Dice

[Lioness]

Does anyone have any dice quirks, habits, stories, etc.?

I've found that everyone in our gaming group stores dice highest number up. It's a habit we picked up from our DM, who is pedantic to the point of obsessed with it.

When I buy dice, I also roll them a few times to find the lucky ones.

Today I bought mini dice, they are so cute! And very convenient for throwing at annoying people, too.

[Random832]

I've found that everyone in our gaming group stores dice highest number up.

What is this "up"? I find it difficult to maintain or know an orientation of any given die in my bag. (or, more to the point - apart from being highest number up, how exactly do you store your dice?)

Funny that you mention rolling dice to find the lucky ones - I was told that that sort of behavior is disrespectful to the dice and will make you get worse results in the long run.

[Mongoose87]

I am on a lifelong question to find a d20 with 10 1s and 10 20s.

[tcrudisi]

When my dice are on the table, I keep them all with the highest number facing up. I never roll anyone elses dice, although I will pick it up and toss it to them.

If you are trying to find the "lucky" dice, what you are really trying to do is find the dice that are weighted towards the higher numbers. If you've got a free 20 minutes, check out gamescience's video. I find it interesting, but I think you have to be a very big gaming nerd to find that video interesting.

[Vangor]

Does anyone have any dice quirks, habits, stories, etc.?

My friend had the worst habit of rolling dice randomly, generally doing nothing, but would note after a few tosses, "Oh, this was for my search," or, "Do I hear anything?" Note the "had".

I don't know if any of us really possess a quirk or habit with our dice beyond what I just said, but I do know if anyone begins getting a string of lucky throws we try to manage the dice away from them. This happens most often in games of Risk, but if a person is getting a few too many N20s we nonchalantly switch for a different d20.

[bosssmiley]

Does anyone have any dice quirks, habits, stories, etc.?

Kevin Cook, the Dice Collector, holder of the GWR for most dice held by a single obsessive, and husband to a very understanding Mrs, hangs about here sometimes. He's probably your go-to guy for all things polyhedral.

I've found that everyone in our gaming group stores dice highest number up. It's a habit we picked up from our DM, who is pedantic to the point of obsessed with it.

When I buy dice, I also roll them a few times to find the lucky ones.

It ain't luck. It's unevenness caused by the standard manufacturing process. Lou Zocchi knows all.

Today I bought mini dice, they are so cute! And very convenient for throwing at annoying people, too.

*Grrrrr! @ mini dice*

Speaking as a DM I hate those things; too small to read, too easy to roll off the table ("That's an auto-1 btw"). Big chunky dice with clear lettering (none of this paizo over-decorating into illegibility nonsense) are the way of truth and light.

Oh, be warned. Dice breed when you're not looking. I'm still trying to figure out where I got so many d10s from.

@v: Some WoD. Hated the mechanics on a profound and visceral level. More L5R. XkY is fun!

[tcrudisi]

Oh, be warned. Dice breed when you're not looking. I'm still trying to figure out where I got so many d10s from.

I'm betting you played some WoD in the past. I used to have handfuls of d10s but they've mostly disappeared. Then again, I lose a lot of dice.

[Lioness]

too easy to roll off the table ("That's an auto-1 btw")

Our DM just lets us reroll ours. I'm generally good at keeping them on the table, unless I'm feeling particularly dramatic.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Our DM just lets us reroll ours. I'm generally good at keeping them on the table, unless I'm feeling particularly dramatic.

Our table rule is that any 1 or 20 on the floor stays, and anything else is rerolled.

In terms of dice habits, well...I have to ensure all my dice are sufficiently close in shade. By this I mean that I have a set of dark green dice, one in turqoise, one in aquamarine, one in cyan, and the darker blue D&D Deluxe Dice I won in a contest--all of my dice sets have to be close enough that you can line them up and have a nice even color progression. This comes from my 1e campaigns, where I had a set of indigo dice I normally used which rolled average for me; any time I tried to use my friend's red-orange always-rolls-20s dice, I rolled badly, but the purplish-red dice he had always rolled normally, and ever since then all of my dice need to be chromatically centered around the cyan portion of the spectrum.

[Jimbob]

I have a set of dice that I have had since I first started playing DND 13 years ago and I never ever use any other dice even if I have to roll the D6 10 times for a fireball I never use another set and always have them set up with 1 facing up.

[Lioness]

Why the one?

[Jimbob]

Just have always done it, guess if they are facing 1 then they are less likely to roll a 1 lol

[The Rose Dragon]

My dice are all black and white. A habit I picked up from a game called Qin: the Warring States, where you roll two d10s, one black (yin) and one white (yang). Some actions are considered yin, where you want yin dice to be higher than yang, some are considered yang, where you want it to be the other way around, and some are neutral, where you just get the difference. Currently, I have only one turquoise set that breaks that uniformity.

[valadil]

At the start of each game I roll all my d20s (or in GURPs d6s) and sort them into a line. I start with the dice that rolled well, but push them to the end of the line if they fail me. If they botch on something really important they go back in the dice bag. This isn't something I'm superstitious about - it's just something I do to keep entertained between turns.

I also play 24 if other people are taking a while. Roll 4 dice. d12s are best but anything as low as a d6 will serve. Add, subtract, multiply, and divide the results by each other to get to 24. ie 3 3 5 6 reaches 24 if you do (5*6)-3-3 or (5+3)*(6-3) or (5*3)+6+3.

[Tyndmyr]

I'm betting you played some WoD in the past. I used to have handfuls of d10s but they've mostly disappeared. Then again, I lose a lot of dice.

Or 7th Sea. I think I still have 20+ D10s hanging around from that game.

Dice build up...I have ludicrous amounts of them, in all sorts of styles. Im not even sure where some came from.

[Fluffles]

I store all my d20s in a bag with a d20 that has nothing but 20s. It helps

[oxinabox]

I like to Roll the Bad out of my dice (i always use my own), i roll them til they've rolled a couple of bad rolls in a row, 'cos that means they have some good coming up, (the chances of 3 one's in a row is small (however i do study proability at uni and know that the chance of rolling a 3rd 1 after rolling 2 is equal to the chance of rolling a 1 normally) it's just a habit.

The bigger my dice pools are (nWod) the worse i roll.
eg dice pool of 3: 10, 9, 6, reroll 10: 8, so 3 successes.
on of my top skills (survival + INT) dice pool of 7: 1 success
then my bigest dice pool of all time: (a knowledge occult one): size 9, zero successes.

[The Big Dice]

I've got a fair few dice. I'd say the bag with them all in weighs around 4 pounds, maybe 3. Lots and lots of them are D10s from my L5R days. Like around 70 or so of them, plus half a dozen pewter ones. I don't roll them, but I do threaten to throw them at annoying players

I'm not superstitious about making sure they're in a certain pattern or that they show a certain number when I'm not rolling them. But I definitely have my favourites. There's 5 red and 5 blue D10s that I use for L5R, a set of six identical D6 that I use in threes, with three as a substitutes for GURPS and four D20s that I use for games that involve them. A black one with red numbers, a blue one with white numbers, a red one with white numbers and a clear crystal one with black numbers. The black and blue ones are my main dice, while the red and clear ones are my backups for when my main ones start rolling bad.

I've also got some red D6s that I use for my damage dice in games that use them for damage.

It can take me a while at the start of a session to find my dice from among the masses in my bag...

[ondonaflash]

I'm lethal with a d20. I have one that I specifically use for whinging at people.

My college room mates learned to duck whenever I'd reach for my dice bag. It was fun.

[Roukon]

I have six sets of dice. A red set, a blue set, a multi-colored set, a white set, a black set and a gray set. The colored sets are my PC dice. I use them when I play and when I DM, I let my players use them if they don't have dice themselves. Usually they are the communal dice for when someone doesn't have enough for something. The white, black and grey sets are my DM dice. Players are almost never allowed to use them. Only once, but that was because my player's dice were not being nice to her, even with character creation rules that allow for slightly higher stats. As I use a screen, I use the white dice when rolling for a good encounter, the black for a evil encounter and the grey for a neutral encounter. If needed, I will borrow from the other sets of DM dice, but most have to be from the alignment dice.

That is really about it for me.

Roukon

[Sinfire Titan]

I have the antiflag for a die.

We call it that because of its habit of rolling 20s, but only when used to make an attack against a specific player's character. It never threatens a critical against anyone but him (we've kept track, currently sitting at a record 74 critical hits against him, 2 against anyone else). It works both when I DM and when I play under him (in the latter case, I get critical hits left and right against anything he sends at me, to the point that he refuses to allow me to play anything that needs a d20 to attack).


Oddly enough, the die itself only scares the bejewels out of him, it's never actually managed to kill one of his characters.

[bosssmiley]

I store all my d20s in a bag with a d20 that has nothing but 20s. It helps

Good idea. They bully the smaller, weaker dice if you don't keep them isolated.

[Rixx]

I'm not particularly superstitious about my dice, but I will put a die away if it consistently rolls badly.

[Doc Roc]

I have a pretty odd quirk as a GM. I own only one d20, and no other dice excluding a cursed pair of d10s that are used exclusively for call of cthulhu. This means that I borrow dice from my players continuously, with famously horrible results.

[Nai_Calus]

I want a d20 with nothing but 20s. :<

I switch out dice when they misbehave, to the point where I've bought more dice during a session at a gamestore where all six d20s I had with me were failing me.

I have over a thousand, so it's not particularly hard to have enough, and playing Shadowrun has gotten me in the habit of carrying large quantities of dice. I could probably go ten sessions without once needing to use the same die twice for anything.

[Tyndmyr]

I have a pretty odd quirk as a GM. I own only one d20, and no other dice excluding a cursed pair of d10s that are used exclusively for call of cthulhu. This means that I borrow dice from my players continuously, with famously horrible results.

Borrowing dice is nearly always horribly unlucky.

[Dairun Cates]

The dice of improbability. My blue d20 I've used since the beginning of my role-playing days. Rolls 1's when it's hilarious and ironic, rolls 20's when the $#!^ hits the fan. This is true for both my play as a player AND as a GM. Needless to say, it's lead to some hilarious bluff checks, and some epic peasants. I don't honestly know what's going on there though. I know that dice luck can sometimes be improper balancing, but it's only dice I've ever seen that has perfect dramatic timing and will roll to suit the story.

[Sinfire Titan]

The dice of improbability. My blue d20 I've used since the beginning of my role-playing days. Rolls 1's when it's hilarious and ironic, rolls 20's when the $#!^ hits the fan. This is true for both my play as a player AND as a GM. Needless to say, it's lead to some hilarious bluff checks, and some epic peasants. I don't honestly know what's going on there though. I know that dice luck can sometimes be improper balancing, but it's only dice I've ever seen that has perfect dramatic timing and will roll to suit the story.

There's an article in the Dragon Compendium regarding this. Your brain instinctively remembers such instances in favor of other occasions, giving you the illusion that the die is doing that. It may happen every so often, but when it happens just right, your brain hardwired the phenomena as being related to that die.


Still it happens.

[Rhiannon87]

I have to have my dice arranged from highest to lowest (d20 to d4), with the highest number face-up when I'm at the table. My chrome d6s (so pretty! so heavy!) have to be arranged in rainbow order (each die has different colored pips). I used to prefer my copper set of dice, but now that the d20 from that set has proven to be a faithless harlot, I've switched to my plastic grey dice. I'd like to get another set soon, preferably another metal set. I love the way metal dice roll.

I also really want a nice set of wooden dice, not just d6s but the whole set of 7, preferably stained and/or varnished. I just think they'd look really cool. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any others.

When I'm at a gaming store, I'll test roll dice for the hell of it, but since I buy most of my dice online, I rarely test the ones I'm going to be using. I usually don't try to get out the bad rolls of dice prior to game; I'm more concerned about arranging the dice properly so they learn which side is the right one to land on.

I will lend out my dice if someone needs it ("I cast searing light, can I have some d8s?"), but I expect them back as soon as the rolling is done. I also hate it when people borrow dice without asking. I never borrow someone else's dice (though one of the guys in my group has a pair of heavy silver d6s that I will sit and compulsively roll when we're not playing.)

So, in conclusion, am I neurotic about my dice? Yes. Yes I am.

[Superglucose]

Highest number showing, touching each other to form polygons by type (so my d20s are all douching at least one side with at least one other d20 to form a polygon).

This is true except when I play a wizard. If I'm playing a wizard, only the D20s come out. And a single d6 and single d4.