About Averoll (FAQ)

What is Averoll?

Averoll is short for "Asynchronous Verified Dice Rolling".

Okay...so what's Asynchronous Verified Dice Rolling?

It means a system for rolling a dice between two parties that aren't present at the same time, where each can trust that the other side didn't somehow cheat the roll.

Cool, I guess...when would that be useful?

Let's say you're part of a group of friends playing Dungeons & Dragons regularly. You meet once a week in person or over Roll20, but you're all so into it that throughout the rest of the week you keep talking about things in an online message group. What happens if something arises during this discussion that requires a roll? You try to bluff out a teammate, throw a rock at a distant target, or activate a wand with an unknown affect, but without a roll you don't know what happens. If your Dungeon Master isn't free, you normally only have two options. Either wait until you all meet up again and your Dungeon Master can verify the roll, or roll on your own and hope your Dungeon Master trusts that you really did roll a natural 20. With Averoll, you can send your Dungeon Master a roll, and your Dungeon Master verifies it whenever they get a chance.

How does it work?

Enter a roll on the homepage, with an optional description of the purpose of the roll. Click "Begin Roll", then send the resulting URL to the second party verifying the roll. When the second party visits the URL, they see that the roll hasn't finished yet, which verifies to them that the roll is honest. They then click "Finalize Roll" to finish the roll and freeze its result.

How long does my roll last?

To make sure our server isn't overflowing with dice, and to speed up finding dice when asked for them, we use pretty weak dice that disintegrate over time. Rolls that aren't finalized will disappear after 7 days. Rolls that have been finalized will disappear 60 days after they were created.

When would I use this instead of something like Roll20?

Averoll is intended as a low-friction system for one-off rolls when both parties can't easily be present at the same time. For situations when both parties are present, or you need to make a whole lot of rolls, Roll20 (or a similar sytem) is probably a better choice.

What is this made with?

Some strong conjuration and divination magic. Also python/Flask for the backend, using Jinja templates for the HTML, Bootstrap for CSS, and MySQL for the data, all sitting on Google App Engine.

This is stupid.

That's not a question.

I want to file a bug or suggest something for the site.

That's also not a question but you can contact the creator of this site by sending a cantrip to "averoll DOT web AT gmail DOT com" (except, you know, with . instead of DOT and @ instead of AT and no spaces).