I love dice.

“Well duh, Brent. You’re a gamer, of course you love dice.”

Well sure, but I reeeeeally love dice. When I was 12 I typed a program into my VIC 20, in Basic, that allowed me to apply a chi-squared test to my dice. I then rolled each of my dice 100 times, entering each result into the program, to see whether my dice were returning unbiased rolls. Also, the gamer gene that makes a gamer prefer one colour of dice over another? I don’t have that gene; I will play with any dice of any colour. I also lack the gene that tells me I have enough dice. Because I Never Have Enough Dice! I could be swimming in a room full of dice, Scrooge McDuck-style (and thank-you, Wil Wheaton and Hijinks Ensue for capturing that image) and I would style want more dice. And while I respect your quaint myth regarding the touching of another gamer’s dice, I don’t personally believe it, so you can use my dice any time. Because science.

So I’m always on the lookout for cool, special and/or unusual dice to add to my collection. I thought today I’d highlight a few dice I have that are special to me for one reason or another, or just plain neato.

Of course I have d20 of various sizes…

The d20 on the left is about the size of a baseball; the right-hand d20 is regular size.

I have themed dice, depending on what type of game I’m playing:

Pictured: Steampunk d6 (left), Elvish d10 (centre), Elvish d6 (right)

I have dice that don’t even use recognizable numbers, because adding that layer of complexity to dice-rolling is fun!

Centre: A d10 using oriental-style calligraphy, with Yes/No dragon markers, below.

I have a set of spindle shaped dice that were a fad a while back. While I like them, I think they’re really only practical for d10 and lower; you need a really level surface to make the d12 and d20 work.

d20 on the left, down to d4 on the right.

One of the prides of my collection is a die I made myself. When I was about 13 or so I came across a piece of gravel while digging out my Mom’s garden. At first I thought Mom had

A battered reminder of good times.

thrown out one of my dice, but it turned out to be a piece of rock shaped almost perfectly like a d4. So of course I cleaned it up, painted pips on it, and used it until it became a little too banged up to be considered truly random (if it ever was). But I keep it as a reminder of my early gaming days. Every once in a while I even sneak it into use when I’m GMing. Don’t tell my players.

Okay, that’s all I’m showing off today. I was trying to figure out a way to properly take a picture of my Flashing d20 (courtesy of Think Geek), but I couldn’t capture it flashing with my simple camera phone technology.  So I’ll hold that back, along with some other special dice, for another post.

In the meantime, why not tell me about your special dice. Do you have any dice superstitions or rituals? The comments are there, just waiting for you…