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d2 skeletons walk into a bar.
Bartender: What’ll you have?
Skeleton(s): Someone to rewrite that first sentence.
Last week I was working on getting Blackflower, a CY_BORG heist, finished. As part of looking over a draft,
noticed my inconsistent dice notation.Specifically, there were places where I used a capital ‘D’ (e.g. 2D6) and other places a lowercase ‘d’ (e.g. 2d6). Good catch!
I struggled with how to handle a bullet point that began with dice notation, which is quite common in rules-light TTRPGs. The classic example is a dungeon room description including something like:
d4 guards are in the room playing cards at a wooden table
This means there are 1-4 guard in the room, and you could roll a four-sided die (1d4) to determine how many are actually there.
Because it starts a sentence or line, should the ‘d’ be capitalized?
While thinking about how to handle it, I posted a poll on Twitter that got more of a response that I expected. Over 7,600 views and close to a thousand votes. More notable were the many opinions in the over 70 replies!
So down the rabbit hole I went on dice notation!
Dice notation
It’s widely understood that in modern tabletop games, dice rolls are given in the form of XdY. X is the number of dice, and the Y is number of sides on each die. The ‘d’ in the middle is the first letter of the word dice in English. Other languages might use a different first letter (e.g. ‘t’ in Swedish).
For example, you might write 1d6 or d6 to instruct the player to “roll one six-sided die.” Similarly, 2d20 would mean, “roll two twenty-sided dice.”
Of course, modifiers are common too. Perhaps you have a magic sword and it does a little more damage than usual. Using XdY+M notation, the damage might be 2d6+1, meaning roll 2d6 dice and then add 1 to the result.
I’ve seen reference to other notations, but they are a little less common:
XdY-L: Roll the dice and then drop the lowest result
XdY-H: Roll and drop the highest result
XdY[i]: Roll and keep all results higher than i
XdY[i-j]: Roll and keep only results between i and j
XdYkN: Roll and keep only N of the dice
XdYkhN: Roll and only keep N of the highest dice
A few other notable ones are used when rolling on random tables:
d66: Roll two six-sided dice and use each as a digit when looking up an item. For example, if you roll a 2 and a 6, you’d look up item No. 26.
d666: Similarly you’d roll three six-sided dice and each one is a digit in the resulting number. Rolling a 1, 5, and 6 would be item No. 156 in the table.
I’m sure there are other dice notations as well, including percentile dice, advantage/disadvantage, dice pools, exploding dice, and other specific situations.
Dungeons & Dragons
While Dungeons & Dragons had an impact on popularizing dice notation, it didn’t always use it. The 1979 printing of TSR Dungeons & Dragons never uses the XdY notation, and instead simply writes out the instructions (p. 7):
Even randomized items are written out in detail (p. 7):
Gold owned by the character initially is determined by rolling three 6-sided dice and multiplying the result by 10. The result is the number of gold pieces owned. From this amount the character must outfit himself.
Monsters and damage are handled the same way. There’s a note at the start of the Monster List (“Bandit to Zombie”) that, “Monsters’ hit dice are 8-sided.” Then it just specifies the number of hit dice for each one.
Monster damage is given as a range rather than dice. A black pudding does 3-24 points of damage, and a bugbear does 2-8 points. It’s left up to the player how to generate a number in that range.
Credit is given to Ted Johnstone for introducing modern dice notation to gaming with his article called “Dice as Random Number Generators” in a 1975 issue of Alarums and Excursions. There’s a nice writeup of that in The Origins of Dice Notation at Playing at the World.
The TSR Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Game Expert Rulebook (1981 printing) uses dice notation with no explanation, assuming the reader can figure it out. Character creation begins with YdX+M notation for hit dice.
The Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook (2000 printing) includes a small introduction to dice notation (p. 6), with examples:
And the same with the D20 Modern Roleplaying Game (2002) from the same era:
And finally the D&D 5e book has a similar game dice explanation at the front, but I think it’s written in a way that is clearer than the D&D 3.5e version above:
It’s worth noting that D&D always uses a lowercase d in dice notation. This is emphasized in the D&D Style Guide: Writing and Editing. It also notes, “the abbreviation we use for percentile dice is d100, not d%.”
Uppercase vs. lowercase
While D&D exclusively uses a lowercase d, other systems might vary:
BattleTech uses capital Ds when talking about dice, which somehow seems appropriate for giant robots.
MÖRK BORG uses almost exclusively lowercase XdY notation except in a few cases. When monsters are introduced in the Rotblack Sludge adventure, small-caps are used (e.g. D4 crooked guards).
CY_BORG uses only lowercase d, even in headings and when introducing foes.
Blades in the Dark uses lower case d as well.
Looking through a few supplements, it seems like capitalization is handled differently by each author. Some even use lowercase and uppercase in the same paragraph. Others seems to determine which to use based on the section or heading level.
Is there a standard?
I would argue that normal rules like the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Stylebook don’t apply to tabletop games. For journalism and writing a novel, you’d just reword the sentence and never begin with an abbreviation. In writing rules for games, however, being brief might outweigh following the rules.
That said, with 954 votes, using a lower case d won (63.1%) vs. using an uppercase D (36.9%) in the recent Twitter poll, for whatever that is worth.
Beyond that, the most common opinions seemed to be (in no particular order):
Use lowercase when you can.
Do whatever the core rulebook does (if there is one).
Do whatever you want, but be consistent.
Rewrite the sentence so the issue goes away.
I think strong cases can be made for all those solutions.
A few people also noted that using lowercase notation makes it easier to read for those with dyslexia/dysgraphia. While I can’t speak to that directly, I do agree it makes it easier to read for me as well.
So is there a standard? Doesn’t seem like it, but there are some solid reasons to be consistent and probably use lowercase.
Conclusion
Some things to think about:
Little things matter: It’s easy to think that capitalizing a d or not doesn’t matter. Attention to detail and consistency can, however, improve the readability and accessibility of a document.
No standards: Just because there isn’t a widely adopted standard, doesn’t mean you can’t make your own. Having a similar style across your works might make it easier for players to pick up and play your next game. Make your own style guide!
Explain it like every player is a new player: Stan Lee supposedly said that every comic book could be someone’s first comic book. The quote might be apocryphal, but I like the idea. You never know if your game is the first one someone ever picked up to try. It’s worth a few sentences to help them have an easier and more enjoyable time.
Let’s run another poll with Skeleton Code Machine readers! This time with a wider range of options than just uppercase or lowercase notation. How would you handle a bullet point with d6 frogs jumping out of a box? 🐸🎩🎵
— E.P. 💀
P.S. I’m really excited about BLACKFLOWER. If you play CY_BORG and want to get in on the upcoming pre-order, watch the Exeunt Omnes mailing list.
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This is the sort of thing that should be covered by a game line's style guide, which for D&D 5th, it is: https://adventurersleague.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/1765690-dnd_house_style_guide.pdf
- signed, a guy that does tech support for style guide software.
I'm a bit confused by the sentence, "I would argue that normal rules like the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Stylebook don’t apply to tabletop games," especially just a few paragraphs after you cite the D&D Style Guide, which is explicitly built on Chicago style and uses it to settle any issues not covered by their house style.
No style guide provides rules. That's why they're guides. But as a tabletop game editor, I find the Chicago style to be a very helpful starting point for defining a game's specific style. It's not the idea that the "rules" of common style guides "don't apply" to games that gives us lowercase XdY dice notation. It's the fact that "stylization" is one of the many tools editors have to emphasize, standardize, or tweak different content for readability, retention, and reference.
I would always default to using the lowercase d for this because it's a standardized notation that, as you indicate, aids in readability, keeps formulas consistent, and is widely used and recognized. Using special styling for certain words, phrases, or uses is perfectly in keeping with traditional style guides like Chicago. (There's no guidance to change "iPhone" to "iphone" or "i-phone" or to change the capitalization of math variables, for instance, just because their stylization doesn't use "normal" capitalization.)