Critical Success asks the question: why bring cheap, plastic dice to your game night, when you can bring your expensive modular-synthesizer-in-a-box that requires power to operate? Why waste all of that energy rolling dice when you can instead press a button — such a time-saver! What non-problem wasn’t ever made better by adding more technology?!

A perfect crossroads of two distinct domains of nerdiness — Critical Success lets you roll gaming dice, from D4s to D100s — from the comfort of your pedalboard or modular rack or wherever you keep your ZOIA.

The dice are found on the second page: UI buttons labeled D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20, and D100 (note: the D100 goes from 00 to 99, adjust outcomes accordingly). You can customize the color of each die on this page as well, using the white value modules on the middle row (there is a secondary set of UI buttons to demonstrate the color for that die, in case you have already moved it).

Then, move or copy the dice UI buttons you need for your game to the first page. Press the die and it will roll. Switch seamlessly between different-sided dice. Have fun!

When you roll a 20, the colors will flash a little, letting you know you’ve scored a critical success! (You can toggle this effect off and on with the “Fanfare” button on the second page).

This patch arose from a conversation on the ZOIA Discord, involving Anxst, meanmedianmoge, smithrobs, and prismaticspray.

Just a quick overview of the patch, for those interested:

The different die are all radio buttons, so when you press one, that die is selected. This directs a “voltage” (value) to the input of the corresponding switch for that die; this voltage is attenuated to produce the appropriate color. A random module — triggered by each of the dice radio buttons — selects the outputs of that die’s switch, and the output is connected to the appropriate UI buttons on the first page to display the number. (Things get slightly more complicated for the D20 and D100 options, since they involve two switches; the D20 also employs a little logic to spread the results over two switches, while the D100 adds a second random module.)

I added a short, negative voltage at the onset of each roll to blank the display and make it feel a bit more like distinct rolls (when you rolled the same number, it didn’t “feel” right — a “is this busted?” sense — but the brief delay fixed that, for me).