zhang.dianli, 2 months ago

What can I say? I'm obsessed with #dice, almost as much as I am with #PlayingCards. #RPG (#TTRPG) have been such a huge part of my life since 1977 that, naturally, I have a good, healthy appreciation for quality dice. But more than that, I'm fascinated by randomness and the various tools humans have used for thousands of years both to generate, and often simultaneously tame, stochastic processes.

Hence cards and dice.

As usual Mastodon viewers will have to click through to see all the pictures.

This little beauty is a die made from red sandalwood with brass inlaid pips. I haven't tested it for balance and randomness yet (having only received it a bit over an hour ago, along with several others), but cursory tests have shown no immediately obvious bias and a very nice roll. Currently showing faces 4-6.
Roll 3D6 for damage. Or with these babies,
Early Chinese dice were not, oddly enough, cubical. The absolute earliest were, like almost everywhere, some form of knuckle bone. Later they instead threw flattened bone or stick with each side painted or marked differently. When actual dice showed up, well, some of the earliest are like this reconstruction in weathered brass: a D18. Describing this in words is difficult: imagine three octagons whose edges are extended to form squares. Now have them intersect each other at right angles. You wind up with a die that has 18 large, square faces and 8 small triangular faces. The triangular faces are unmarked, the square ones are numbered (in seal script, in this case). One view of the die in question.
Early Chinese dice were not, oddly enough, cubical. The absolute earliest were, like almost everywhere, some form of knuckle bone. Later they instead threw flattened bone or stick with each side painted or marked differently. When actual dice showed up, well, some of the earliest are like this reconstruction in weathered brass: a D18. Describing this in words is difficult: imagine three octagons whose edges are extended to form squares. Now have them intersect each other at right angles. You wind up with a die that has 18 large, square faces and 8 small triangular faces. The triangular faces are unmarked, the square ones are numbered (in seal script, in this case). The opposite flipped view of the die in question.
Rounding this purchase of dice out are a pair of brass d10s as a percentile pair: one numbered 0-9, the other 00-90. This was done to free up the copper percentiles I have set aside for playing Chivalry & Sorcery to reintegrate them with an all-copper set so my C&S set now has a percentile pair in brass and a single d10 in gunmetal.