Thursday, March 4, 2010

My Dice Suffice


On the latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Fear the Boot, they did a segment on gamers and their dice. Let's face it, this great hobby of ours wouldn't be what it is today without dice, and there are about as many superstitions between gamers and their dice as there are stars in the sky. I was inspired to bring pork rinds to the last game thanks to FtB's 'health' episodes, and they've inspired me again, this time to talk about my dice.


I keep all of my dice in this little chest. It's one of the 'knick knack' type boxes you find at places like Hobby Lobby and other similar stores. This one's a Hobby Lobby find, it was on the clearance shelf for a mere four bucks.


Inside isn't just a big, messy pile of assorted dice. I've got it further subdivided by type. I'll break down each category below. The only thing shown in the above pic that doesn't go in the chest is the plastic baggie in the background (more on that later). I've placed the whole 'kit' on my laptop, just to give a sense of scale. It doesn't take up too much room.


In the chest itself, loose, are all of my "pipped" d6's


All sizes, some printed sides, and even some little d6's inside larger ones


For real workloads, I also keep two bricks of uniform d6's
on hand


My GW dice; old scatter, new scatter, sustained fire, and blocking dice


Somebody tell me what these are from, I don't know!


Rounding out my d6's are my three "oddballs". The first two are printed with words, the white die has different weapons on it. Run across a brigand in the backyard? What are they armed with? Roll your weapon die! Same thing with the blue die, but it deals with armor. Looking at the pic here, you've got a plate-male wearing brigand wielding a spear apparently. The last one has me puzzled as to its origin. It has shield crest faces, what looks to be spider head faces, and I believe it also has skulls on it. Also, it's one of my few wooden dice.


Getting into types of dice other than d6's, I have two more oddballs. The one on the left is a ten-sided die, shaped more like a cylindrical crystal. This was once part of a percentile set, but apparently the "tens" die has gone AWOL. The die on the right is my 16-sided (hexadecagon) die. This die at one point got a lot of use at my gaming table. In the game Blood Bowl, you have a sixteen slot roster, at the end of each game you would roll randomly to see which player received the MVP trophy. Most players I knew just used a d20, ignoring the 17-20 rolls, but why do that when you can just roll a d16? Frankly I think it's about time we introduced the d14's and d16's (and d18's) into "mainstream gaming. The enormous gap between the d12 and the d20 has gone on long enough, time to make some more room!


All of my non-pipped d6 dice go in here, as well as the other polyhedrons. It does have d6's, but they're the types with the printed numbers on them. This bag is about as "gamer" as it gets; handmade, emblazoned sword emblem, the works. Now the real kicker is that I bought it at a ren fair to boot! Of all places, we were on vacation in New Mexico, tooling around town, and chanced upon it. I didn't have any turkey legs, but this dice bag was worth the trip.


...and it's got a fancy lining too


Finally we have the "leftovers". These dice didn't make the cut for some reason or another. All of the dice in the bag are in sets. They may not have matching colors, but they're all grouped up by "sets" of the usual d4-d20 run. What's left over is what's in this bag. These don't really see the light of day anymore. Writing this I'm starting to get an idea of what I can do with these guys, you'll have to stay posted to find out! A little hint though is that it will probably occur over on our group endeavor, the Minions of the Monster Master podcast. I mentioned FtB first thing, and I must admit, it's one of my favorite podcasts out there (maybe tied for second, if not second itself), but I'd be remiss (something I'm always trying to avoid!) if I didn't plug my favorite podcast, the aforementioned Minions of the Monster Master!

10 comments:

  1. My brother and I used to keep all our rpg dice in one big bag as kids. When I moved out I just took a small bag with a set of really clear plastic dice like your d16. Slowly been building back up my dice stores. Also have a d16 for blood bowl but those do roll sort of funny so to be really random you have to shake it in your hand a lot to randomize which side is up.

    I have a pair of d6 that I got at a Blood Bowl tourny that I do not use at all since I went 0-4-1 at the event. I think those dice are cursed. For my blood bowl games I actually specifically use the d6s and d8 that came with my original 2nd edition set.

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  2. The one to the right in the pic with the white "spear" and blue "plate male(?)" dice is a Heroquest (GW/Milton Bradley, IIRC) die.

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  3. @Brad, you should smash those cursed d6's in front of the other dice as an example! My buddy Andy picked up some orange colored blocking dice for Blood Bowl a while back, those are pretty cool.

    @ChristophB: Thanks, it was throwing me off, especially since it was wooden!

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  4. Gooood Night! Man, in all my years as a gamer I have NEVER seen a collection this vast. You should be in a record book somewhere yo!

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  5. Yeah, the white die with the black shields and skulls is definitely from Heroquest. I recently bought a set of these on eBay, despite not having the game any more, just because I'm sad like that.

    I have a set of animal D6s, including that frog die you have towards the top, and none of us can decide if they're weighted. They seem to have an odd feel to them, and don't seem to roll "straight", but we can't tell for sure.

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  6. The mystery dice are from a board game. I remember......argh....what is it. Damn you Burns, I'm going to be thinking about this all damn day now!

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  7. @25mmW: I never considered my collection to be all that huge, but then again I never had a chance to compare it either. Thanks, and it's good to see you making an appearance again.

    @Kelvingreen: You know, if you want to relive the Heroquest glory, we might be able to work something out?

    @Oz: I figured it out! The dice are from the Mutant Chronicles Siege of the Citadel boardgame. We only played it a few times, way back when...

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  8. Ha, a nice offer, Mik, but I think we may be on opposite corners of the globe! If rumours are to be believed, GW are to release Warhammer Quest in the next couple of years, in a similar fashion to their Space Hulk revival, so I'm waiting for that.

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  9. The explodey dice you did not recognize look a lot like the Spy vs. Spy board game I remember that Mad put out a while back.

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  10. The red white and black explody dice are from Siege of the Citadel and Fury of the Clansmen by Target games in the Mutant Chronicles Universe

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