Hey all--

I was wondering if any of you have tried playing with the FFG dice app.  I saw some folks at my friendly local game store playing X-Wing and using the app and it looks really great-- very polished, easy to build and modify dice pools.

The price seems a little high, but I'm very tempted to buy it.  Have any of you guys tried it?  What do you think of it?

I bought it for my iPhone in the summer, and have barely touched it in all that time. I'm sure some people love it, and it's very well done, but -call me old school- I really need to rattle them dice around in my own hand. :)

I have it on my iPad and iPhone. Since I happen to own an iPad and iPhone, this has given me, essentially two sets of dice at once for the price of one.

To me it's definitely worth it. $4.99 may seem like a lot for digital dice, but here's my reasoning:

1. These are, of course, custom-made dice specific to Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Right now you get 1 set of physical dice if you buy the Beginner Game, but, besides the Beginner Game …

2. If you didn't buy this app, you'd have to either buy blank dice and apply stickers to them, which is tedious and may cost more than $4.99, or you can apply stickers to the dice you already have, which is tedious and inconvenient for playing other games which use normal dice.

3. Owning the app and the Beginner game will mean you effectively have two sets of dice, which may help out any players who haven't made the plunge themselves and don't own dice for this game

4. The app itself is super cool. 

By which I mean, it's beautiful, with great Star Wars sound effects, it's easy to use, includes a help menu, has easy-to-read dice, and is a lot more polished than other dice apps you'll see. Whenever there's collision problems with dice, it sorts itself out very quickly, and I never had any troubl reading them. You can easily remove all dice in play, or just some, add select dice and even customize which dice are available in the first place.

The various Star Wars backgrounds are pretty nifty too.

For me the only glaring thing it lacks is multiple tables. It would be nice to have more than one table of dice available at the same time, so you can have different rolls keeping track of different characters and situations at once.

Bottom line is, digital or not, it's an extra set of dice to pass around the table for 5 bucks, and that's really not bad in my book.

I've found the dice app to be incredibly worth the money.

One, you can build dice pools well beyond what you could manage with the Beginner Box, such as character's having three or more Profiency Dice on a roll, or two or more Challenge dice.  Maybe not a huge concern up front, but it could be one if you're playing the same characters for a prolonged period of time.

Also, this dice app doesn't just have the EotE dice, but the dice for X-Wing and a regular set of polyhedrals, making it useful for other RPGs as well.

For a demo adventure I ran about a month ago, I simply put the app on my iPad and let the group use that to make their rolls while I did my dice rolls on my iPhone, which worked out pretty well for us.

i picked it up so i could let players use the real dice and make sound effects as the GM. if it is worth five bucks i have no idea. depends on if you can afford it. it's a small download so feel free to wait untill you are at the table ready to use it.

The app is well worth the money. I have only one very minor gripe about the app. I wish that after rolling, the successes and failures would cancel each other out to give a final total. But like I said, a minor gripe…

As far as dice apps in general go, it's weak- not really bad, but missing a few features.

Things others do better:

• have totals of the rolls
• have multiple "windows" to swipe through, so you can have several sets handy and reference back and forth.
• leave the dice-adding selection tray open after rolling
• have macros on the main screen, not on a separate one.
• have multiple sizes of dice (there's only one size in the FFG SWD app)
• A few allow zoom in on the dice.
• have multiple colors of standard dice
• use shaking to trigger (on my tablets and on friends' tablets, shaking is pretty much not working reliably enough to be worthwhile - except on a buddy's iPhone 5.)
• cost less for better general features

What it has going for it:

• SW Edge of the Empire Dice
• X-Wing Dice
• Nifty backgrounds
• Nifty sound effects

Note that the first two thigns going for it are about the best reason to get it. However, I'll note that at the X-Wing event I ran today, almost everyone opted to use the physical dice… because it was MUCH faster to select dice.

Aramis,

I actually don't feel totals are necessary for this app, and I like doing that myself when it comes to these dice.

Also, the app handles zoom automatically and I never felt a manual zoom feature to be needed. Nor do I personally need macros or different colors or sizes beyond what's there.

I do agree that the shake sensitivity is not that great, although pressing the Roll button works fine.

DylanRPG said:

The lack of colors means being able to only roll one percentile set at a time - as a general rule, not an issue. But it also meanshaving to roll it multiple times for Character gen, instead of making the 2 requisite percentiles plus the 1d10 roll all in one go.

The lack of macros on the main view means 3 extra clicks to grab common combinations. 

The lack of totals is a bit of an issue for those of us whose vision isn't so good anymore, and for one potential player who is visually severely impaired. 

For being one of the MOST expensive dice apps out there, it's one of the most feature-poor.

Thanks for all the replies--

I ended up buying the app, and I'm pretty happy with it!

It looks great, and the sound effects are slick.  I like the ability to add preset dice pools to your app, making common dice rolls easy to access. 

I agree adding a color option for the numerical dice would be a big improvement.  The fact that it doesn't add up your successes/failures and advantages/threat is not a huge deal to me-- I can see how it would be convenient, but I like that it lets you do the math.  Makes it feel more like the real thing.

My game group doesn't get into town until next week before I can test it out in play, so we'll see if there's life beyond physically rolling dice.

What do you guys think?  Do you prefer physical dice?  Or is this app the next evolution of table top gaming?

Aramis, those are very valid points through and through, although I still don't understand the convenience gained by

macros. Maybe it's just because I never use them myself.

DylanRPG said:

For a player: if you have 5 or 6 skills at 2 yellow and 1 green, having a 1-click to drop those on would be useful. Havng it burried where it is now? not so much.

aramis said:

But clicking three times doesn't take very long, and I don't mind clicking three times every time I need to roll dice. It's actually still faster than picking up 2 yellow dice and 1 green and rolling them.

DylanRPG said:

Not for me it's not - and I'm on a fast tablet (Gal Note 10.1) - because it's having to redraw whole screen to access the macros. and again to go back.

Plus, the way I'd normally set up the macros, as a GM, it would be 2/3/4 green, 2/3 yellow and the same for purple and red. The point is that the macros are hidden behind unneeded slowdowns as is - click for ring, wait for ring. Click for macros, wait for  for animated page change, click desired macro, wait to get dumped back to table page. With the way I'd prefer to use it (adding to macros together), it's another ring click and pause, then another wait for return.

It's got lots of pretty instead of lots of function. Its only real benefit is that it has the special dice. Otherwise, it's an overpriced very mediocre piece of work.

Tassedar said:

Several come REALLY close -

Prime Dice D&D ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rambutan.dice )
has most of the features, lacking in macros, and doesn't keep the tray open…  
the latest update tests adding custom faces. (at present only for d2.)

And that's a free dice app…

I've not bothered with any of the other payware die-rollers than FFG's, but some of the GPL ones are pretty damned capable.

As I said, FFG came in over priced and under featured. Most dice apps with more features come in under $3.