Troll, a Language for specifying Dice-rolls

TY - GEN

T1 - Troll, a Language for specifying Dice-rolls

AU - Mogensen, Torben Ægidius

N1 - Conference code: 24

PY - 2009

Y1 - 2009

N2 - Dice are used in many games, and often in fairly complex ways that make it difficult to unambiguously describe the dice-roll mechanism in plain language.Many role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, use a formalised notation for some instances of dice-rolls. This notation, once explained, make dice-roll descriptions concise and unambiguous. Furthermore, the notation has been used in automated tools for pseudo-random dice-rolling (typically used when playing over the Internet).This notation is, however, fairly limited in the types of dice-rolls it can describe, so most games still use natural language to describe rolls. Even Dungeons & Dragons use formal notation only for some of the dice-roll methods used in the game. Hence, a more complete notation is in this paper proposed, and a tool for pseudo-random rolls and (nearly) exact probability calculations is described.The notation is called "Troll", combining the initial of the Danish word for dice ("terninger") with the English word "roll". It is a development of the language Roll described in an earlier paper. The present paper describes the most important features of Troll and its implementation.

AB - Dice are used in many games, and often in fairly complex ways that make it difficult to unambiguously describe the dice-roll mechanism in plain language.Many role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, use a formalised notation for some instances of dice-rolls. This notation, once explained, make dice-roll descriptions concise and unambiguous. Furthermore, the notation has been used in automated tools for pseudo-random dice-rolling (typically used when playing over the Internet).This notation is, however, fairly limited in the types of dice-rolls it can describe, so most games still use natural language to describe rolls. Even Dungeons & Dragons use formal notation only for some of the dice-roll methods used in the game. Hence, a more complete notation is in this paper proposed, and a tool for pseudo-random rolls and (nearly) exact probability calculations is described.The notation is called "Troll", combining the initial of the Danish word for dice ("terninger") with the English word "roll". It is a development of the language Roll described in an earlier paper. The present paper describes the most important features of Troll and its implementation.

KW - Faculty of Science

KW - Programmeringssprog

KW - Sandsynlighedsberegning

KW - Spil

KW - Programming languages

KW - Probability calculation

KW - Games

U2 - 10.1145/1529282.1529708

DO - 10.1145/1529282.1529708

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-1-60558-166-8

SP - 1910

EP - 1915

BT - Proceedings of the 2009 ACM symposium on Applied Computing

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

T2 - The 2009 ACM symposium on Applied Computing (SAC '09)

Y2 - 9 March 2009 through 12 March 2009

ER -