Dicenomicon – App

Gandreas’ Dicenomicon is the fullest-featured dice app I have found.  Not only will this roll any dice you can think of, it does it using simulated physics, dice formula, and looks good to boot.

Full review and more screen-shots after the break.

First off, this is how Gandreas describes the app:

The Dicenomicon is the ultimate in fantasy role playing dice rollers for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Unlike others, it actually rolls dice!

• All the standard dice shapes (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20)
• Exotic dice shapes (d14, d16, d18, d24, d30)
• Specially marked dice for d100, d1000 and dice for FUDGE
• "Relabelled" dice to simulate d1 (binomial 0 or 1), d2, d3, d5, d7, d9, and averaging d6 dice.
• Dice with text (for generating alignment, simple random tables such as weather and hit location), symbols (zodiac, chess, planets), and roman numerals (just for variety).
• Rich dice formula language:
  • Add, subtract, multply, divide dice results and constant values
  • Modify dice results to take the highest N dice, lowest N dice, etc… (making it trivial to do "roll 4 six sided dice, keep the 3 highest" = "4d6H3")
  • Support for strings, lists, functions
  • Conditional expressions
  • Parameterized expressions (set up the formula once, reuse for multiple times by being able to fill in a dialog with values such as bonuses, number of dice, etc…)
  • Includes support for Storyteller style "count dice greater or equal to a given threshold, subtracting any 1s from that" (so a dice pool of 5 with a target number of 8 is "5d10≥8")
• Fully customizable list of "favorite" dice formulas (edit, add, delete, reorder)
• Multiple background (including user images), dice textures
• Choose between single colored dice, or multi-colored
• Large "total result" splash to make it easier to read the results
• Free-form mode lets you add/remove dice, ignore certain dice, or "hold" others such that they remain where they are when you reroll.
• Shake your phone to roll (or just tap the "reroll" button for secret rolls) Multiple "game rooms" so you can keep all your d20 formulas separate from your FUDGE games separate from your Storyteller games (each with their own background image settings, dice textures, etc…)

This is the most powerful app for the high-tech gamer out there.  Gandreas made a solid application here that greatly increases gaming productivity.  Like all software, Dicenomicon is not without it’s problems.

1. The app crashes once and a while, exiting to the springboard main screen abruptly.
2. You cannot add dice to the dice bar at this time due to a bug.
3. Working with global functions and global variables is tricky, if you do not do it just right it crashes the app.
4. You must press enter upon each field in order to setup the webapp, this is unintuitive and a known bug.
5. As powerful as it is, the documentation about how to work with the different formula options is lacking.
6. The options menus are cumbersome.  For example, I have to search forever each time I wish to clear the history.

There are many promised features for 3.0 when it hits the app store, like Character Sheets and many bug fixes.  No word yet on Gandreas’ progress on the new version.

Overall, I’m happy with this app, and when the promised update comes to fruition, I’m sure I’ll like it even more.  The issues are frustrating, but once you learn to work around them (or just not use certain features until they are fixed) they are minor annoyances.  I’m happy I purchased Dicenomicon and use it in my weekly game sessions.

Obligatory ratings

Screenshots

If your feeling like this app is for you, head on over to to download it.