"You collect dice?
Why???"
Here, I reveal one of my hobbies which
some would regard as rather sad... The fact of the matter is, I
like it, and to me, that's all that counts.
Well, my dice collection started as a
result of playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, not
that I was any good at it, mind you... I became fascinated by the
fact that there was more to dice than six sides and dots (see below for examples), and so my collection expanded.
Rapidly.
I still collected six-sided dice, but
mostly if they didn't just have dots on their faces; for example,
I have a set of Scrabble Sentence Dice with words on them (appropriately
enough), and TSR Dragon Dice with symbols on them which have no
use other than in that particular game...
People who aren't familiar with AD&D
are often surprised when I tell them that there are dice with 4,
8, 10, 12, 20, 30 and 100 sides, whilst others do things like
fetch me back proper casino dice from Las Vegas*. Still others
call me a sad b*****d, but like I said, I don't really care :)
Of course, what I do accept as
being sad is that I nominated myself to appear on The Big
Breakfast, back in May 1993, as Anorak of the Week, and was duly
interviewed by Paul Ross (Mr C. Evans was off sick that day). I
still have it recorded on video, and unsuspecting citizens are
shown it, possibly as a salutary warning on the dangers of
seeking fame (or some such rubbish). What I don't have
are pictures of the actual day itself - I took loads,
but none of the damn things came out!
To date, I probably have about 1,000,
but it's been ages since I sat down and counted and catalogued
them all.
The dice themselves...
4-sided (known as "d4" in role-playing games such as AD&D; tetrahedron if you're a maths bod). Because there is no upper face, as with all other standard polyhedral dice, manufacturers generally tended to put the number thrown on the lower edge, on all three visible sides.
However, some rather more enterprising manufacturers decided to put the number thrown on the upper-most corner of the visible sides - there's one in the picture (there are two dice near the top of the picture showing a three - the one I'm going on about isn't the blue one).
But if you're viewing this page in black-and-white... why???
8-sided (d8; octahedron). Generally speaking, these dice are used for 8 possible outcomes. However, there are situations when the manufacturers think that a d4 just doesn't roll well enough for their liking, and so they use a d8 as a d4, with two occurrences of the four outcomes - like the "compass points" dice in the pic.
This picture has some good examples of translucent dice (also known as "gem" dice), gold-effect and silver-effect dice.
10-sided (d10; decahedron). One of the slightly more unusual shapes - you won't often find it in maths books! But, as you can see, it's perfectly possible - and they certainly seem to roll OK... Some people don't agree, though - and prefer to use a d20 instead, in the same way as using a d8 as a d4.
Other manufacturers, knowing that d10s and d20s are also used for rolling percentages (d% in AD&D-speak - said as
"d-percent"), brought out 10-sided dice with 10, 20, 30 and so on up to 00 (for values less than 10; although 00 on such a die, and 0 on the units die, is counted as 100 rather than zero).
12-sided dice (d12; dodecahedron). For those times when throwing two six-sided dice and adding the scores together (or "2d6") just isn't good enough...
Huh? Well, for starters, you try throwing two six-sided dice and scoring a total of one... Second, the distribution of the totals follows what statisticians call a "bell curve"; there are so many more ways of scoring 7 with two dice than there is of scoring 2. But with a 12-sided die, you've got one way of scoring 7, or any of the numbers for that matter. See?
20-sided dice (d20; icosahedron). I've got quite a lot of these, as you can see... As mentioned earlier, d20s can also be used as d%, by using two at once, one for tens, one for units. But the player using them has to use two different colours, and specify which order they're going to be read. I mean, you throw a 0 and a 9 - and that can be 09 or 90 depending on the order... Too easy to cheat that way.
Once, for a laugh (I have a strange way of amusing myself), I decided to play Monopoly using 2d20 instead of 2d6 - you certainly shoot around the board much faster that way! :)
These are some of my more unusual dice... If the six-sided die at the top left looks a little distorted to you, it's because it is - and the manufacture is quite deliberate; it's to make it roll strangely, you know...
The translucent blue one is 30-sided; not much call for that kind of die, and I wouldn't use it in proper games anyway; it's badly made, although the picture doesn't really show that.
The dice in the top-right corner are six-sided - trust me on this! There's a little free-moving weight inside (which makes them weighted, rather than loaded), allowing them to produce the six possible values.
The purple one in the centre is 100-sided - the result of countless man-hours of development. The result? A very pretty and unusual die - but it's of no use to a serious gamer... The reason is because there are so many faces to the die, it doesn't change direction as it rolls, unlike the lesser-sided polyhedra, so you often tend to get it rolling pole-to-pole, or around its equator.
The white die at bottom-right is a "standard" die - I've put it into the picture to give you an idea of the scale of my two smallest dice, taken from one of Dad's old lighters. These days, I would have left the lighter intact, rather than smashing it apart to extract the dice from within...
Last, but by no means least in the picture, are two pigs... Surely they can't be dice? Oh, yes they can... Milton Bradley Games produced a game called Pass the Pigs, and they were carefully designed to produce set outcomes - standing, laying on their side, snout-down and so on. Anchor Butter copied the idea, but naturally using cows. Whether they were sued by MB, I have no idea...
This is by no means my entire collection - I have squeaky ones, inflatable ones, dice with letters on, as well as dice with rather racy suggestions on them! But then, I only had Dad's digital camera for a short time, so I thought I'd illustrate the more widespread shapes...
But not just dice, oh no...
I also collect dice-themed products,
such as Rubik's Dice, and olive-fork holders, and doctor's room
thermometers which would be heavy enough to kill with a single
blow (not that I would!)
I'm not alone!
For years, I thought that I was probably the only person in the world who had such a fascination in dice - but I'm glad to say that I'm not! Shortly after the first version of this page appeared on my website, I was contacted by a Dr Alexander Simkin, who told me that he had created a web community for "dice maniacs" on MSN. I checked it out, and it's full of fascinating links to other sites, including the history of dice, and collections made by other people! If you want to visit the Dice Maniacs' Club (aka The Random Fandom), then just click here.
* Proper casino dice have
oversized pips, and true squared-off corners, which allow them to
bounce and change direction better (the corners, that is, not the
pips). The picture on the left illustrates a couple quite nicely. They are also translucent - not for any aerodynamic or
randomising effect, but simply because they're more showy...