A numerical value representing how many points the die is worth
• showing-value: A numerical value representing what number the die is currently showing
• rolls: A list of numerical values representing a number that the die can show when it rolled

For the examples below, I've dropped "showing-value", because that's part of the die's state, not its definition; and "skills" except where the definition of a die requires a skill (e.g. Deck).

So, a regular six-sided die would be:

• description: Six-sided die
• point-value: 6
• rolls: 1,2,3,4,5,6

A Twin (4,4) die would be:

• description: Twin die with two dice (2 x four-sided)
• point-value: 8
• rolls: 2,3,3,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,7,7,8

A Twin (1,2,2) would be:

• description: Twin die with three dice (1 x one-sided, 2 x two-sided)
• point-value: 5
• rolls: 3,4,4,5,5

An eight-sided die numbered with the Fibonacci sequence:

• description: Eight-sided Fibonacci die
• point-value: 12
• rolls: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21

A NineCard die (a deck of cards with nine cards numbered one through four, with 3 x one, 3 x two, 2 x three, and 1 x four) with the Deck skill (once a value is rolled, that value is removed from the rolls list until the rolls list is empty):

• description: NineCard die
• skills: Deck
• point-value: 3
• rolls: 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4

A Shamrock die (http://web.archive.org/web/20080706172140/http://home.att.net/~kerry_and_ryan/LasVegas.html):

• description: Shamrock die
• point-value: 13
• rolls: 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13

A zero-sided die:

• description: Zero-sided die
• point-value: 0
• rolls: 0

This is a die that's always showing zero, and isn't worth any points.

An alternative interpretation of what a "zero-sided die" should mean:

• description: Zero-sided die ("Undefined" variant)
• point-value: 0
• rolls: Undefined

This is a die that always shows "Undefined", a special value that isn't a number, and is thus inferior to all other values for all purposes. It's not lower than any other value (so it doesn't help with initiative, and can't be targeted by a Power Attack), it's not higher than any other value (so it can't be used to make a Power Attack, or be the target of a Shadow Attack), you can't add another value to it (so it can't be used in a Skill Attack), no other value is equal to it (so it can't be the target of a Skill Attack), etc.

The point value of a normal die is its average showing-value, times two, minus one, so I've used that to come up with point values for these other hypothetical weird dice, but there's nothing magical about it, and dice can in general have an arbitrary point value if we want that for some reason.

Note that the point-values and showing-values don't necessarily have to be integers. You can also represent non-integer numbers of sides by creating a list with repeated elements, e.g. if you wanted a 3.5-sided die that had a 1/3.5 chance of rolling a 1, a 1/3.5 chance of rolling a 2, a 1/3.5 chance of rolling a 3, and a .5/3.5 chance of rolling a 3.5, that would just be

• description: Three-and-a-half sided die
• point-value: 3.428571
• rolls: 1,1,2,2,3,3,3.5

Weird, but not fundamentally broken.