The sides on the Genesys dice as pictured are all well and good for a generic game, but I can't help but think that they don't say "Fantasy" or "SF" or "Horror" or "Supers" or any of the other genres/settings we're all planning to play with this system.

And, thinking about it some more, I realize that my inner-dice-collector has been frustrated by the dice in the Star Wars RPG line -- they're cool and all, and I understand the need for them to be this way, but every set is THE SAME!

When I look at my dice collection (and those posted by gamers all over the internet) I see purple d20's, white d20's, mottled d20's, "fire-opal" d20's, d20's with elven runes on them, and on, and on. The same goes for every one of the different polyhedral dice types out there -- there are multiple colors and styles for all of them.

Now, I'm not suggesting that FFG produce different colored sets of the Genesys dice (that would just get confusing), but wouldn't it be amazing if they would develop sets with different faces on the dice to align with a setting/theme?

If you're still with me and like this idea, what would you like to see on the faces of the dice for your favorite setting/theme/genre? And, could FFG get away with adding some kind of variegation to the colors for these sets? (Mock-ups earn you boost dice!)

I've always had trouble with Fantasy Flight's penchant for near-incomprehensible hieroglyphics on their dice, so I once made a set in my phone's digital dice roller with different symbols: a tick and a cross, a four-leaf clover and a black cat, and a shooting star and a skull and crossbones. Nice and generic.

7 hours ago, CarrotandStick said:

I've always had trouble with Fantasy Flight's penchant for near-incomprehensible hieroglyphics on their dice, so I once made a set in my phone's digital dice roller with different symbols: a tick and a cross, a four-leaf clover and a black cat, and a shooting star and a skull and crossbones. Nice and generic.

If Genesys takes off, I'd actually be shocked if someone didn't step in and make generic narrative dice just like that.

Also, what dice roller is that that lets you make custom dice?

If you wanted to spend the cash you could just pick generic symbols and have Chessex make you a set of dice.

3 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

If you wanted to spend the cash you could just pick generic symbols and have Chessex make you a set of dice.

I don't have a problem with the FFG symbols, so pricing makes me like FFG and I don't care enough about color/hue/transparency for it to matter.

But I could see a third party making new dice in bulk , and charging bulk prices, with generic symbols, and I'd be inclined to buy that if it was $8 a pack or somesuch.

I'm curious to see if this will happen as it would certainly speak to the popularity of the system.

I know Artisan Dice was unable to make Star Wars Dice because of the copyright in the symbols, I wonder if Genesys dice might be a possibility.

That's the point, you don't use the symbols, you use Shamrocks, or triangles, or even just letters, or whatever, as long as they're positioned on the faces correctly. I doubt anyone can copyright math....

17 minutes ago, Revanchist7 said:

I know Artisan Dice was unable to make Star Wars Dice because of the copyright in the symbols, I wonder if Genesys dice might be a possibility.

Yeah, the FFG symbols are copyrighted, and as such only available to FFG.

But to 2P51's point, using other symbols in the same configuration... Especially if a 'standard variant' could be found.

I actually don't like the symbols for the new dice, I find them confusing. With Star Wars it's fairly intuitive, successes/failures are pointy symbols while advantages/disadvantages are circular symbols. The Genesys dice are all pointy, so it's down to stars and triangles and circles and it's just not intuitive. If I were to make generic dice, I'd use unicode symbols (no copyright!) which would have corresponding shapes and themes. In the below set the "good" symbols are based on the night sky while the "bad" symbols are based on adverse weather.

The symbols I used while helping a friend develop custom talent trees for a campaign went like this:

• Triumph: ⍟
• Success: ✧
• Advantage: ☾

• Despair: ?
• Failure: ⚡
• Threat: ❄

These were way easier than importing symbols as little pictures, and kind of looked like the actual dice symbols. And if you squint hard enough they could work for the new dice, too. Unless I feel like installing an actual symbol font pack when I develop Genesys modules, I'll just keep using these.

3 minutes ago, CitizenKeen said:

Especially if a 'standard variant' could be found.

We could just declare a standard that we can use until (or if) we get the official symbols working here. I volunteer my symbol set, but I'd like to know if anyone has suggestions for better symbols.

Given that they provide a conversion chart for standard dice in the books, coupled with the wealth of fan made materials like the career/spec sheets they allow on the SW forums I don't think they're too Sith over dice...

Very true, I don't think FFG is worried that we are going to steal their symbols for nefarious purposes (honestly what would we do, besides make projects that require us to buy more dice ). My concern, well not even a concern even, is that the SW/Genesys symbols aren't standard characters, so you need font packs and whatever. It's a minor pain and some people aren't good with installing those types of things.

A unicode symbol set is as simple as "copy-paste", even those who can't find the 'symbol' button in their word processor can use them! They don't require sizing or formatting, since they are font characters, just plot them into your document and it's good to go. Sure the official symbols look better, but until you're ready to go 'professional looking' a standard unicode set works just fine.

Reading the dice still seems pretty intuitive to me.

Good symbols are on yellow, green, and blue. Bad symbols are on red, purple, and black. No chance of mixing those up, right?

The symbols themselves are still pretty distinct too. Successes are Suns. Triumphs are Suns in a circle. Failures are X's. Despairs are X's in a circle. Advantages are arrows. Threats are traps.

Maybe pointy and not pointy would have been better, but this isn't bad at all.

I was working on a conversion document and used [TR] for triumph, for setback, etc as placeholders during the writing. Once the writing was done, I used a font that included the ETOE dice symbols and did a search/replace to the spaceholders with correct symbols. This was in Open Office writer but required the ALTERNATE DIALOG SEARCH REPLACE extension. It also works in Indesign and probably other word processors. For me, I had to setup CHARACTER STYLES for this to be successful. If you save your file with the spaceholders, once a new font file comes out then installing the new fonts will be easy.

Understanding the importance of the color of each die in this system, I think it would be cool if FFG, or some company, created variations on the colors. For example: translucent, sparkly, metallic etc., still keeping the same color, but making them unique.

Could always make a template document that could be printed onto sticker paper and then cut up and fixed onto the Genesys dice.

Honestly, unless someone is going to be in it for the long haul of a product line, I don't see custom dice sets to be very likely. Investing in a custom dice set would pretty much demand that you're planning an expansive product line like SW was. That or something you knew was going to sell a lot of copies. For example, a Android game could have corp logos for negative symbols and hacker tags for positives. In such a line, you probably wouldn't have to worry about making a huge product line initially. Might even be able to do a core rule book to go with the book that's already out. Otherwise, you'd have to be looking at having at least 7+ books for your main line, and then more if you're successful.

As an additional thought, my idea of stickers could work if you're not to worried about players thinking it's cheap and tacky. You make a core rule book, and in the back, you have one to two sheets of stickers that players can put on their Genesys dice for customization. Start with that, and then work on supplemental material. If you get 8-12 books past the core and sales are steady, then maybe look at custom dice.

I've considered a few times, even before I knew Genesys was a thing about ordering a few from Q-workshop for me. https://q-workshop.com/en/content/7-custom-dice but my pocket book isn't even really deep enough to purchase their dice at normal cost, much less whatever it would cost me to ask them to make me some.

On 9/13/2017 at 2:51 AM, Revanchist7 said:

I know Artisan Dice was unable to make Star Wars Dice because of the copyright in the symbols, I wonder if Genesys dice might be a possibility.

I really hope so

On 9/13/2017 at 7:43 AM, gdotbat said:

Understanding the importance of the color of each die in this system, I think it would be cool if FFG, or some company, created variations on the colors. For example: translucent, sparkly, metallic etc., still keeping the same color, but making them unique.

Metal, I want metal Genesys dice with different hues to keep the colour differentiation. I would settle for the others if i had to but i really hope FFG either license out or require no license to make these dice.

My only problem with all this changing symbols is that if i buy 4 different sets and they all have different symbols on them then resolving a dice roll could be a massive pain. Im already going to have to keep the Genesys and SW dice seperate. Realistically most groups need 3 to 4 sets of dice to avoid rerolling individual dice for a single check, if you want to have multiple players rolling at the same time then 5 to 6 sets is even better.

On 9/13/2017 at 0:18 AM, CitizenKeen said:

If Genesys takes off, I'd actually be shocked if someone didn't step in and make generic narrative dice just like that.

Also, what dice roller is that that lets you make custom dice?

I used an app called PrimeDice ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rambutan.dice ) but this ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.boardnaut.studios.customimagedice&hl=en ) seems good too?

On 9/12/2017 at 7:18 AM, CitizenKeen said:

If Genesys takes off, I'd actually be shocked if someone didn't step in and make generic narrative dice just like that.

Also, what dice roller is that that lets you make custom dice?

If you use a iPad, there is the Dicenomicon.

Its not desogmed tp be customizable but this EOTE online dice roller ( http://game2.ca/eote/ ) is downloadable. The downloaded version is a HTML page and the dice are base64 encoded graphics. Replacing the dice in the HTML with Genesys dice graphics should be fairly simple.

On 9/13/2017 at 3:16 AM, dresdinseven said:

We could just declare a standard that we can use until (or if) we get the official symbols working here. I volunteer my symbol set, but I'd like to know if anyone has suggestions for better symbols.

Yo. =)

On 9/12/2017 at 4:51 PM, CarrotandStick said:

I've always had trouble with Fantasy Flight's penchant for near-incomprehensible hieroglyphics on their dice, so I once made a set in my phone's digital dice roller with different symbols: a tick and a cross, a four-leaf clover and a black cat, and a shooting star and a skull and crossbones. Nice and generic.

40 minutes ago, CarrotandStick said:

Yo. =)

Here's a mockup for you, using unicode:

• Triumph: ?
• Success: ✓
• Advantage: ?

• Despair: ☠
• Failure: ⅹ
• Threat: ? or ? (this unicode wasn't cooperating..)

It's a nice symbol set. I like mine because it sets clear parallels between symbol types (circular, pointy, round, for the respective three categories), yours sets it up based on understood cultural icons (everyone knows four leaf clovers and black cats represent luck, ect).

Which set works best for you comes down to how you conceptualize symbols, which is a little different from person to person.

Either way, I think both sets are way easier to conceptualize than the ones we currently have (which means I'm sticking to my SW dice until third party generics are made, and only if I like their symbol set). Too bad the books will be using a bunch of symbols that look like different variations of one another (points and circles in various arrangements, except for that one triangle aberration).

31 minutes ago, dresdinseven said:

Too bad the books will be using a bunch of symbols that look like different variations of one another (points and circles in various arrangements, except for that one triangle aberration).

Counterpoint - the symbols will eventually become things like Magic: The Gathering's symbols: universally known by nerds.