[Weekly Whimsy] Dice

Welcome to Weekly Whimsy! Discussing dueling dodecahedrons, dancing deciders of destiny, denizens of dicebags and deliverers of defeat.

[I don't think I'll ever get tired of that...onto today's topic!]
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Roll With It, Baby- Steve Winwood, Roll With It


We women have a terrible reputation for taking a long time to get ready, and being extra-particular about accessories and styling.

I've stumbled upon an area that puts girls to shame, and it's pretty universal across the board.Guys, girls, old or young, the subject at hand is one that fascinates us all.

Dice!

Put a gamer in front of a dice display, and you get the same general response all over.- "OOOOOOOOH, shiny!"

Aside from general fascination, there are some things we all share in regards to dice. Things like superstitions, obsessions and silly tendencies.

We've all heard of cursed dice- or worse, cursed people. There are a couple of guys down at the game store who are forbidden from touching other guys' dice for fear of "tainting" them.

Some people collect dice according to special themes- color, according to their army faction, shapes or other inscrutable reasons. TheDude is one of those collectors, with a great assortment according to a particular idea.

Here's a shot of his SPARE dice:

Can you guess the theme?

A better shot, about half full.

This is not a die! It's one of the "Rainbow Ninja"- universally known in our gaming circle. There's a pink one and a blue one, too.

Another one of TheDude's dice. With another die inside it.

And an orange round die.



No idea yet? The Dude collects the weirdest, strangest, most unusual dice he can find. Which usually end up being ugly. Our friends have all gotten in on the action, and bring home some of the craziest dice I've ever seen from conventions, game stores in other towns and other locations unknown. As seen above, he now has a HUGE collection and keeps his spare dice in a huge ice cream bucket. Spares- the ones he doesn't use every day.

These are my dice. The red ones are my spares. The black ones are my regular gaming dice.

This is what's inside my black bag.

These are the dice I use for Eile.

 

These are some of my favorites- custom dice from our game store! 

Now we have some themed  collections out of the way. Buying dice is pretty personal. Some guys get new dice every convention (TheDude), new game (TheDude) or  new character (TheDude). Some match their dice to their character's outfits. Some take the dice out of the shell and look at them in depth- others just grab whatever looks good. Some guys order straight from the catalog- but we all buy dice in a way that makes sense to us. 

There's even different approaches to dice- Crystal Caste, Game Science and Chessex are all different ways of making a gamer's heart leap with excitement. 

I see a lot of "wishful thinking" with dice- the tendency to sit them with the optimal number facing up, in hopes that doing so will encourage the dice to roll that way more often. 

I also see lots of crazy dice carrying methods. Plastic ziplocks, cigar boxes, dice bags, tupperdudes, deck boxes and much more. I love seeing how they're treated and what we make of them. 

I think we all love dice in some way. Sometimes, they are a pain- like when you play --IG-- or Orks and have cover saves or to hit rolls for 40+ figures. 

So what do you with mass rolls? With the rise of the iPod and iPhone, electronic dice rollers are becoming more common. The apps for deciding outcomes have gotten more sophisticated and easy to use, and some guys have been using them at the store. They certainly have a place and I like them for what they are, but they are not as fun to me as rolling big handfuls of dice.  I remember 20 or more years ago, my dad had a Dragonbone that he used, but it felt more like a remote control than a way to determine chances. 

I love dice- picking them, rolling them, and buying them for TheDude. (Especially really ugly ones!)

Come on and share some of YOUR dice stories!