I've been giving some thought to this, and I've begun to wonder if we could come up with some better ways to roll dice than d20 and d100?
Now, by better I mean it gives a moderate range without resorting to obscure, expensive dice like d30's. This stems from my personal feeling that the 1-20 range is too small and the 1-100 range is too large (I want a more gradual effect from bonuses than what a d20 provides, but a d100 is just too much).
For an example, a variant on the way we roll d100's is to go with d6's instead of d10's. If you subtract 1 from a basic d6 you would have numbers 0-5 on each face. One number becomes the ones spot and the other becomes the "sixes". If you translate the result from base 6 to base 10 you get a range of numbers from 0-35. For simplicity, you could change the faces of the dice to show results like this:
Die 1-
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Die 2-
0, 6, 12, 18, 24, 30
If you note that a 00 result is a result of 36 similarly to the d100 method, you essentially get a d36. You can do this with d4's for a d16 or d8's for a d64 as well, if you were so inclined. I've been thinking about developing my own RPG system for a while now, and I'm liking the d36 range for the "core mechanics" of my own games.
Has anyone else come up with their own dierolling methods for getting new number ranges? Weighted ranges in particular can make interesting additions to a game.