Friday, August 07, 2009

Guess What?! I've Got a Fever, and the Only Prescription... is More Dice!

Occasionally I take an impromptu trip to local thrift stores. There is an order to what I look for in thrift stores, but I'll leave the full list for another time.

Step one, the Game and Toy aisles. I generally look for games that I'm unfamiliar with and check the box for unique dice. If the die or dice within are unique enough—I'll purchase the game. I like to try and make sure that I have all the game pieces—though this is not always an option.

Recent acquisitions:
 Scattergories—For the Gigantic d20 with letters. It's only missing Q, U, V, X, Y, and Z.


Scattergories Jr.—For the Gigantic d20 with letters. It's missing even more letters as some have been replaced with a star.


Advance to Boardwalk for the d6 with colored Squares, F, and M...or is it a W? I don't know, I haven't read the rules yet.


I have one more, but I'm going to save that for the end. In the interim I'm going to mention that the Mini Dice that I used to not really care for have grown on me. I've purchased Four Sets over the past few months.


I somewhat recently picked up this question word die and parts of speech die. What would I use them for? No Idea, but they're fun to have.


Quite a while ago I got my hands on these Pre-shaken Dice.


My Sister got these Mice Dice for me at Disneyland.


When I first started collecting dice there were some types of dice I wanted to get, but kept putting it off. Then recently I finally got around to trying to obtain them and apparently they're not so easy to get anymore. But I found some. First up Fudge Dice.


Fudge is a Role Playing Game System. The name comes from the phrase, "just Fudge it." I've tried reading the rules several times now, but my eyes keep glazing over. The dice are cool though; and it's an interesting mechanic where you roll a dice pool of 1–4 dice yielding a number between -4 and +4.

The other dice that I had trouble finding were these TALI bones.


They were created for a Role Playing Game called FVLMINATA: Armed with Lightning. It too uses a dice pool system (They come in a set of Eight—they are rolled in sets of Four). The Dice are eight sided, but the Roman Numerals do not correspond to 1–8. The faces have two sets of I, III, IV and VI. These Mimic Dice that Romans used. FVULMINATA is an Alternate History game set in the Roman Empire, with the addition of gunpowder (i.e. Guns) and a light sprinkling of magic.

Speaking of Dice Pools—I have a set of Ubiquity dice.


Ubiquity is the Role Playing system that drives the Role Playing Game Hollow Earth Expedition (often referred to as HEX). HEX uses a dice pool system that turns every die into a 2 sider (odds and evens). I heard it explained five times and still didn't understand it until I had read it twice more. Ubiquity dice negate the need for having handfulls of dice to throw. The White ones Represent 1d2 each. The Red ones 2d2 each and the Blue ones 3d2. So with a set of 6 dice you can roll the equivalent of 1–18d2.

I like the World of HEX (It has a hollow Earth, Dinosaurs, and Nazis), but I think the system would confuse me, so I'd rather just Savage it.

I have a weakness for glow in the dark things. This pink die for instance.


No, it sadly doesn't glow pink, it glows green like every other glow in the dark product that you've seen since you were a kid.


I do have a rather rare set of dice that do in fact glow blue.


I purchased them directly from Lou Zocci, he no longer makes them as the cost of the blue glow in the dark powder that gets mixed into the plastic costs far more than the green.

My newest Glow in the Dark Dice are Cthulhu Dice.


Behold the Horror! & Hang on to your Sanity.


Now let us return to my thrift store acquisitions. Escape the Mad Mummy. Gyroscopic d6. Let it sink in.


This thing is insane. In the game they're using it as a d3, it spins on the top of this ziggurat, which sits in the middle of the board. Why the middle of the board? Because when it's done spinning the big hefty die falls onto the board and disrupts pawns and tokens and what not. I haven't played the game or read the rules but it seems like a dumb kids game. But it has a gyroscopic die and cool little figs that I can use for Savage Worlds.

Now....Bring Me More Dice.

6 comments:

  1. That is so cool. I didn't realize there were so many different dice out there. I wish the picture for the blue ones would have shown up that would have been cool to see.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Blue Should Have Shown Up, they're working for me. Try again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You and your dice!
    I'm glad you're finally converted to the mini dice, I love them!
    The pic of the blue dice didn't work for me either.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello! I would love to know where you picked up the question word die and parts of speech die. I am an English language teacher and I would use them every day

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's been so long, I don't even remember. There were a few different online Dice/Gaming shops that I used to frequent, but a lot of them are gone now. RPGshop.com is still around I think. Or I may have picked them up at a local game store.

      Delete