Based on another piece of the
perceptions survey done by u/zonination I thought to take a look at what people meant when they use certain common descriptions of amounts.
Assuming scores and hundreds do not come into play so often, let us look at the range around 'many' and 'a lot' and terms that are often used in our dungeons and skirmishes.
So some of these have more uncertainty - range - on them than others. Top and bottom of the bars are the mid quartiles, the colour change point is the median. Actual numbers are below. If we take the chance to try and assign some dice to roll to these that might replicate some of these we get:
| Descriptor | Low | Median | High | Dice |
|---|
| A couple | 2 | 2 | 2 | n/a |
| A few | 3 | 3 | 4 | d4 |
| Some | 3.25 | 4.5 | 5 | 2d4 |
| Several | 5 | 7 | 7.75 | 2d6 |
| A lot | 10 | 14.5 | 22.25 | 5d6 |
| Many | 9.25 | 20 | 25 | 5d10 |
| Dozens | 24 | 36 | 36 | 6d12 |
| Scores of | 40 | 80 | 200 | 10d20 |
| Hundreds of | 212.5 | 300 | 475 | 6d100 |
There is no range on 'a couple' - you say a couple, people expect two things. Once you say 'a few' there is more leeway. 'Several' and 'some' are more are less the same but 'several' can swing a bit higher.
What is probably the most immediately useful bit for a DM like me is the fact that 'several' says under 10, 'a lot' means about 15, then 'many' means about 20, and dozens is over 30 - those are useful descriptors to help get across how many raiders are coming howling across the valley while still giving me time enough to figure out how many there really should be.
I have eyeballed these on 'hitting the median' and ball parking the high and low swing range, anyone who fancies either brute forcing this through physical dice rolling or by coding something up - go with my blessing, I had not the patience.
Previous writings on
perception of words and their potential use in D&D to be found here.
