Dice And FACs
Which do you prefer?
Dice And FACs
Do you prefer rolling dice for all of your games, or do you use fast action cards — or some kind of online dice roller?
I was wondering that today while looking at the fast action cards for Replay Baseball. These cards are fantastic, by the way. Here is a copy of the free version available on the Replay Baseball Xtras section of the website:
This is an earlier version; there’s a more complete version available for purchase. Anyway, the coolest thing about these cards is that they give you every possible result right on the card, taking away any need for dice rolling — and theoretically increasing the speed of your game by quite a bit.
I know that The APBA Journal offered random number sheets for several years:
I suspect that the Strat-O-Matic community might have had something similar for a while, too.
Anyway, what do you think? Do you use these methods or not? And, if you do, does it save you time?
I use FAC in Payoff Pitch, but for baserunner advancement, sac bunts, and stolen bases. I still roll the dice for the initial result on the pitcher/batter card. The FAC saves me from having to look at charts.
I'm uncomfortable with games where you're expected to use every FA card in the deck over the course of a quarter or a game. It's been quite a while since I played one, but I think Mickey Basketball and Pigskin (Tom Hamilton) Football were examples. Seems to unfairly preclude unusual outcomes. That said, I play my APBA mail league games (baseball Master Game) using the "Quarter Million Random Numbers" book from the APBA Journal, using the first number in a given row to determine the column to use, so that I'm not looking ahead. (Further dice rolls to the same batter use the same row, except for steals or throws for runners.) It definitely seems faster than dice rolling, but I think I started because even though I was rolling out of a dice cup, I'd get concerned that I was doing something wrong if, say, I rolled three 66s in a row. With the numbers coming from different columns, I was satisfied that wasn't a problem,