Saturday, December 22, 2012

More Dice

A while back I posted pictures of my dice.  My collection has grown a little since then, so I thought I'd post a few more pix.  You know me, any excuse to take pictures. 

First up we have "Festive Dice" by Chessex: 
Festive Dice
Basically I got them because I like tie-dye.  They're currently my favorite set of dice I own.  I come from a family of artists, which probably influenced my love of bright colors and other visual stimuli.  This set of dice has a vibrant mix of colors that really calls to me.  In fact, I hear them speaking right now...  what's that, little dice?  Kill them all?  Okay...   Just kidding, moving on...

Deadlands Dice
These are Deadlands dice. I got them for playing Savage Worlds.  It includes an extra d6 of a different style, since Savage Worlds uses a distinctive "Wild Die" with every roll.

This set's design is more for Western settings than anything I've played, but they're still pretty neat.  It actually makes me wish I liked westerns more, so I'd have an excuse to use them.  But it's just never been a genre that interests me.  Westerns are just too "testosterony" for my tastes, I suppose.

"Zocchi" Dice
I got these odd-shaped dice (sometimes called "Zocchi" dice) for Dungeon Crawl Classics. DCC uses a lot of strange, harder-to-find dice.  Here we see a d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. I really like most of them, except for the d7.  The d5 and the d7 have the problem of not being perfectly identical on all sides.  Both dice have two sides that are larger than the rest.  I don't mind it on the d5, because the two largest sides are the 1 and the 5.  So even if there's a greater chance of it landing on the larger sides, I still have just as much chance of getting the maximum as the minimum.

But on the d7, the two large sides are the 6 and the 7.  To me, that's just weird. However, these are made by GameScience, a company that's known for making "perfect" dice, so I have to believe they know what they're doing.  If they say there's an equal chance of it landing on any of the seven sides, I want to believe them.  But even if they're right, I still would have felt better if they'd made the d7's largest sides the max and min.  Also, I don't really like the style of the d7.  It makes me think of casinos more than fantasy gaming.

Sci-Fi Dice
I got these for our short-lived Traveller campaign. The black ones are official Traveller dice, from back when the game was more popular.  The sunburst design with the digital numbers looks cheesy now, but I suppose it looked more futuristic back when it was designed.

The others are from Q-Workshop, and I got them for specific skill rolls.  The circuit ones (Chip and Cyber) are for Computer rolls, and the gears (Mechanical) are for Engineering.

It's unfortunate that our Traveller campaign didn't last longer, but I don't regret buying the dice.  I really like the designs, and I'm sure I'll play other sci-fi games in the future.  I could probably use the mechanical ones right now for my Savage Worlds character (she's a mechanic), but her repair rolls use a d10.  I guess I could use one as her wild die when she makes a mechanical roll, but then I don't get to use my Deadlands wild die.  I know, "first world problems".

(Completely unrelated mini-rant:  One good thing about the Traveller campaign being over, is that I'm sick of the computer's spell-check yelling at me over the British spelling of Traveller.)

Elvish Dice and Forest Dice
I got these when playing a Dryad in our Unlikely Heroes campaign.  The top ones are transparent Elvish Dice from Q-Workshop.  They're very pretty, but hard to read.  Towards the end of the campaign I bought some Forest Dice (lower pic), which are even prettier and even harder to read.  Really, Q-Workshop is legendary for making Awesome but Impractical dice.

Unfortunately the dice arrived right after our final session, so I never got to use them.  But there's always the possibility we'll pick that campaign back up again.  In any event, I like playing tree-hugging characters, so I'm sure they'll get used eventually.

Probability Die
And last but not least, I picked this one up on a whim. "Probability Die" from Koplow Games.  The sides are:  Certain, Likely, Equally Likely, Unlikely, Highly Unlikely, and Impossible.  Really just about sums up all RPG rolls, doesn't it?  You could probably run an entire game using just this die.

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