How to roll dice with cards
So me and Cellar were talking about how to roll dice using cards and I figured that if I didn't write it down, I would forget it. These are our conclusions.1
"But Havoc, why? I own dice!" Maybe you like cards, maybe you forgot your dice at home, maybe your kid or dog or sub ate your dice, I don't know your life. Stop hectoring me.
For this to work, separate your deck into one with just faces and one with just numbers. Remove the jokers.
d2 - Draw a card, red suits are 1, blacks are 2. Can also use it as "Yes / No" with red as No and black as Yes.
d4 - Draw from any deck, hearts ♥️ are 1, spades ♠️ are 2, diamonds ♦️ are 3, and clubs ♣️ are 4.
d6 - Draw from the faces deck. Black J, Q, and K are 1 to 3; red are 4 to 6.
d8 - As d4, but draw another card from any deck. On a red card, add +4 to the value.
d10 - Draw from the numbers deck.
d12 - Draw from the faces deck. Hearts ♥️ J, Q, and K are 1 to 3, spades ♠️ are 4 to 6, diamonds ♦️ are 7 to 9, and clubs ♣️ are 10 to 12.
d20 - Draw from the numbers deck. If it's a black card, add +10 to the result - thus 20 is a 10 of a black suit.
d30 - Draw from the faces deck and the numbers deck. Jacks multiply the number by 1x, Queens by 2x, and Kings by 3x.
d40 - Draw from the numbers deck. If it's hearts ♥️, read as usual. If it's spades ♠️, add +10; add +20 for diamonds ♦️; add +30 for clubs ♣️.
d100 - Draw two number cards, treat the left one as the tens and the right one as the ones.
d200 - As d100 but if the tens card is red, add +100.
d400 - As d100, but if the tens card is spades ♠️, add +100; if it's diamonds ♦️, +200; and if clubs ♣️, +300.
You can extrapolate from here. You could use the "draw a face card and multiply" method to generate a d24 for instance.
There are probably better ways to do it, this is just what that conversation produced.↩