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Using an Online Dice Roller

By My Wheel Name TeamPublished July 24, 20263 min read

An online dice roller solves one very ordinary problem: the dice are missing. It also solves a second one that board game groups know well, which is the roll that lands half off the table and starts an argument about whether it counts.

Why a screen roll settles arguments

Physical dice produce disputes. A die lands cocked against a book, rolls onto the floor, or gets scooped up before everyone has seen it. Every group has a house rule about it, and every house rule gets argued about eventually.

A spun result has none of those failure modes. It stays on screen, it's the same size for everyone in the room, and it can't be nudged. For remote play it's the only option that both players can genuinely trust.

Building dice other than a d6

Six sides is the default, not a limit. The wheel is just a list of entries, so any die you need is a matter of editing that list.

  • A d20 for tabletop role playing: twenty entries, numbered 1 to 20.
  • A d4, d8, d10, or d12 by using the matching count of entries.
  • Fudge dice for narrative systems: six entries reading minus, minus, blank, blank, plus, plus.
  • Evens only or odds only, for a specific maths lesson.
  • Custom faces with words instead of numbers, for a game that needs actions rather than values.

Using it to teach probability

Telling a class that each side has a one in six chance rarely lands. Spinning fifty times and tallying the results does, because the tally is visibly lumpy and almost never lands on a neat even split.

That lumpiness is the lesson. Small samples look unfair even when the odds are perfectly even, and the gap between what students expect and what they tally is the most useful part of the exercise. Repeat with a hundred spins and the distribution flattens noticeably.

Keeping a remote game honest

Remote tabletop groups usually settle on one shared roller rather than everyone rolling privately at home. Save your dice wheel, share the link, and every player is spinning the same configuration.

Setting up a shared roller

  1. Build the die you need: Edit the entries to match the die your system uses, whether that's a d20, a d10, or a set of custom faces.
  2. Save it under My Wheels: Sign in and save, so the configuration survives past this session and you aren't rebuilding it every week.
  3. Share the link: Send it to the group. Everyone who opens it gets the exact same die with no setup on their end.
  4. Roll on a shared screen: For calls, share the tab so every roll is visible to the table at the moment it happens.

It's a small replacement for a small piece of plastic. It just happens to be the piece of plastic that goes missing most.

Questions, answered

Are the odds the same as a real die?

Yes. Each side has a genuine one in six chance, drawn from your browser's cryptographic random number generator. A real die is very slightly biased by its own manufacturing, so the digital version is arguably the fairer of the two.

Can I roll a d20 or other polyhedral dice?

Yes. Edit the entries to however many sides you need, numbered from 1 upward. The same approach covers a d4, d8, d10, d12, or d20, and you can save each one separately under My Wheels.

Can I roll two dice at once?

Yes. Multi Wheel mode spins two independent dice in a single spin and shows both results together. That's also the setup for teaching why totals of seven appear far more often than totals of two.

Does the roller remember previous rolls?

No. Every spin is independent with no memory between rolls, so a run of sixes doesn't make another six less likely. That's exactly how physical dice behave too.

Can I make custom faces instead of numbers?

Yes. Entries can be any text, so you can build fudge dice reading plus, minus and blank, or an action die where each face names a move. Save the result and share it with your group by link.