#roleplaying game dice

[darkelfdice]

DnD dice are out of this world!

[prokopetz]

Given how much of feline play and social behaviour are imitative in character, I feel like it shouldn't come as a surprise to gamers that their cats want to roll the shiny math rocks, too. Like, you demonstrated that this is a form of play and let them watch you do it. They're participating!

[vintagerpg]

Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck (2003) is a collection of short historical essays on dice, by master magician Ricky Jay (RIP) and accompanied by photography by Rosamund Purcell (more on that in a moment). Jay is primarily interested in the six-sided variety and is preoccupied with their use in prestidigitation, games of chances and good, old-fashioned swindling. And while he never touches on their use as randomizers in board games or in roleplaying games, the book still provides these dice-obsessed hobbies with a chatty and entertaining look at their favorite cube’s long, long history.

While I am always down for more of Jay’s prose (that there isn’t more of it is truly the world’s loss), I find the Purcell’s photographs particularly engrossing in this instance. Her subjects are Jay’s collection of dying dice from his own vast collection. As he explains in one essay, the dice are celluloid, which was the first commercially produced synthetic plastic. Celluloid dice can remain stable for years, then rapidly begin to decay in unusual ways, cracking, crumbling, letting off gases and shedding impurities in a variety of catastrophic ways. Purcell’s photos of this process are sublime meditations on the beauty of entropy.

I can’t tell you the delight I experienced about a dozen years ago when I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology for the first time and saw a number of Jay’s dying dice on display there. They were under glass, in a hallway, and though lit dramatically, they were a bit easy to miss for most folks to wander by without noticing. But not me! They had, at one time, been carefully arranged on little platforms, but in many cases, the turbulence of their decay had caused them to tumble around. An unusually chaotic and untidy museum display. I hope they’re still there, and I wonder what shape they’re in now…

[dailydungeondelves]

Some of my favourite comics which got the colour treatment

[chacaillejdr]

Labradorite D6

[unlawfulgames]

Now I’m working on a Goblin Generator zine, someone stop me.

[boxodice]

All that glitters.

[drakoniques]

Grab some potatoes and molasses! 🍂🐸🍬

BEYOND THE BROOK, an Over the Garden Wall inspired actual play series, is coming soon to Kickstarter.

Sponsored by Die Hard Dice!

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/drakoniques/beyond-the-brook-over-the-garden-wall-inspired-actual-play

[grunklefordpines]

Greetings, Dr. Pines! I got an extra set of glowing dice today and I thought you might want one set? If so, red with the fancy font or the gold mixed with navy?

:>

Oohh, Red with the fancy font!

[sairastuff]

Three similar but very different pieces. One for a challenge, one for creativity and one for plain and pure fun. The emerald and gold d20 is in the hands of my friend Noelia, who wanted a bag with a nice marbled design but left all the creative decisions in my hands, trusting me blindly. The blue d12 was commissioned by Ana with very specific specifications: inspired by the game Coyote and crow, with the corporate colours and a specially designed typology. And the antique bronze d12 came about while watching my friend Capitán Yelmo playing a game with a very Ancient Roman aesthetic, and where I tested the viability of a semi-invisible half meat seam (with a satisfactory success). Three pieces that sum up very well my creative capacity starting from the (almost) same pattern.

[darkelfdice]

My original DnD dice -- or what's left of them! Checkout the rounded corners of the top d20. That twenty-sider has seen some use! Action and adventure at it's finest.

The robin's egg blue and yellow dice were from original Dungeons & Dragons boxed sets I had as a child, and the opaque and translucent blue dice were the very first dice I bought from a "hobby store" (they didn't have dedicated game stores were I lived in the early 80s). These were GameScience dice, and numbers never came inked. You had to color your numbers yourself with a crayon.

Over 40 years later and I'm still collecting and playing with dice. What a fantastic hobby!

[prokopetz]

Here's a tabletop RPG history question, and also an etymology question if your nerdery bends that way.

d66 tables – as in "roll a six-sided die twice, reading the first roll as the 'tens' place and the second roll as the 'ones' place, yielding a number in the range from 11 to 66" – have been around at least as early as 1977, when the Starships book for classic Traveller used them to randomly generate trade goods for players to buy. However, the term "d66" wasn't yet being used to describe them – the book's text simply describes in detail how to roll on them each time such a table appears.

Conversely, we know the term "d66" was being used to describe this type of random lookup table no later than 2004, because several popular Japanese indie RPGs which came out in that year use it. However, none of these games seem to have originated it – the way they're using it suggests they're dropping a piece of jargon that was already well established at the time.

So the question is: what's the earliest tabletop RPG that specifically uses the term "d66" or "d66 table" to describe this type of random lookup roll? i.e., not "d6/d6" or "d6,d6" or any alternative verbiage, but "d66" specifically? It has to have been published in or before 2004, and (probably) not earlier than 1977. No speculation about which games might have used it, please; if you're going to suggest a candidate, be prepared to cite a specific title and page number.

[vintagerpg]

Ahhh, Dice Men (2022). This is billed as the origin story of Games Workshop, and primarily covers the period from the company’s founding to the point in 1985 when Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson passed leadership over to Bryan Ansell (though they retained shares in the company until 1991). There’s a little bit about WFRP and Rogue Trader, but that is really a nod rather than anything in-depth. And while there is a good deal of business history here that is interesting, I caution readers from expecting a no-holds bar accounting; this is very much a celebration of a much-loved period of the company’s history and there is little here that is controversial or even a little bit prickly, even. That’s fine! I’m hear for the visual history, honest!

It’s rich! The book starts briefly with the manufacture of board game bits and gets right into the Owl and Weasel newsletter, showing all 25 covers, which is a treat (the version I crowdfunded came with a replica of #1, even)! There’s a lot of material on the import of D&D, as well as big chapters on White Dwarf magazine, Citadel Miniatures, Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy. All full of art and covers and photos of ephemera and even a too-brief catalog of painted miniatures.

The rest concerns business stuff, which has its own charm. Lots of vintage photos of warehouses and offices and folks painting miniatures and folks gathered at the storefronts. It’s all rather cozy, actually.

Highly recommended for GW aficionados, particularly those, like me, who appreciate the early period above all else. My interest whithers pretty much completely after 1991 or so (the Realm of Chaos books are the last to grab me), and this basically gives me everything I want. I’m keen to see what the publisher does with the forthcoming Fighting Fantasy art book (update: it’s fucking amazing), and how this account pairs with Grimdark: A Very British Hell.

[dailydungeondelves]

Sometimes even the dice have to admit, that NPC is pretty cool...

[chacaillejdr]

A handful of D20

[paralunadice]

Blue Moon

A blue set with blue and purple shimmering foil and bright yellow-golden inking. This set was made to match with a dicebag made by LittleOwlWorkshop! :D The combination was just too cute. I'm hoping to collab with her again soon.