Introduction
Roll for initiative. Roll for ability. Roll for advantage.
Prepare to experience a new level of independence in your tabletop role play gaming adventures.
Introducing... Ready to Roll, a blind and low vision accessible RPG dice manager.
Roll multiple dice and dice types quickly and efficiently. Save custom rolls and review previous rolls. Roll percentile and for advantage. Change voice over speed and type. Have individual dice rolls read out.
Enjoy the magic of easy navigation, full voice acting, and the freedom of having a set of RPG dice on hand, ready to roll when you are.
Specifically designed for blind, low vision and also sighted players, Ready to Roll is now available on the Apple App Store.
Ready to Roll is a dice rolling app specifically designed for blind and visually impaired people, though it is also completely usable by sighted people as well. In addition to being able to roll all common dice types, you can also roll for advantage, roll percentile dice, add modifiers, and roll multiple dice types at once. The app was designed with the input of numerous blind and visually impaired testers and gamers, so all the tasks were also designed with attention to detail and ease for all players. Rather than using VoiceOver to read the app's content, a professional voice actor reads all content, including app screens and dice rolls. This app can be used for any situation where dice might be useful, and even has several noteable options specifically for tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons.
Taps, Presses, and swipes
Throughout this guide, you will be instructed to use a number of gestures with the app. To avoid confusion, these terms will be defined briefly here.
Tap: briefly press and immediately release the screen with one or two fingers.
Press: Press your fingers to the screen for aproximately one to two seconds, hold them on the screen, and then release them
Swipe: With the phone held in portrait mode, move your finger across the screen in the direction indicated. (Up, down, left or right.)
Universal Gestures
There are a number of gestures which are useful regardless of what screen you are on. Pressing with one finger reads the content of any page, while pressing with two fingers on the screen lists the available actions for a given page. These gestures are universal in help, settings, and dice rolling pages.
App layout
When you first launch the app, you will be on the app's Home page. Pressing and holding with 1 finger- the gesture to read a page- will prompt the app to describe the app's cover art. Pressing and holding two fingers will cause the app to read the available actions you can take from the Home page. From the Home page, the app is laid out in a cross shape, with Home at the center. Swiping up from the Home page brings you first to the Guide, then to Settings, and finally to a Blessing, which reads a pre-recorded Bible verse. Swiping down from Home brings you first to Previous and then to Credits. Swiping left from Home takes you through all of the possible dice types in order from smallest to largest, followed by specialized and custom dice. Swiping right takes you first to your saved custom dice, and then through the dice types in order of custom, specialized, and then largest to smallest. The horizontal menu wraps, so it is possible to get to any of the items from either direction, though quicker depending on which direction is closest to your intended target. Swiping left through the options, they are:
D4
D6
D8
D10
D12
D20
Modifier
D100 (percentile dice)
D20 Advantage
Custom 3
Custom 2
Custom 1
Swiping left or right from any of the other vertical pages also brings you through these options, so you do not specifically have to be on Home, but can get to these options by swiping left or right on any of the items in the vertical menu.
A note about what some of these options are
In almost all cases, a d followed by a number refers to the number of sides each dice has. For example, a d6 plays a dice sound and then generates a number between one and six. An exception to this rule is the d100, which, rather than generating a number between 1 and 100, instead rolls 1 die which increases in increments of 10 from 0 to 90 and 1 10-sided die and then adds those two values together.
A modifier refers to a value which represents a character's aptitude for a given skill, and adds or subtracts the given value from your dice roll. In the app, modifiers can range from -5 to +30.
Advantage refers to a mechanic common in Dungeons and Dragons, though used in other systems as well, wherein a character's aptitude for a skill gives them advantage on a roll. In-world, this means the chances of them doing certain tasks poorly is supposed to be very low. It would be very uncommon, for example, for a master negotiator to fail to be persuasive in an important situation. So, the advantage mechanic allows you to roll 2 20-sided dice and take the higher of those rolls, representing a character's enhanced aptitude. While both rolls are shown, It is, essentially, a shortcut to rolling 2 20 sided dice, with the understanding that you will typically use the higher roll. If you have disadvantage on a roll, for example if you are trying to do something very difficult or unlikely, you will, predictably, use the lower roll.
Rolling single dice types
Once you find the die you'd like to roll, swipe up with one finger. This automatically rolls 1 die of the specified type and reads the result aloud. Tap once quickly with one finger to increase the number of dice rolled by one, or tap on the screen quickly once with two fingers to decrease the number of dice by one. You can roll between 1 and 10 dice of a single type. For example, selecting the d20 and tapping twice on the screen will increase the number of d20's rolled to two, tapping with one finger again will add a third, and so on. Tapping with two fingers would reduce the number back to two. At any point, swipe up with one finger to roll the dice, or down with one finger to clear the stored dice formula.
It is important to note that, once more than 1 of a dice type is selected, simply swiping to a new dice type, from d20 to d12, for example, does not clear the 2 d20 or add 1 d12. In order to start over and roll 1d12, it is first necessary to swipe down with 1 finger to clear the stored dice formula. Tapping once on the d12 without clearing the d20 formula would add 1d12 to the 2d20, rolling a total of 3 dice. Once you clear any previous dice, swiping up with one finger would roll 1 of whatever die was selected, and the instructions above for adding and subtracting additional dice still apply.
Continue swiping up to re-roll the same dice formula.
Adding modifiers
As described previously, modifiers are one way of representing your character's ability or lack thereof at a skill. They add or subtract a given value from a dice roll, and can range from -5 to +30. The default value is 0. As with adding and subtracting dice, tap once with one finger to increase the modifier by one, and once with two fingers to reduce the modifier by one. After setting the modifier, swiping to a dice type and swiping up with one finger will roll 1 of the specified dice type plus or minus the modifier selected and announce both the modified and unmodified dice roll. The modifier remains even after additional dice are added or subtracted by pressing with one finger on the dice you want to add or two fingers to subtract, so that you could, for example, roll 2d4+your modifier. To clear both the selected dice and modifier, swipe down with one finger.
At any time, you can briefly press and hold the screen with one finger to hear the stored dice formula, including the number of dice of each type and any modifiers. Swipe up to roll the selected dice formula. Continue swiping up to re-roll the same dice formula.
Rolling complex dice formulas
Ready to Roll makes it easy to roll dice consisting of more than one type of dice. As an example, let's say you wanted to roll 2d20+3d4. First, swipe left or right until you find d20 or d4. Because you can get to the dice from either direction, it does not matter which you reach first. Tap twice on the d20 and 3 times on the d4. Then, swipe up with one finger on any dice to roll the dice. Depending on your app settings, you will then hear either the result of each individual dice roll plus their combined total, or the combined total alone. You can roll up to 10 of each dice type, for a total of 60 dice at once, plus the modifier. Continue swiping up to re-roll the same dice formula.
Reviewing previous rolls
It is possible to see your three most recent rolls at any time. From the vertical menu, swipe down once from Home to Previous. Press briefly on the screen with one finger and your last three rolls will be read aloud. Note: The previous rolls are read with the verbosity they were set to at the time of the roll. If you have the app set to read only the totals of your dice and then change it to read each individual roll, you will not be able to see the individual dice of a previous roll in the history unless the speech was set to individual at the time of that roll.
Rolling and saving custom dice as favorites
Ready to Roll has three slots for saving dice formulas which you use often. This might be groups of dice (2d4), a single die (1d20), a die plus a modifier (1d20+6), or any combination of dice and modifiers. In addition, it is easy to change these on the fly, so that you can set and change them quickly depending on your game. First, set the formula you want to save as described in previous sections. Tap once to add one of a particular dice or modifier, tap with two fingers to reduce that number by one, and long press with one finger to hear the stored dice formula. Swipe up to roll the stored formula. In order to save it in a custom slot, swipe left or right until you hear a slot number, such as Custom 1. Swipe up to save that formula in that slot and roll the formula, or swipe down to save that formula to a custom slot without rolling it. From then on, swiping up on Custom 1 will roll that dice or group of dice.
In order to replace a stored custom dice, simply perform these steps again with the new group you want, as adding a new formula overrides that slot.
Guide
You can access a stripped down version of this guide by swiping up with one finger from the Home screen. Long press with one finger on the page titled Guide to hear a quick reference of the most common actions performed in the app.
Settings
The settings page contains options for setting and modifying two core components of how the app works - the way dice are read and the speed of the in-built voice over. Both these are wrapping menus changed by pressing with either one or two fingers. Tapping with one finger allows you to change the VO Type, while tapping with two fingers allows you to set the VO speed.
Voice Over type
The voice over types and descriptions are as follows, along with some examples of how a dice roll would be read with each setting selected:
Brief: uses a minimum of words. 1d4: 3. 1d4+1d6. Total: 6. 1d4+3 modifier. Total: 7
Individual: speaks the number rolled on each dice. 1d4: 1. Total: 1. 1d4: 3. Plus 1d6: 5. Total: 8. 1d4: 1. + 3 modifier. Total: 4.
Verbose: Speaks in full sentences. You rolled 1d4 for a total of 3. You rolled 1d4 + 1d6 for a total of 4. You rolled 1d4+3, modifier, for a total of 7.
Voice over speed
Finally, from the Settings page, tap with two fingers to cycle through the options for the VO speed. The available options are off, which turns off the in-built voice over entirely and only plays the dice sounds and shows the numbers visually, and VO speeds normal, moderate, and fast, which increase the rate at which the in-built voice over speaks. Once you have the settings configured to your liking, simply flick away from the settings and back to any other page, or left or right to get directly back to the dice. Your settings save automatically and will be applied automatically to any future rolls.
Credits
From the Home page, swipe down until you hear that you are on the Credits page, and press with one finger briefly to hear the Credits page read aloud. The text read out is as follows:
Blind Sparrow Interactive
Accessibility Consultant: Brandon Cole Design and Programming: Drew Taylor Dice Foley: Kpow Audio SFX: Brian Fairbanks, Ryan Gardner VO: Grace King, Anderson Carvalho de Oliveira VO Producer: Brain Fairbanks Illustration: Madeleine Beer Photography: James Taylor Lead QA: Samuel Kacer QA: Jack Falejczyk, Maeskye Trigg, Ant Stiller, Baylee Alger, Brandon Cole Technical Writer: Tangela Mahaffey
Special thanks: Dallas Taylor, Matt Ditton, AudioGames.net, Kate Brent, Tim Best, Tin Man Games, Shaun Everiss.
If you have questions that are not answered in this guide, or want clarification on any aspect of this guide, send an email to [email protected].
