Roll For Initiative

Roll for initiative is a pretty simple app. Let me walk you through the buttons. The very top and bottom row are to determine how many sides are on the dice. Need a coin to flip? We got that. Is your Vorpal Blade d20? We got that. It defaults to six sides, since that's what most games use. The number of sides is represented by the shape of the dice, so choosing ten-sided will have you rolling a d10 dice!

Up from the bottom, there are Roll All and Individual buttons. Hit the Roll All button if you want to roll the dice all at once. Hit the Individual button if you only want to roll one specific dice (say, the 5th out of 7). Handy for re-rolling those exploding 10's, or those annoying 2, 3, 4, and 6 in Farkle.

Up in the middle, there's a block of twelve dice. Hit any dice to roll it and all the preceding ones. If you need to roll 6 dice, hit the sixth dice, and it'll roll all six. Easy as pie. Only need to roll 4? Hit the fourth dice. Need to roll all twelve? Hit the twelfth.

But say you're playing Yahtzee or Farkle, and want to keep score. Simply swipe to the next screen, which has a handy dandy scoreboard.

It has eight rows, each of which have the same elements. On the left, there's a blank spot. Tapping on that will let you put in a player's name, should you so choose. Next to that is a white space to keep track of that players score. Tapping on that will add the score in the bottom left corner to that player's score. The down arrow decreases the bid, the blank space keeps track of the bid, and the up arrow increases the bid. The bid space can be used to keep track of whatever you want - bids in games like Oh Joy or Wizard, phases in Phase 10, holes in Golf (the card game, although it could be used for the actual physical activity), anything you need.

Down on the bottom, there are numbers for entering in the score you need to add to the player. The box to the left displays the score to be added. To the far right, there's a minus button in case you need to subtract from a score (enter in the score, then push the minus button to make it negative). The clr button underneath that is in case you make a mistake. It will erase the score in the bottom left box.

For example, say Alice, Bob, Claire, and Daniel are playing a game. Alice scores 3, so press 3 on the bottom square, and then the white space beside Alice's name. Bob scores -2, so press the 2 button, then the minus button to turn it negative, then the white space beside Bob's name. Claire scores 13, but you accidentally pressed 30 instead. Just press clr, 13, then the space beside Claire's name.

The Reset Bids button will reset all the bids to zero, which is handy for games like Oh Joy and Wizard, and probably shouldn't be used for Golf or Phase 10. The Reset Scores button will reset all scores to zero, once your game is done.

So, what're you waiting for? It's time to Roll. For. Initiative!