what came first: rpg or d20s?

[King of Nowhere]

roleplaying games make large use of non-standard dice, mostly d20 but also d12, d10, d8, d4.
I call them non-standard because everyone outside the rpg community hasn't seen one and don't even suspect it exists. Seriously, i am a teacher, i bring my dice in the classroom in case i have to sort out a random number (useful to call out a random student), and every time there's plenty fo students surprised that there are dice with a number of faces other than 6.

So, those dice are only used in the rpg community, as far as I know.
but the rpg community was born some 50 years ago.

so I'm left wondering, where do those dice come from? I mean, I doubt gary gigax thought "hey, for this new game i'm making, let's require dice that does not exist. I'm sure the game will generate a demand and so some manufactory will spring out". And equally unlikely some entrepreneur decided "hey, let's produce dice with 8, 10, 12 and 20 faces. there's no use for them, but I'm sure someone will find one and buy them"

Is there anyone who can satify my curiosity on the history of dice?

[Excession]

The icosahedral d20 goes back a fair way. That one is from Ancient Rome.

For RPGs, the d20 was used in wargaming first. As D&D grew out of wargaming it brought to polyhedral dice with it.

[King of Nowhere]

The icosahedral d20 goes back a fair way. That one is Roman.

huh. real interesting.

the question is then, what were those dice used for before rpg?

[Excession]

huh. real interesting.

the question is then, what were those dice used for before rpg?

For that early one, nobody really knows. Some sort of game, or fortune telling possibly. The magic 8-ball is also a d20 internally, and that was based on a fortune telling device.

[LordEntrails]

i bring my dice in the classroom in case i have to sort out a random number (useful to call out a random student),

Interesting, my brother is a math teacher and he does the same thing.

As for the question, well a Dreidel might be considered a 4 sided die. If so, they date back to at least 1890. But it is derived from a teetotum, which dates back to Greek and Roman times and had various numbers of sides, including 12, 20, etc.

Senet used what were effectively 2 sided die and dates back to before 3000BC. Do they count?

20 sided die in the shape of icosahedron date back to second century BC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#cite_note-11)

So yea, RPGs did not invent them.

[ngilop]

I know there was a d20 found in Egypt I think from 300 BC

QUick googled search link https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collec...00008377?img=0

[Kadzar]

I had remembered reading somewhere that originally came from an educational supplies store, and, after a bit of Googling, found this Stack Exchange thread that points to a blog post on the subject.

In very brief summary, the wargaming community had, for a long time, been looking for some means to resolve percentile rolls, learned about d20s available from Japan, a game that used 20s called Tractics was published, and, to keep up with demand, people turned to a newly discovered supplier called Creative Publications of California, which only sold d20s in a set with a d4, d6, and d12.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I had remembered reading somewhere that originally came from an educational supplies store, and, after a bit of Googling, found this Stack Exchange thread that points to a blog post on the subject.

In very brief summary, the wargaming community had, for a long time, been looking for some means to resolve percentile rolls, learned about d20s available from Japan, a game that used 20s called Tractics was published, and, to keep up with demand, people turned to a newly discovered supplier called Creative Publications of California, which only sold d20s in a set with a d4, d6, and d12.

And of course, the dice in that collection are the Platonic solids.
They've been around as ideal solid shapes since 360 BCE, and in the imagination of crafters since the stone age. And as people above have already shown, the icosahedron has been used as a randomising object since the 2nd century BCE.
In modern times, the magic 8 ball uses a d20 shape inside, and it predates RPGs by 20 years or so.

[Willie the Duck]

In very brief summary, the wargaming community had, for a long time, been looking for some means to resolve percentile rolls, learned about d20s available from Japan, a game that used 20s called Tractics was published, and, to keep up with demand, people turned to a newly discovered supplier called Creative Publications of California, which only sold d20s in a set with a d4, d6, and d12.

And d8, just to clarify.

And of course, the dice in that collection are the Platonic solids.

Indeed, and it took quite a while for the first non- platonic solid dice to show up. Me and my group started with B/X and BECMI basic sets (which came with d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20), but we knew people that started earlier who had sets where the d20s were 0-9 twice (allowing them to do intuitive double duty as d10s), and you had to color in on side with a crayon to denote them as the 'with 1 as tens digit' set of outcomes.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

...
Indeed, and it took quite a while for the first non- platonic solid dice to show up. Me and my group started with B/X and BECMI basic sets (which came with d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20), but we knew people that started earlier who had sets where the d20s were 0-9 twice (allowing them to do intuitive double duty as d10s), and you had to color in on side with a crayon to denote them as the 'with 1 as tens digit' set of outcomes.

Ha! I remember those! I still check my d20s when I've had a streak of low rolls to make sure it's not secretly a d10!

[The Library DM]

And d8, just to clarify.



Indeed, and it took quite a while for the first non- platonic solid dice to show up. Me and my group started with B/X and BECMI basic sets (which came with d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20), but we knew people that started earlier who had sets where the d20s were 0-9 twice (allowing them to do intuitive double duty as d10s), and you had to color in on side with a crayon to denote them as the 'with 1 as tens digit' set of outcomes.

We used chits, until the local hobby shop offered dice. They were horrid things, and yes, we had to color in the faces of half of the d20s to indicate 11-20; I think 1-20 numbered d20s came out in the mid to late 80s.) I still have my original dice, and still use them. Okay, not the very first set, which were made of some super-hard plastic on which the corners and edges wore away while rolling; the 20s would eventually be near spheres...

[Willie the Duck]

We used chits, until the local hobby shop offered dice. They were horrid things, and yes, we had to color in the faces of half of the d20s to indicate 11-20; I think 1-20 numbered d20s came out in the mid to late 80s.) I still have my original dice, and still use them. Okay, not the very first set, which were made of some super-hard plastic on which the corners and edges wore away while rolling; the 20s would eventually be near spheres...

Yep, there was a point when it what chits instead of a d20 for a while too. Jon Peterson (referenced above) dug into it and found out the true (or at least 'most documentation-verifiable' truth to the matter), but for the longest time there was a raging debate over whether that was a supply issue or cost-cutting measure.

If you ever want a set of those original plastic dice (no, I don't know why), apparently some guy who worked at Windmill Dice in 1979 had a farm where he or his heirs or whatever found a huge stash of them, dropping them form hundreds of dollars on ebay to like $15.

[Kadzar]

And d8, just to clarify.

Huh, I thought I had written d8 at the time, but apparently not. It was kind of late at night when I posted that, and I was pretty sleep-deprived.