Aragorn says: I hate this campaign…gotta love that one

“When some of us started playing, the only dice were the knuckle bones of past games masters, with the numbers scratched into the ’sides’. Oops, showing my age there…”

Darn, I knew there was a reason I went into hiding … a lot of us from the early 70s are still around, but watching our fingers and knuckles …

I started a d20/2d10/3d6 system a long time ago. 1 is a fumble, 20 a critical. A berserker rolls a d20. A normal fighter rolls 2d10 and a cautious (man at arms) type rolls a 3d6. The distribution curves and the risk/reward ratio were fun.

Without every group of kobalds wasting any high level by sending a barrage of d3 arrows and hoping for a critical (after all, consider Richard the Lion Hearted at the siege of Jerusalem — 70 vs. 10,000).

Chris Says:

I like the Black on Orange dice. I’ve got a whole cube of the Black on Orange d6’s.

Yech!

The first polydice I owned were a black and orange-red pair of D20s, which we called “percentiles” since that was the fashion then. They had to be imported from America and I had to make a 110 mile journey to get them from an obscure game shop just off the Tottenham Court Road in London. That was the fashion at the time. Then they had to be filed down since there was plenty of casting flash on them, and a nasty bulge on one face. Then they had to be painted since they were numbered 0-9 twice – you needed black and white paint to turn the orange one into a real D20. I used white and red on the black die, but the red is very hard to see.

Then I got a set of (Gamescience I think) blue and a set of yellow polydice with the other shapes. I’ve never gamed with these to my recollection. The dice have a “soapy” feel to them and sharp edges, but the percentiles are the “0-9 twice” variety too and needed painting in. Unfortunately, these dice have a lower relief for the numbers than the older dice and painting them is no fun. I also have sets of crystal dice from the same company. They had the first see-through colours on the market in the UK, and I bought a D20 in each colour for use as EPT gem demonstrators.

Over the years I have steadily acquired huge quantities of dice, mostly D6s. Partly because I used to play Star Fleet Battles and you need pairs of D6 during combat (it’s easier to play if you have sets of matched pairs of D6) and partly because I used to play Wonkhammer 401k and used themed dice sets for each army I fielded. Second ed Wonkhammer 401k called for lots of D6s. What’s that? Use the SFB dice for Wonkhammer? Are you mad?

But I am happy to say that never, in my history of dice accreting, have I ever been even halfway tempted to add dice of that nasty orange colour to the mix.

Oh, hang on. As you were. I’ve got a pair in the SFB dice bag. Gah!

:o)

Steve.

In my first D&D set, you had to cut the dice out of paper and glue them together. Didn’t work really well. Also, since I had no one to play with, I generated dungeons by clipping houseplans out of the newspaper. Life is much better now.

I love the orange die.. We can see it without messing with our display settings… and about the “I hate this campaign”… Classic.. why do players make these kick-butt characters then whine if they get a paper cut.. I’m always amazed.. everytime.. when a player whines because anything hits him.. He’s a walking tank and complains when someone scratches the paint.. They say they want combat.. but they just want to bet told how good they are.. like my 4-year-old.. though.. my 4-year-old will complain if he’s not challenged.

Sorry for screwing up the markup there. Thank You Mr Brain.

“Wow. You people are really taking the orange dice personally.”

So, up to now , we’ve had 58 posts; and 11 have revolved around dice color or replies to dice color. (12/59 with this one). We are a sad bunch…anyway, everyone KNOWS that the best looking dice rolled crummy, & the ugly dice never get thrown away because we always need a good role now & then…

Great strip, Shamus! “I hate this campaign” was hilarious when Legolas said it, & is still great from Aragorn.

My fave crit fumble has to have been the one in from rolemaster(?)

“Trip over an unseen imaginary deceased tortoise.
Your foes are stunned for 2 round laughing.”

Genius.

Not even seen the rulebook for about 20 years, but still remember that fumble ;o)

Uh… “Lupusian?”

Shamus, your server is a victim of your success….

Steve – why the hate-on for dice you obviously wouldn’t own?

Colour’s so subjective, and I was _glad_ to have many traffic cone (safety) orange D10s for my campaigns in Cyberpunk 2020, and I’ll buy a set for 3.5 D&D if I see them. It’s a great contrast in all levels of available light (some of my games are by torchlight, candle, LED or aquarium glow).

-You’ll never have to worry about mixing up your dice with someone who has this colour.

-Or worry if this colour is any more or less “lucky” than what you like.

My first set was the clear yellow crystal (circa 1981) with no inking. I used burnt umber oil pastels to rub in to the numeral lines, they finally need a redo. Going with dark blue this time.

Never lost any of my dice… what are the odds?

/roll percentile!!!

Owner of Dueling Grounds RP shop (Toronto, Canada) now knows of your online comic, I made sure he’d googled it. The recruitment continues…

Too funny. I couldn’t stop laughing. “No, You were TRYING to fall off”. Reminds me of when I used to DM…

A TWENTY SIDED MEMOIR:

Growing up in a small town where the idea of a “gaming store” was as much a fantasy as the games themselves, it was uncommon for every player have his own set of dice. (I use the masculine possessive because “gamer girl” was also a fantasy at the time.) When I started DMing, most of my players shared dice or used some of mine, of which I had four sets that I had purchased along with my Players Handbook and Dungeon Master Guide. (As with Damien Walder – see above – I have never lost any of those original dice.) Those four sets were: solid green with white numerals, clear green with white numerals, clear with white numerals, and solid white with black numerals. It was found that the solid green ones were quite lucky, while the solid white ones were decidedly the opposite. In those early days, I insisted that one player always use the white ones, bot to be cruel, but because he was rather hyper and I felt that if he were to lose any dice, it best be the white ones. Perhaps he did not appreciate my logic.

After a few years of gaming, I got word of an older kid who was “retiring” from the hobby. I made arrangements to inspect his collection, and found enough of it useful that I bought the whole works for the price of fifty dollars. Among the mix of first and second edition books, modules, and accessories that I acquired was the Fighter Player’s Pack, complete with the set of solid-coloured dice of varying hues. As some of you may recall, this included an orange d20 with black numerals. Now, greatly enriched in polyhedrons, our gaming group had dice enough to go around, and no one had to use the unlucky white set.

Eventually, enough people had their own dice that my dice were used only by me, but not before the orange one had earned a formidable reputation. That die has rolled more than its share of 20′s, but it is reknowned for its 17′s. For some reason unknown to modern science, that orange d20 likes to hit high, odd numbers: 13, 15, 17, and 19, but 17 especially, and 19 next most frequently. However, sometimes it will have a slump and only roll 1 or 4 for an inordinate stretch, so it had become feared for its sudden reversals and most of my players felt its power best left beyond the hands of mortals. By this time, I had taken to using the unlucky white dice for most of my rolls as a means of reducing the rate of character attrition. This had brought great relief to my players, and allowed them to finally attain some moderate-level characters. The lucky green dice I used for friendly NPC’s. Which brings me to the point of my nostalgic excursus: the orange d20 became the official “character killer.” Woe and calamity came to whosoever pissed-off the DM, for with sombre countenance I would heft the orange die above the screen and foreboding (or heckling directed at the offending player) would fill the room.

So, Shamus, when I saw that orange twenty-sider in your latest installment of comic genius, my first thought was not “Yech!” but rather, “Ah, yes, the character-killer. Doom is certain.” I can just imagine one of my players begging me to use the orange die for his all-important roll, only to have it betray him for his hubris. The orange die is painted the same colour as hazard signs for a reason.

Sorry for the late posting on today’s strip. I should point out that many Bothans went without lunch to bring you this comic.

Paraphrased from one of my fav quotes. My standard reply to the original has always been: “So? They’re only Bothans.”

Anyway top stuff as usual. Two thumbs up.

damien walder Says:

Steve – why the hate-on for dice you obviously wouldn’t own?

We hates the nasssssty orangey dices, doesn’t we my preciousssss?

Steve.

You young whipper-snappers don’t appreciate the usefulness of orange dice! Those dice saved my life! Almost crashed into a stalled tractor-trailer one dark, stormy night; saved only because the driver was smart enough to scatter his ugly dice on the road after his flares burned out! Saw ‘em just in the nick of time, I did!

I have to return to the falling off of the mount issue. It seemed to me that the skill was in the timing of the fall. Aragorn needed to goad the Warg to the very brink, THEN leap off without going over. The skill lay in falling neither too early nor too late. As far as dice are concerned, I go for pure visibility. I have a white d20 with black letters and plain white spotted d6 ala monopoly. I hate when people use whacky dice colors, since I can never read their dice. Then again I am colorblind and have keracotonus, so I need clarity! :)

From the d20 SRD: “Typical riding actions don’t require checks. You can saddle, mount, ride, and dismount from a mount without a problem.”

Nice try, railroader.

I still have my original 1st edition red and blue box sets and the dice that came with them. It was a set of solid colored red and blue dice (for each box, respectively) and a white crayon to color in the die face. The blue d20 seemed to almost exclusively roll 1,3,7,17,19 or 20. It was a huge risk to roll it (as my DM used critical failures), but , man those 19 and 20s were tempting as hell…

Steve wrote “For my worst pick, based simply on how hard it is to see what you rolled on the buggers, is Granite by Chessex, which I think belong firmly in the what in Azathoth’s name were they thinking? classification.”
I have a set similar to those, but they’re much easier to read than those in the pic. The gray specks are lighter and the orange numbers are darker.
Now to resist the temptation to go buy a set of black-on-orange dice, for the sake of being able to say I have some.

Rule 1 about D&D: The DM is ALWAYS against you. XD

“If the DM is against you, it doesn’t matter what you roll. You’re going down.”
I once played a campaign where the DM got so so frustrated with us leaving his (in his mind) beautifully crafted story that he sent seven flights of dragons after us to make sure here was no way we could survive!! I admit we probably deserved a little punishment for some of the stunts we were pulling, but I still feel this was overkill!!!!

A few years ago I was in a D&D campaign. Our group was fighting near an enormous pit which contained some sort of arcane magical object. One of the party members had the Tumble skill.

So he told the DM that, in order to avoid an enemy, he was going to tumble, but NOT into the hole.

He rolled a 1.

I just have to add my experience to this.

After a long and convoluted campaign, my friend Russ had a Paladin/Fallen Paladin/Blackguard who became a Death Knight (they were epic at this point), and he was riding around in the sky on his nightmare when the party had planned to assault a city.

He figured he had plenty of damage reduction and hps, so he’d just jump off the nightmare in full flight and stiff the landing, because he could take it. He was bound to land in a hay loft or something soft anyway.

So he rolled. The thing with +stupid amount black full plate, a Dex of around 8 and no agility skills turned his average roll into around -6.

“You sit calmly on your nightmare as it whizzes through the sky, and with iceberg-slowness slide slowly off and plumet down into the city with none of the grace or finesse you had imagined when you pitched this idea to me.”

He then crashed through the roof of a house, startling the hell out of an old peasant woman, who was then rescued by the epic-level paladin who had been watching his blazing nightmare from the ground. This paladin then kicked him through a wall and kicked seven shades of crap out of him until he luckily defeated it.