Rolling Dice

Just as we were sitting down to enjoy a fine evening of roleplaying, the subject of dice came up. Stories of raiding dice sets in order to acquire the necessary and appropriate amount of dice for that night's game ran rampant... before I had a chance to contribute to the conversatio, the game started...

So I decided I'll put my 2d6 up here instead!

This is how you play Exalted.

In our wonderful hobby of creating interactive stories, it is often customary for us to turn to the fickleness of the Dice Gods to resolve our disputes.

Although among the great variety of games that we were blessed with, there exist diceless games and games using cards in lieu of dice, it is hard to find a roleplayer without dice.

I suppose it's a combination of a wide variety of dice and sheer availability. Whenever I went to DragonMeet in London, I either bought some pretty dice or had dice thrown at me. I especially remember that day when I and my friends were about to leave only to be stopped by a woman asking us to take as many dice as we could carry... fortunately, I had a whole lot of pockets that day.

When I say variety, I don't simply mean a range of colours and sides. Nowadays we have themed dice, with special symbols etched into the sides. There are tiny dice that will fit inside a lighter and bigger ones... metal dice are especially dangerous. I think dice rings are an awesome idea and I am going to need one in my life. It would supplement my dice earrings nicely.

At the table, it was clear to me that we, as gamers, all have our own little quirks when it comes to dice. My main one is that I strongly believe that dice is a plural word and I shan't use it in as singular (it is the One True Way). Another is that I try to build up my dice bag to allow me to play a range of games without the need to look through my collection before each game. That's why I've got so many d10s (Exalted) and one of my d6s is of a different colour (In Nomine).

Exhibit A: Chaos

Exhibit B: Order

The brief discussion we had at the table made me realise that others treat their dice differently. Some even go to such lengths as to melt a die that rolled poorly in front of other dice, in order to prevent them doing the same. I even disagreed with Jules on the probability of dice rolling after I rolled a few for no reason whatsover and managed to get a couple 6's.

A simple bystander just needs to have a look around the table to see how different we are in our treatment of dice. I had mine in front of me in a chaotic mess, ready to be rolled, while some organised them in an orderly line with each side showing the same number. Others still will use them as protection against the wrath of the Dice Gods and their eternal need to see our characters fail despite many accumulated bonuses.

Exhibit C: Wall

I wish I had something witty to say at the end of this piece... but I don't...
sorry...

More Dice

Over at The Lands of Ara, Carter and the Spawn of Endra have been showing their Pounds o' DIce off to the world. Both of them seem to have received some special funky six-siders, but neither of them got the teeny-tiny dice I had in my Pound. So, for Carter's benefit, here's a shot of said teeny-tiny six-siders alongside a standard Chessex d6 and d20 for scale:

Show Me Your DIce

We're all dice fetishists to an extent, a tendency Tim over at Gothridge Manor has identified and decided to celebrate. So without further ado:

These are the contents of the bag I take to our regular games. There are a couple of full seven-dice sets in there, a d30, a d16, a bunch of two-tone d10s, a handful of d8s, a couple of twenty-sided d10s and some twelve-sided d4s. There's also a tape measure in case of wargame-type activity, a decent rubber because the ones you get at the end of pencils always smudge the character sheet, and a plastic tengu from the D&D miniatures line; this is Wu Ya, my character in Ben's Kingmaker game. He's a monk with the potential to bust out seven attacks a round, so I have quite a few d20s in the pile; there's one for each colour of the rainbow, in case order of attack is important, and a few extra just in case.

This is everything else. It may not look much bigger than the other lot, but this is a pile that's a couple of inches high in the middle. The bulk of it is made up of a Chessex Pound o' Dice bought by a sympathetic relative one Chrimble, but you've also got a few seven-dice sets -- including one still in its case for no apparent reason -- and then a fair number of odd dice. There's a Zocchihedron, an inkless precision d20, a set of FUDGE dice, some of those funky third edition WFRP dice, a set of HeroQuest dice and a spare set of Blood Bowl blocking dice acquired from the NAF. Most of these dice go unused -- we haven't played WFRP3 yet and a Zocchihedron is to be admired, not rolled -- but I doubt I'm the only one with such a reserves pile. There's something satisfying about tipping them all out then putting them back in their box, akin to when I did the same with my Lego as a child.