Are there any role-playing games which use dice larger than a d100?

Question

AFAIK, Dungeons & Dragons' largest die is a d100 (even though in practice people very often roll two d10s). Are there any role-playing games whose rules mention dice larger than a d100? It seems to be possible to make a d120 but the article claims it has no use.

Inspired by today's XKCD:

Mathematically speaking, that cannot be a die that is both 'fair' and 'regular', but 'almost fair' and 'almost regular' are OK in my book. And as the d100 = d10 × d10 practice shows, there are other ways to 'roll' such large dice.

Answer 1

d1000

In a brief search I found the following:

Here's a forum post including images of a Games Workshop publication using the d1000.

The d1000 MUTATION TABLE! is simultaneously everything that was right with 80s GW and everything that was wrong.

It's massive, takes up 11 pages, has 36 (!!) sub-tables and such wonderful ideas as 'silly walk' and 'mechanoid' (roll for which body part). It's awesome.

According to this article, Games Workshop also used a d1000 for the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e random career table.

The Iron Sky RPG appears to be attempting to make the d1000 a primary die mechanic. Presented here without further comment.

Answer 2

d120 exists, but doesn’t seem to be in use

There are 120-sided dice (since there is a 120-sided face-uniform polyhedron, the disdyakis triacontahedron). I cannot find any game that uses a d120, however. Considering how many articles I found on just how difficult to produce this die was, that’s probably for the best.

d1000 exists, and seems to get used

Unlike the challenge of producing a d120, a d(power of 10) means just rolling more d10s for more digits. So a d1000 or even d10,000 or d1,000,000 or whatever is trivially simple, since you just need more d10s and not fancier dice.

And there’s even a “d1000 spinner,” which does not entail rolling separate dice to generate the number. Doubtful that higher powers of 10 get anything like that, though, nor could I find any.

So do these get used?

Wiktionary has an entry for a d1000, which claims

d1000

(dice games) A die roll used for example in some role-playing games and wargames to generate a random number between 1 and 1000. The most common method is to roll 3 differently colored d10s, where each color has been designated to represent one of the three digits.

It does not cite any source for “some role-playing games and wargames” that use a d1000, however.

What I’ve been able to find with my own searching is that Kenzer & Co.’s Hackmaster seems to use 1000-entry random tables, and thus require d1000 rolls. See this review, which mentions them, and explicitly refers to it as a “d1000 roll.” I have not purchased or played Hackmaster myself to confirm, or to determine if Hackmaster explicitly refers to a “d1000” within its rules (or if it just presents a random table with 1000 entries and says “randomly pick one”).

Answer 3

MAID Rpg: d216 by technicality.

maid-rpg generally uses d6 and d66 (2 d6 with the order being relevant, consulting a table for results), but the items section uses ordered 3d6 to generate random items:

1D666: Roll three six-sided dice, assigning one to be the hundreds digit, one to be the tens digit, and one to be the ones digit. This will give you one of 216 possible results numbered from 111 to 666. This is only used for the optional item table (see optional rules section).

Men and Supermen: Occasionally a strange roll using d1000+

The "Men and Supermen" by Jerry Stratton contains rolling for your blood group on a percentile table during character creation, and that's just one of the "roll multiple d10 and treat them as ones, tens, and so on". Generally, they are used for chances that are super small or try to go for very specific chances:

Blood Type: Roll d1000 (Robots and Aliens must roll on the Mutated Appearance Table for this):

Roll	Type	Roll	Type
001-384	O Positive	850-943	B Positive
385-461	O Negative	944-960	B Negative
462-784	A Positive	961-992	AB Positive
785-849	A Negative	993-999	AB Negative
000	Mutated Blood (see Mutations, below)	--	--

A d10000 is used to represent a 0.01% chance:

Psychic Immunity

Intelligent Robots have Psychic Immunity on a d10 roll from 2 to 10. Other characters have Psychic Immunity on a roll of 100 on d100. Normals have it on a roll of 10000 on d10000.

Similarly, there is another d1000/d6 used to determine a length:

Base (Headquarters)

[...]

43-50 Backup Power Supply (lasts d1000/d6 days)

A very interesting graph by the way with 6 distinct areas due to anydice rounding to get integer outcomes... In fact, the game has another case of strange math using large dice. There is an entry demanding what is effectively a logarithmic compound die to generate numbers between 100 and 100100 with decreasing probability:

Normal Equipment Table

30-32 Choose from real world, using (d1000 times d100 divided by d10)+100 dollars

Answer 4

d666

French twin games In Nomine Satanis and Magna Veritas feature a very tongue in cheek take on Christianity and a custom dice system to go with it. Players actually roll 3d6 and most of the time only two of them are relevant (cutting the 216 possible outcomes down to 36 in most situations). Not to pass on a religious reference, the rules call it d666 or 666-dice.

As you already guessed, a result of 666 gives a demon a critical success.