Tumbling Dice

This post doesn’t fit with most of our themes, but it does pertain to something near and dear to my heart; Dungeons & Dragons. For those of you that don’t know, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a table-top role playing game. The general idea goes something like this: some friends get together and make characters, one friend (the Game Master) builds a world and writes a story for them to play through, they eat pizza and drink Mountain Dew, fun is had all around. Building characters is quite complicated if you’ve never done it before, and being the Game Master (GM) requires a sizable amount of work ahead of time, so I’m not going to get into the details of either of those right now. The point is, it’s a bunch of friends playing through a story, sort of like watching a movie or reading a book, except you can make choices for the characters.

Within the story (called a campaign in D&D lingo) the characters can’t just do things all willy-nilly. There are mechanics in place that tell you how good your character is at particular tasks, and inform you about what your character will reasonably be able to accomplish. There is an element of luck involved, otherwise someone with a higher strength score than you would beat you in a fight every time. This is where the dice come in, which is the real reason I’m writing this. Both the characters and the GM roll dice for various attempted actions, you add (or occasionally subtract) some numbers to the roll, and find out if you did the thing you were trying to do. D&D in a nutshell.

The dice are very important, and as such each player typically has their own set, if not multiple sets. A set includes 7 dice which are named following the convention d(however many sides it has). The smallest is a d4 (four sides), then comes the one everyone is most familiar with, d6, and goes up through d8, d10, d12, d20, and d% (we’ll talk about that last one in a minute). d4-12 are usually just used to determine how much damage you do to an enemy, with smaller weapons doing less damage and bigger weapons doing more. Dagger? d4. Great axe? d12. The d20 is the most important die, as it is used for almost every other roll. Did I hit that guy? Roll a d20, add some stuff and find out. Did I manage to grab the edge of that cliff as I was falling, or did I plummet to my death? Roll a d20, add some stuff and find out. Can I convince the guard to let us off with a warning? Roll a d20, add some stuff and find out. Can I find the note that wizard was talking about? You get the picture. The d% seems a little scary at first, but all it is is a d10, but instead of being numbered 1-10, it’s numbered 00-90. Roll the d% to determine the 10’s place and  a regular d10 to determine the 1’s place, and you now have a number between one and one hundred. For example, 40 on the d% and 2 on the d10 is a 42.

Now, to get to the point of this inane ramble. I got new dice! I know that doesn’t sound exciting, but for people that play D&D it’s always fun to get a new set. A buddy told me he found a good deal, so I checked it out. $10 for five sets, and each set has a bag to keep them in, and it comes with one big bag to keep all the smaller bags in. At game shop you can easily spend $15-$20 on one set. To be fair those sets will be a bit more aesthetically pleasing, but for dice of similar quality to the ones I bought I would expect to pay $45+ for this many dice. I opened the package and had to share how excited I am and what a great deal this is. If you need dice, or know someone that could use another set, get these. If you’re a GM, and feeling extra generous, buy this bundle and give each of your players their own set. Or if you don’t give a damn about dice then go read my post about the kitten we got a while ago. He’s adorable. Regardless, I’m pumped about these dice and can’t wait to use them tonight with Kayla’s family (it’s their first time playing for some of them).

If you have any interest in future posts about D&D, or questions, feel encouraged to comment below, or send me a message privately (I know it can feel embarrassing at first).