Sometimes it’s difficult to get a tabletop RPG going in person: friends move away, or you just don’t live in an area where many people want to play. Since the three of us at 10×10 Room are divided between two major cities, we know what that’s like.
To help with that, we’ve created Bones, a dice-rolling app for Google+ Hangouts. If you’ve never tried one before, a Hangout is a group video chat that supports extra features like screen sharing. With Bones, now you can roll dice and share the results with gamers no matter where they live:
To play with Bones, you’ll need a Google+ profile. Then click this button to kick off a Hangout with the app:
After that, you’ll be able to select Bones from any Hangout you kick off; you won’t have to keep using the button. Check it out and let us know what you think!
p.s. Hangouts are also handy for playing our web-based RPG Conclave face-to-face.
nice use of Stoopid Stoopid Rat Creature!
Hi,
Nice little roller. Is there any chance you can increase the number of dice. For example in Pendragon, its not unusual for a Saxon Berserker to roll 16D6 on a critical.
Cheers
Damon
Good to know Damon. We’ll add it to the feature list of things to do if we hear there is enough interest to build a new release of the Hangout app.
Thanks!
Is there any way to make a negative modifier when you roll? It doesn’t allow you to enter a non-numeric character.
Cool tool. I like it. I also have some “end user” suggestions:
Suggestion #1: If it is feasible, it would be nice to be able to change the color of the Dice. With the Small size, it is difficult to read the rolled value on the Die.
Suggestion #2: It would be nice to have the option to choose whether to display only the last roll or keep the running history of all rolls.
Suggestion #3: It would be nice to be able to choose an alternate Icon/Avatar for the ” rolled and got ” display. Perhaps even being able to turn off the Icon and just have the Google Plus Username in Text.. like ” rolled and got “.
Suggestion #4: It would be nice to have a input field that could add “flavor” text to the roll display. It could allow a player to add text like ” rolled and got “.. it would let someone provide more info on the rolls to the GM/DM. Like, ” rolled and got .”
Pretty serious bug report: The modifier will not accept input from the numeric keypad, not accept a negative sign (to apply a negative modifier), and after a roll is made, drag selecting the modifier and entering a new number results in the new input being stealthily appended to the old. e.g. if a 13 modifier was used for one roll, then the 13 was drag-selected and replaced with 5, the modifier used for the next roll would be 135, not 5.
I echo the previous comments about the negative modifiers and inputs from the number pad keys.
I would also like to request a “Clear” icon for both the input area, and the logs. For the dice input area, it would be nice to start fresh and not have to un-tick individual dice when switching from an attack to damage. For the roll log, I have found that sometimes (err, often) I roll incorrectly and I want to remove it due to the error so everyone in the hangout isn’t confused or misled.
Is the source available for community improvement?
Thanks for the bug reports, all. We haven’t had a chance to work on Bones for the past few months because we’ve been working furiously on our game Conclave. Since that’s likely to continue for the near future, we’re looking into opening up the source to Bones so that others can make improvements.
The Dice rolls do not drop down after each role. They stick and I am unable to see the next role. By the way great app. This program Google+ worth going on to. Thank you.
I’d be interested in having access to the source code to add some of the above tweaks and one or two of my own.
Just curious, you posted a few months ago about potentially opening up the source for Bones to allow users to alter it to their needs. I was wondering if you’ve decided to yet or not and where it would be made available.
I like the tool, there are just a few modifications that would make it perfect for the tabletop ruleset that I am currently playing with.
Corey, we’re still open to it. We’ve just been too busy to set up a repository somewhere like GitHub.