Dice, and the Gamers Who Love Them

So there was this guy.

He was having a very bad night, and it was mostly because of a single die. This twenty-sider was rolling terribly -- lots and lots of 1s. Even his friends were amazed at how poorly he was rolling. Finally, they'd all seen enough. They cleared off the game table, and placed the offending die on a small stand. Then, they all spread their dice out around the stand, on the table. Solemnly, these gamers spoke to their dice. "This is what you get," they said ominously. Then, they dumped lighter fluid on the evil twenty-sider and lit it on fire.*

Gamers and their dice. (And by the way, in case it needs saying, montecook.com does not endorse setting your dice on fire.) It's not unlike a skilled craftsman and his tools, or a soldier and his weapon -- gamers are attached to their dice with something akin to fanaticism. There are three different kinds of gamer relationships with their dice:

1. Couldn't care less. This guy, the rarest type of gamer, sometimes doesn't even own his own dice. He shows up at the game and uses someone else's dice. (I have a fishbowl full of dice in my game room for just such an emergency.) This guy can almost get annoying, sometimes, especially to those who really care about their dice. Use my dice? No freakin' way.

2. Miss Fancy. This gamer is always buying dice. The latest sparkling, titanium, light-up dice that look like tiny Death Stars. Rarely annoying, this gamer -- at the extreme -- is often more preoccupied with her dice than her character.

3. Ol' Faithful. This guy still has the die that killed the ancient red dragon back in 1984, and saves it for dire emergencies. Heís got a die for saving throws, a die for attack rolls, and special dice keyed to each weapon. He talks about a die "getting hot" or "running cold," and looks at you funny if you start to talk about probability and the fact that all dice roll the same. (Even now, reading this column, some of you are saying, "No way, man, you haven't seen Rich's d20 -- that thing is uncanny.")

Now, I love probability. I love figuring the chances of such-and-such happening and understand the math behind figuring out how often a 3rd-level fighter is going to be able to take down an average orc with AC 15 in 1 round. I understand the psychology of coincidence (you know, where someone says, "This die rolls nothing but threes," and then you are particularly aware of 3s, noticing them more than other results, so it seems like the person is right). I know that any time you pick up a die there's an equal chance that you'll get any result (unless the die is loaded or skewed in some way). Still, I find myself saying, "Man, this die sucks," or "I'm really rolling hot tonight." I can't help it.

If you're going to accurately measure something's value in the game, it probably shouldn't be based solely on a playtest. While playtesting is fun, you should also "run the numbers." Assume average hit points, average AC, and average rolls and see what happens. This might seem like "work," and it is. I guess that's why game designers don't work for free.

Third Edition D&D is subtly set up around certain die combinations. The barbarian, for example, is a d12 guy -- he rolls them for hit points and for damage if he's got the archetypal greataxe. The cleric is the d8 guy. It's not only his hit die, it's his healing die and the die a lot of his spells use. With a few exceptions, if you're going to roll lots of dice, like for a fireball or a sneak attack, you roll d6s. I'm sort of surprised no manufacturer has tumbled to that. You could, for example, have a "cleric set" that had the standard dice, and then a bunch of extra d8s. The "wizard set" would have at least 10d6 in it. I'd probably be sucker enough to buy one.

Remember in Dune, when someone would see the sand ripple and call it "wormsign" because it meant that a sandworm was coming? Polyhedral dice are, by and large, gamersign. This works two ways. When my wife Sue and I moved into our rental house in Lake Geneva (back when TSR was in Wisconsin), we were digging in the backyard garden. So what did we find deep in the dirt? A twenty-sider. Now, it seems that if you're going to dig in a garden and find a polyhedral die anywhere in the world, it'll be in the birthplace of TSR, but still -- it was weird. Gamersign.

The other way is with a person who is evolving into a gamer. My wife, for example, has played roleplaying games for years (long before she met me, in fact), but she's never been a hardcore gamer. But now she's in one of my weekly games, and sheís really getting into to it. She's turning into a true gamer. How can I tell? She's now gone out and bought her own dice (multiple sets), despite the fishbowl full of dice that we have. Gamersign.

There was this guy.

He was playing in the back of a game shop and having a terrible night. His twenty-sider was rolling nothing, it seemed, but 1s. It ended up resulting in his character's death. Frustrated, after the game, he went out to his car and got his golf clubs. He took them and the die back behind the game shop and put the die on a tee, facing an empty lot. Wham! He smacked the die with his driver, and saw it fly off into the night. He could tell by the wobbling trajectory that the die had actually split upon impact. When he looked down, he saw that half the die was still on the tee. A "1" stared back up at him.*

Maybe some dice just are cursed. Yeah, that's gotta be it.

* These are real stories, told to me first hand at Gen Con a few years ago. However, I don't remember the names of the actual gamers. If this was you, or if you know these gamers, send me an email.