Just curious about how people communicate things at their tables. Do you tend to refer to the different dice types as their respective colours, or by their actual names?

Personally my table refer to everything by colour. Difficulty is always communicated as "purples". I think this is a side effect of playing online and using a diceroller which uses colour initials for building dicepools (e.g. 3g 1b 2p)

Name

1 minute ago, Richardbuxton said:

Name

Seconded

Thirded

Color and name, depends if I'm in the middle of a narration suddenly switching languages to say "Proficiency", "Ability" etc. ruins the flow, so we often resort to just the Norwegian words for the colors. (Norwegian words for the names are tricky because it can have multiple translations (e.g. "Abilty" is either "Egenskap" or "Evne", but in this context it is "Evne") so it's just easier to stick to the colors.

Color.. because I'm an idiot

Both. But that's because so far I've played with people who have had little exposure to the NDS before. Once they associate "Purple die" with "Difficulty die" I'll drop the colour. But for beginners who can't always remember that the yellow one is Proficiency, using both is a great learning tool.

1 hour ago, Crowag said:

Color.. because I'm an idiot

Colour! Because all the others are idiots.

So the real question is: Do you refer to the dice by color or by colour?

Colour. Because, even though I'm American, I was influenced at a young and formative age. The first job I ever had was working for Games Workshop, and they are British so it was colour, armour, manoeuvre, etc. I left that job because I was going overseas for a year: in French-speaking Belgium. Being FR, they also use the 'u' in colour. Thus, from the age of 15 to the age of 17 I used colour and it's just stuck with me.

30 minutes ago, siabrac said:

So the real question is: Do you refer to the dice by color or by colour?

Depends if you're in North America or not.

I think both name and color is a good idea

I do color. Some of the people I play with don’t play the system regularly so they need refreshers when we play. It’s much simpler to use color. No ambiguity.

Name. Unless we're swearing at them. "**** IT PURPLE! YOU AND YOUR *BLEEP* Sided PURPLEY *BLEEP*!"

Colour, its easier than remembering the names, and its easy for new players to understand when i say "make a atheltic test with 2 purple and 1 black"

I like Mike Krahulik's (Penny Arcade) name for the Challenge Die: "THE F**K ORB"

Color. Easier for the casual gamers.

Color.

Colour, then Check name and then number of those dice.

Colour for me and my group. It's just simpler and requires less rules-jargon at the table.

Colour

By Color. As an American English speaking American, it's "col-or", not "col-our" 'round these parts. Also my group and I have played Star Wars rpg 100% online, and it was easier to just say "hey shooting someone at medium range is average, that's 2 purps, and how about it's also dim and foggy so that's a black. Don't forget your blue for Aiming though." for the dice rollers UI.

Color.

Generally, color, though I am starting a new group soon an will try out calling the dice by their names with that group.

I tended to use both the times that I played Star Wars: "Purple Difficulty," etc. Which made it both easy to find and easy to remember why it was there.

Color when we have new people at the table, or when we haven't played in a few months (referring to my Star Wars campaign, since it's the same system). But when we've consistently had the same group for several weeks in a row, we start switching over to calling the dice by name.