T w e n t y S i d e d
Sooner or later, we all become Dave.
– Shamus, Wednesday Nov 8, 2006
Man, nothing ages content faster than mentioning the cost of something. Although, I’m willing to bet that that particular cost ranges wildly depending on where someone lives.
I, personally, collect mini dice, an obsession born of four mini six sided my dad had in his own collection when I was little. Four mini dice, my favorite being a sea-glass blue one which had a very distinct texture. Now I have an entire bag of teeny tiny dice, and at $10 a set I don’t want to think about the cumulative cost…oh no, I thought about it.
I don’t even play D&D with physical dice anymore. Geez.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
I unfortunately can beat you on your “expensive dice sets”… I have these boring* purple 19mm† d6s from SJG that come ‘free’, 3 of ’em, with each set of Illuminati coins you buy. Each set of coins (and 3 dice) cost $25. I currently have 12 sets, once I’m done I’ll have 24‡.
* It’s not even a nice shade of purple, it’s kinda drab and boring. It’s a sad purple, which is very depressing as purple should be a vibrant, joyful colour.
† The annoyance here is that SJG dice come in two sizes, 14mm, which is handy, and 19mm which is just a little bit too large. But I have other d6s in 19mm, so at least there is that, however I don’t need 24 sets of 3 in sad purple… unless I want to use them as “punishment dice”. Like, “Okay Steve, you forgot to bring pizza this week, you have to use the sad dice”. I dunno, maybe I can sell them for cheap on ebay… or give them away to homeless gamers.
‡ I may have a problem. Maybe. Possibly. Indeed. I just want to replace all the cardboard chits in my Deluxe Black Box Illuminati game with 20 pounds (and 600$** worth) of coins, why is that so wrong?
** /choke. Though I bought the last 12 sets for 12$ a pop when they were on sale, so I’m hoping for another sale… and to have the 150$ shipping in the bank and not needed at the same time…
No no no. You know nothing of dice.
These sad purple dice are the best dice you own. In their own polyhedral minds,* they’re not sad dice – they’re just drawn that way. They want to be loved. And therein lies your advantage.
The sad dice will try to win you over. They will roll high for your damage rolls, and low for monster damage rolls. They will bring you such a lucky streak that you’d never DREAM of putting them back in the bag for some pretty dice who feel entitled to be rolled, who will never love you back and hurt you just to amuse themselves.
The sad dice have an unhealthy codependent need for you to love them, and you can exploit that personality flaw to manipulate them into doing your bidding on a regular basis. Because what are you, some kind of dice paladin?
* Any argument that dice are not sentient will, of course, be met with outright derision by anyone who’s ever sat at a physical game table.
Required alignment, Neutral or lower.
Gimli would like a word.
For a moment there, I thought your comment said “Gmail would like a word”
I don’t know why, but that’s extremely funny to me :D
“…They will roll high for your damage rolls, and low for monster damage rolls.”
I’m the GM, they better roll high for monster damage.
“* Any argument that dice are not sentient will, of course, be met with outright derision by anyone who’s ever sat at a physical game table.”
I’m not dice superstitious. I know my dice roll weird, they trend towards rolling high. I’ve rolled dice thousands of times and tracked the rolls. all my dice roll statistically slightly high. d6s roll about 3.9 instead of 3.5. For GURPS (which only uses d6s) this is good for damage, bad for skill rolls.
I seem to recall hearing, over the years, reports that *casino* dice (the boring six-sided kind used for harvesting large sums of money from people in limbo-like rooms outside the space-time continuum, which come to think of it isn’t that boring after all) are manufactured to incredibly high tolerances under precisely controlled conditions, etc, etc. But then the polyhedral dice are thrown together in whatever corner of the dice factory is left over after the production of the “real” dice is handled.
Whatever podcast I heard this on used this to conclude that if you seem to have lucky or unlucky dice, it’s very possible that you’re not imagining it, because they’re just not all that well controlled. (I assume true dice aficionados would know how to get very finely made, perfect polyhedra. This was talking about standard dice you’d get out of a bin in a store.)
For a few years before Covid forced RPGs online, I began buying a dedicated dice set for each of my campaign PCs. I only did this when the campaign was under way and apparently going to go a fair distance, but once we’d gained a level or two and were still going strong, I’d try to find something in a character-appropriate colour scheme. One of my favourites was a marbled blue set with bright yellow numerals which matched the colours on a superhero PC’s costume. The self-justification was that it kept me from buying either too many new dice, or really expensive ones like the solid metal or haematite ones.
I also learned the hard way that high contrast numerals were important, which made me quite wary of some colour combinations.
Mini dice as in specifically mini d6-es? That might actually be a good way to go if you wanted to play Shadow Run with physical dice.
If anyone still plays Shadow Run. And if you hadn’t already said you don’t use physical dice.
Honestly, the price seemed off to me even when the strip first came out. Most (non-cheapass) sets at the gaming stores were about $8-10 IIRC, and that’s for 7 dice. My wife owns over 30 sets, so we saw these prices a lot.
French translation available here: https://dmoftheringsfr.blogspot.com/2023/07/tresor-illuminatoire.html
I’ve got a couple of nice sets of dice that I like bringing to games and showing people. I think they’re also fairly informative for some since they’re trans and lesbian pride sets. (They’re from Heartbeat Pride, and also nice since their sets have two d20 and four d6.)
“I’m gonna miss that guy like a toothache” absolutely killed me, to the point where I’m still using that expression, even though it sounds a little clumsier in French.
I have a lovely set of hand-forged steel Fudge dice for running my neo-Steam Punk campaign, I even have a baize-lined wooden bowl to roll them in, saving table tops etc.
And then Covid-19 … and everything went online. :-(
Wow i have to ask, what happened to those original Emerald Frosted translucent luminous gemstone dice your father used for the original strip? Are they still around? I can see theese are different ones.
I tried to find those dice online but it seems like they are either long out of print or being sold under a different name this days.