Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Buried Treasures: Just a Roll of the Dice

Karen: Who remembers having these around?


Karen: I came across a bag full of these beauties in the garage. Some are the clunky dull plastic dice included with the original boxed Dungeons and Dragons set, and other boxed TSR games (maybe Gamma World?). There's a Ghostbusters die in there from that game -that's about all I remember about that!To the right is a cool six-sided die that resembles a vertebrae. The rest are just an assortment of big, small, opaque, crystal, and otherwise fun dice.

Karen: While I enjoy computer gaming now, there's nothing like the feeling of dice in your hand...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny, and I don't mean "Ha Ha" funny I mean ironically, how a simple phrase like "a roll of the dice" can bring back a flood of memories.

Part of the my circle of friends included a family of 8, six kids and the parents. They had the gamut of board games plus all the rule books. If you were going to play, you played strictly, and I do mean STRICTLY, by the rules.

We had all gathered to play Monopoly. It was a fairly routine game. People had made it around 5 or 6 times, we were buying properties, I may have been to jail a time or two, and I think there may have been a house or two on those first purple ones. Anyhoo, one of the brothers, we'll call him "Chris" landed on the property with houses, which I think made the rent $24? And then it happened. He noticed that the dice didn't quite match. So he puts them in the middle of the board and really starts to look at them. One Monopoly die and one Clue die. OMG, that nullifies the whole game up until this point!!! We were going to have to start the whole game over. Someone else suggested we just find the correct die and go on from this point. WRONG. Words were spoken, cards were tossed, the exact nature of your parents relationship at the time of your conception came into question.

Good Times.......good times.

The Prowler (cruel to be kind in the right measure cruel to be kind it's a very good sign cruel to be kind means that I love you Baby, you gotta be cruel to be kind).

Edo Bosnar said...

That's a really nice collection of dice. I've never actually had the opportunity to throw any of those unconventional, non-cubic dice because - and I'm going to lose some geek cred here - I've never, ever played any RPGs, either table-top or on a computer. But I think they look really, really cool.

Otherwise, there's a board game we used to play in school (during recess on rainy days) that had these cool, big dice made of some kind of rubbery material that we used to throw on the floor and bounce against the wall. I have no idea what the game actually was, because the best part, obviously, was flinging those dice all over the place - until one of the nuns got all irate and made us stop. Like Prowler said, good times...

david_b said...

Never into any D&D or fantasy gaming stuff ever. But I did get quite proficient dice-rolling in Monopoly.

Played more chess and checkers, mainly.

Nice song reference, Prowler, funny post.

Anonymous said...

I still have a bunch of D&D dice somewhere, plus a bag full of "regular" dice in assorted colours.

Mike W.

Humanbelly said...

HBSon & I went through a period of about 4 years or so w/ the HEROSCAPE gaming/figurine system. We actually became INTENSELY immersed in it as hobby/game that we massively modified and expanded on to suit our own style of playing preferences. Over the course of time, he in particular noticed odd trends of the dice (regular and twenty-sided) in relation to our own moods and even in relation to specific figures that seemed impossible to disregard. His Junior and Senior years of high school, he attempted to do a major data collection and analysis trying to somehow quantify the nature of "Karma" or "luck". It was tough, and probably a bit beyond the scope of a high school Science & Tech practicum research project--- but, OMG, the results he was getting (rolling dice in a controlled gaming situation where outcomes have specific rewards or consequences-- i.e. "meaning") at the very LEAST indicated that random chance simply wasn't the only factor in play. He was completely onto something. But-- the science fair was cut from 3 days to one afternoon due to bad weather, and so each of the judges spent approximately 60 seconds with each exhibitor. . . and weren't actually scientists, just volunteers. Very abstract premise-- tough to explain in a sound-bite to a dazed, get-it-over-with listener-- they just missed the point completely. "Oh, it's some game thing"-- and on to the next board.

"He's trying to quantify luck!", I'm thinking, "And he has numbers and data that pose some incredibly intriguing questions!" But, no-- relegated to the dust-heap of science, my poor lad. . .

HB (STILL bitter!)

Anonymous said...

Like Edo and David I was never into the RPG thing, but those are some cool looking dice Karen!

- Mike 'the diceman cometh' from Trinidad & Tobago.

Redartz said...

Oh, the memories those dice evoke! In college, we had a group of gameplayers who met every weekend. Usually it was Dungeons and Dragons, but also played Runequest, Talisman,and some Superhero rpg. Normally we would send out for pizza and spend hours around the table. Everyone had their own bag of dice, with their own personal favorite or 'lucky' die.

Several of our group had coordinated dice; 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided all matching in color and style. I preferred variety; lots of colors and crystal dice with a set of black six-siders with red pips. Also had a copper metal 4 sider that got a lot of use. I also had a green 20-sider that had to be the unluckiest die ever. Hardly ever threw a 20; usually you could count on it to give you an epic fail with a 1 or 2.

Come to think of it, I wonder where all those went. Perhaps my son appropriated them when he got caught up in D&D.

Chris said...

My bag of dice has never been a buried treasure as I've always known where they were! I've played RPGs on and off since D&D first came out and have always thought that they are more social that computer/console games.

My friends and I are currently playing a Star wars RPG from Fantasy Flight Games which uses dices with symbols on them to determine the results rather than numbers. It's a cool mechanic (bit complicated to explain here) but leads to lots of fun.

Humanbelly's son would have had interesting results analysing my dice throws. I had lots of luck....it was just all bad!

Dr. Oyola said...

Yep, not buried for me either.

I still play D&D about every 2 to 3 weeks with a group that is largely the same people I have played with on and off since the mid-90s (and before that I played with different groups through Junior High and H.S.).

I even have a box of "free dice" I offer to new players to choose from.

For those of you on twitter you can follow my gaming related handle: @Aquerra_d20

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