It's fairly well-known that the most important tools of gaming we own are our dice, so this is the thread to talk about them. I was bored and decided to inventory my dice and this is what my dice collection consists of:
28d20s
21d12s
60d10s
19d8s
216d6s
15d4s
1d3
Of those, certain dice stand out. I have a go-to d20 that's my primary attack roll die (blue marbled) because it consistantly performs well when I most need it to. I have two other high-performers (orange and red marbled) that I roll with it if I need to make multiple attack rolls simultaneously - currently for my sorcerer's Scorching Ray.
I also have a different d20 (dark blue marbled) for vital saving throws, although it's not as reliable as my attack roll d20. Back when I was playing 2nd ed. AD&D I used my aquamarine marbled d20 for psionics power checks because it likes rolling low.
If I'm ever called upon to use the old standby 4d6 drop lowest stat generation method I have a set of d6s for that too consisting of three blue gem and one purple gem that's given me good results.
Last but not least I have a set of d10s (dark blue glitter gem) used exclusively for one particular roll by one particular character of mine. I even keep them in their own little dice pouch so they're not intermingling with my other dice.
I really don't have any rituals around my dice aside from the typical pre-rolling to get them warmed up, although I usually make it a point to separate my top-performers away from my general dice pile. If a die gives me several bad rolls in a row it gets tossed back with the others and a different one is used for the rest of the night. I usually give bad-rollers a clean slate at the beginning of the next session.
I know I'm not alone in all this so I wanna hear about other gamers' dice and dice rituals.
I have a small treasure chest full of dice and little gold, silver and copper bars (those plastic ones you get for christmas decoration) some other little deco stones that look like gems.
I haven't counted the different dice, but it's about 10-20 of each, more d6 than the rest I guess.
Special dice: miniature golden metal ones, the d6 is about 2mm on a side, or if you have one of each after another it's about 2 inches, for Americans. They are mainly for luck outside RPGs, but are a good backup.
And my lucky, favorite, wooden d6s, I have 6 normal size, and 4 slightly bigger. They are not weighted, but I can roll incredibly good results throwing 4 of them at a time. By the way I don't like pointbuy, I prefer to roll.
Ritual: noone rolls my wooden dice except me, if the GM really wants he can lift them to be sure they are no trick-dice, but I'm the only one to roll them.
Just started I don't have many die but I do have dice that are incredibly Small brother got a pair of skateboard barrens (the brand is lucky) and they come with a pair of D6 there so small they are about this size
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^ litterly This size
Also I have 2 metallic die they are pretty heavy so I don't use them often.
I like D6 best idk why but most of my collection is strange and unusual D6s
I look forward to adding to my collection
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^ litterly This size
If you bought the old-school Pirates of the Spainish Main game, you would get 1 every pack. It really was cool. I still have one, and I love using it. It's like I cast reduce person on my dice!
I have a set of dice for every character I play or will play or have played. It gives them more life. I have a Jade color for my Halfling Summoner, a speckaled green for my Half orc Fighter, a silver and green for my Human Wizard, and a speckaled blue for my soon to be Elf/Half-Elf Oracle of Waves.
I have way too many dice to count. I once tried to market a game that used d6s, d8s and d10s, and I literally have a 18"x18"x24" plastic trunk filled to the brim with them. And I don't even use those.
My "gaming dice" include a full set each of black, red and white dice which include five each of d6, d8, d10 and d12, with ten d4s and two d20s. Plus I have at least thirty random dice that I carry around to loan out to others who forgot their dice.
I play 4e and I don't like to reroll dice, so for those 4[w] daily powers using 8 d4s for two attacks, plus my d6 quarry dice my d4 furious attack dice, etc... I have been known to make a single die roll containing up to thirty dice.
If there is nothing else you can say about 4e, you can at least say it probably saved the dice industry...
I've been collecting dice since the late 70's. We have a tradtion in our group that any time you find a new game store, you have to buy dice. Even if it's just a few. (And, because I travel a lot to wrok with my field reps, I get to visit a lot of towns and I try to find the local game stores everywhere.)
It's also a tradition that GM's give a die to each player when starting a new campaign and old-school players often buy a new player their first new set of dice or give them one each as part of the "welcome to the group" thing.
There are also lots of game stores that give away dice as part of a promotion. We've had unofficial "Game Days" where all of the participants got a free loose die of their choice with their admission fee. And one game store used to do an annual RPG Day of their own, where you got free dice as well.
And, back in the 80's at Advacon one of the vendors had a gumball machine filled with dice. For .25 you got a random die from the machine. Most were d6's, but there were some funky dice and it a was a good use for your spare change. (and they were refilling it about once an hour...)
I keep several sets of dice for different games: I have a Pathfinder set (with COCT, ROTR, SD, KM, and LOF sets as well as a couple of dozen others), a Shadowrun bag, a Mekton Bag, a small ziploc with 2d20, 2d10, a set of Decaders, 3d6, 2d12, 2d8, and 2d4 in my suitcase in case I end up out of town and get into a pick-up game, a set of dice in my backpack with my regular PF books, a couple of royal crown bags with assorted dice sets, and then, the box...a large plastic bin full of 100's of assorted dice. My GF and I tried to fill out our sets once, getting crystal and opaque matching sets in the standard colors.
And I still have my original Dungeon Boardgame d6's and my original dice from the D&D Redbox (Erol Otus Cover) and the dreaded Gamma World Dice. The cheap plastic dice you had to ink yourself with crayons. We only pull those dice out for special occasions because they're the lucky ones that roll high.....
I'm sure there are people with a lot more dice than me too. The point of this is that it's a fun part of the hobby to play around with. And its a quick way to spread the love, by buying dice from any FLGS you come across and also giving dice to new players.
I no longer know how many dice we have though...
I have a set of brushed steel dice I keep in a leather bag. Everything else is split between backup dice in my crown royal bag and a crochet bag of holding for my go to dice. I usually use my runic set when it comes to DMing because it rolls so well
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In my 'use' bag, I have:
3 different sets of red dice (Strawberryish colored ones, red swirly ones, and a pretty simple red)
1 set of greenish with gold numbers
1 set of blue with black specks
1 set of clear dice
1 set of black w/ white specks
The Patriot Dice (a white cube with 3d6 in it, 1 red/1 blue/1 white)
A clear d10 with another d10 insdie for percentiles
A clear d20 with another d20 inside for when I just wanna roll something different.
A giant purple Paizo d20
My Critical Hit dice (big and red and flashes when you rolle a 20)
and my dice ring (a ring with d6s engraved around the edges), for when I really need luck.
Then I have the other bags with I don't even know how many.
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I have more dice than I would be willing to admit, sufficient to that, if they ever ask "do you have enough for the whole class?", I do :)
Recently I found a online dice store in England, I have ordered there for about ... well some of my friends ordered dice through me to save on shipping ... is 250 € for dice a lot? ...in 2012 :P.
I really can't help it those 12 mm metal dice from crystal castle are just to awesome.
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I've been collecting dice longer than I've been playing any game that uses any of them. Notable ones include:
A d30, and all the attendant frustrations of there not being anything that calls for one.
A letter die-- a d30 with letters instead of numbers (plus three "vowel" spaces and a "wild" space). Good for making up names and words.
A pair of metal d6's carved from musketballs. Not good for rolling, just there for the historic value.
Three spherical d6's with weights inside to get them to stop on an actual number.
A box of Chessex d6's, blue with white pips. Only notable in that there's 36 of them and they stay in their own plastic box. Good for Yahtzee, Farkle, and any other such game we want to play while the GM looks something up. ;)
If I have an area where I may be OCD, it's my dice. Since I began gaming in 1985 I can say with absolute certainty I have every die I've ever owned, except for 3 sets I gave away and I have lost precisely 2 d6's and had a d100 come apart completely on me during a game. I threw it away.
I don't pre-roll or warm them up and I don't mind a bit if someone else picks one up to roll with it or look at. My group is pretty fast and loose when it comes to that.
I don't have a go to set, but I do rotate out sets from regular use. I think it's just because I get tired of looking at the same set so much. And whenever I visit a game store for the first time I always buy at least one set. It's just courteous to do so, I think.
I own roughly 400 dice. I do keep the full sets separate from the mismatched ones, and I only loan out mismatched ones during games if someone didn't bring any. Some of the standouts are a d100, 2d30s (the green one came from The Orc's Nest in London back in the 80s), a d5, a fist sized d20, a tiny little orange d20 that came in a package of Twerps Ninjas, and a few others that I can't bring to mind. I do have 3 d10s (my first dice, the DM just gave them to me) that are gud ol' Gamescience dice but in some really nice colors I've never seen since. I'd love to have a full set of each.
Today I buy almost Chessex dice exclusively (I'll take as many as they'll send me for advertising them lol). I have a set of Steampunk themed dice from Q-Workshop, and while pretty, they are the worst rolling things I've ever owned. I feel like they do it on purpose, they roll so badly. My local store carries all the major dice companies, so I think my next purchase will be some classic razor edges from Gamescience.
I guess that's about it.
Around a 100 dice.
My favorites are my Chessex gemstones. They're hard to read, but they look like actual crystals. Bought my first two sets in 1985, of which I lost all but two; bought another set two years ago online.
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I use to have a ton of dice like that until I lost my dice bag at Origins back in '85. Lost over 150 dice. At first, I was, what ever they are only dice. Then I did the math and even at .50 a die, that was $75 lost. Considering some of the cooler ones I had, it was probably closer to .75 to a buck a die. Not a happy drive home.
So now I keep a very select group of cool dice. I have a couple of 20s with opposite colors so it is easy to know which is hot and which is not. I have a couple of normal 12 sides that match the 20s. For my 10s & 8s, I have a couple of pipped sided dice that are hard to find. Sixes are easy to find so what ever I have in my bag. Finally, I have a new set of 4 sides that are actually 12s but have hash marks on them instead of pips or number and look cool. That latest ones I have added are a set of 10s that have small 10s inside of them and the same with a set of 6s.
That is it. What, less than 20 dice probably. Not counting my 2 bricks of 6 sides I use for counters and Hero games.
I have a ton of dice, and regularly buy new sets, but I only have one that is of any distinction. It's an old d20, made of metallic flake burgandy plastic. I named it Sparkle, and it hates PC's. Now, in all other things mystical I am a huge skeptic, but in this case, I have to wonder...
The story of Sparkle goes way back to the early 90's. I was a young DM then, and running a Palladium game for my friends. Sparkle started off as the possession of one of my more finicky players who, I swear, never rolled above a 7 on that die. It was crazy - I've never seen a string of such bad luck. After several sessions like that, he got so made he chucked the die across the room and actually dented the wall where it hit. I picked it up, asked if he wanted it back, and he said:
"Screw that piece of !@#$, or better, let me burn it!"
I thought that was a waste of a die, so offered to trade him one of my seldom used d20s for it. He accepted, but still wanted me to toss the die in a fire. I said no. The next session, my regular d20 was rolling terribly, and the players were steamrolling all my encounters...so I decided, what the heck, I'll use Sparkle.
In that one session, I rolled 6 natural 20s - all in front of the players. The session ended with a near TPK, with the player who chucked the die being the first to fall to its fury. I continued to DM with Sparkle, and it continued to roll an insane number of crits, no cheating, no fudging. Players began to fear Sparkle. Stranger still is that Sparkle ONLY rolls good, it seems, when being used against players. When I have been the player, Sparkle rarely rolls above a 10. But as soon as I am DMing, critical hit time! Finally, my players had enough, and begged me to retire Sparkle.
Years later, and half a country away, I started a new gaming group. Curious if Sparkle still hated players, I brought it back into play...and sure enough, it was still a crit monster. My new players also learned to fear Sparkle - and yes, again, rolls were made in the open. They too, asked for me to retire Sparkle. That group broke up, alas, but a few of my players remained, enough that remembered the wrath of Sparkle. When I started a new game in which a few of those players joined, they were quick to warn the new players about the dangers of Sparkle.
One of said players, however, is a statistician. He refused to believe the power of the player slayer die. He said he'd have to see it for himself to believe it. So once again, Sparkle came out of retirement...and once again, Sparkle began killing player characters. The statistician, convinced that the die was loaded, demanded that he be allowed to roll it for a combat intensive session. Without arguing, I handed it over. He never rolled above a 9. His faith was shattered, his conviction of foul play destroyed. The session ended, he handed Sparkle back, and said "That die is @#$$ing evil. You should burn it." They never learn. That threat only increases Sparkle's fury. When his wife began running a game of her own (in which I play) she demanded the right to use Sparkle. I let her. His character was the first to die.
Even now, Sparkle waits in its isolated cell (a dice box all its own), waiting for its next chance to wreck havok on a player character.
Fear the Sparkle.
The session ended, he handed Sparkle back, and said "That die is @#$$ing evil. You should burn it." They never learn. That threat only increases Sparkle's fury. When his wife began running a game of her own (in which I play) she demanded the right to use Sparkle. I let her. His character was the first to die.
Amazing story! Sparkle is clearly to be respected and feared.
I have sets that match the character I'm playing thematically, such as camoflage for druids, red speckled for fire-weilders, etc. I use a giant brass d20 for initiative when I play PFS, and I have lots of black and bone-looking (and some actual bone) when I DM. I have a d30 for tracking combat rounds, direction d8s, pizza topping dice, round d6s, etc etc etc.
And then there's the set I keep under glass on a velvet pillow...
My DM for the game that I am currently playing in has an emotion die. Smiley face, sad face, blank face, angry face, surprised face, and something else.
On occasion when someone does something particularly unexpected he rolls to "see how the Temple of Elemental Evil would feel about that"
A throwback joke to when he ran ToEE long ago. However, we have a feeling that he has hidden The Temple, and Hommlet in his homebrew game world somewhere.
As for my dice collection it is fairly small. 3 sets of polyhedrals; Green and Gold swirls, Black with white flecks and blue numbering, and the red BBox set. Along with a nice red and black marbled with green pips 12D6 block. And about 20 odd dice from old sets/games, d6s, d10s, d20s mostly.
No real rituals really, When I DM the red set usually goes out on the table for anyone who has forgotten/doesn't own dice. My girlfriend is using the green set until the ones she ordered through our FLGS come in. And the flecked black set are my DM dice.
In my other game I play a TWF Ranger, for that one i assign one colour to one weapon, another colour to the other and roll both of my attacks and damage all together.
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I've got 7 sets of dice. All of them are Chessex. I've got a bunch of varieties. Two are flecked various shades of grey (one with white numbers, the other with yellow), one is a sparkly purplish color, and the rest are various swirls: jade green & gold, steel & copper, crimson/brown/purple (my memory is a little hazy on that exact mixture), and red & gold. I've also got a random collection of solid Chessex d20s and a set of small, turquoise flecked d6's which I use for enemy pawns and counters.
I like all my dice and am not particularly attached to any of them more than others. Since the rest of my group are bums, they use my dice when we play :)