The Bowl game: an alternative to dice.

Apparently FUDGE dice can be a bit difficult to find sometimes, enough so that methods for using D6s in place of Fudge dice are described in the core rules. But I've always had a fascination for non-dice game mechanics, and one of the settings I'm working on is a game of tribal hunter-gatherers. So I did a little research into the gambling games of indigenous peoples and found The Sacred Bowl Game.

It's a traditional game played by North American Hunter/gatherers. The premise is pretty simple in RPG terms: you roll 6D2, and if 5 or 6 come up the same, you win that throw. It's kinda cool, and I bet you could base an RPG around that as a core mechanic. But I'm adapting this to FATE, so we're looking for a -4 to +4 spread on a bell curve.

So here's the idea. You'll need 8 of these two-sided tokens. Four of them have a [ + ] on one side and a [   ] on the other. The other four have [ - ] on one side and [   ] on the other. Toss them in the bowl, and count your + and - like you do for FUDGE dice. You'll get a +4 to -4 spread on a bell curve fairly close to the FUDGE die standard.

Here's the probability spread on normal FUDGE dice (taken from here),

4dF

   n                    P(n)   
  ---                 ------- 
  -4       1/81        1.235 %   
  -3       4/81        4.938 % 
  -2      10/81       12.346 % 
  -1      16/81       19.753 % 
   0      19/81       23.457 % 
   1      16/81       19.753 % 
   2      10/81       12.346 % 
   3       4/81        4.938 % 
   4       1/81        1.235 % 

And the spread on the my modified Bowl Game. 

8d2 Bowl
   n                    P(n)    
  ---                 ------- 
  -4       1/121       0.826 % 
  -3       6/121       4.958 % 
  -2      14/121      11.570 % 
  -1      24/121      19.834 % 
   0      31/121      25.619 % 
   1      24/121      19.834 % 
   2      14/121      11.570 % 
   3       6/121       4.958 % 
   4       1/121       0.826 %

So my idea is to use this as the core "dice" mechanic in my Hunter/gatherer game, for setting flavor. There's possibly more to get into here. For example, the bowl pictured has 4 quadrants, so perhaps how many tokens end up in each area might have some effect. But for now I'm happy just closely replicating the 4dF probability curve in an interesting way.