Dice, or growing old gracefully

The older I get the more I appreciate simple, easy to see dice. I don't need gold specks, fancy scripts or funny symbols on my dice I just need easy to read numbers that are large enough to see. Better yet on D6s give me pips. In this post I will share some thoughts on dice in general and show you what I have settled on for daily use.

D4s

I am not a fan of the standard D4, give me an octahedron (D8) marked 1-4 twice or a dodecahedron (D12)  marked 1-4 three times any day. I have seen the term "barrel dice" to refer to the D4s Runehammer includes in his dice sets, there is a picture lower on this page, and I have been satisfied with them as well. 

D6s

I prefer pips to numbers on D6s as they are faster to mentally process than numbers. Che over at Roleplay Rescue mentioned this on his discord, it is a cognitive shortcut called subitizing and has to do with being able to recognize a quantity without counting individual objects. With numbered dice you have to first recognize the number and translate it in your mind. Another poster on that discord pointed out the other advantage is that the pattern of pips is easy to recognize at any angle.

If I could only have one kind it would be the standard 19mm casino dice which are available from a variety of sources in a variety of colors. They are easy to read and readily available. 

D10s

My strong preference are the old style D20s marked 0-9 twice. If you search websites that sell dice you can find listings for them. The ones I bought most recently are made by Koplow and they are available in white, black, red, blue and green. 

Sets

Out of the currently available sets of dice the easy button are the ones being sold by Runehammer. These 20mm dice are easy to read and have a cool look. The dice set comes in a cool case and the booster pack in a dice bag. You can even buy booster sets to get extra D6s and D4s.

https://www.runehammer.online/online-store/DICE-c201880796

Images are from Runehammer's Webstore and shared here solely to promote these products and that webstore.

The only thing that would make these better for me would be a run of D20s marked 0-9 twice that come in a pair of easily distinguished colors so you know which is the tens and which is the ones. That said I understand I am an oddball and most people are happy with the standard D10 percentile dice.

 

I suppose I should mention Zocchi Dice which are a key feature of games like Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics and Raven God Games' Reaver. These, like D10s, are non platonic solids to give a wider range of dice including the D3, D5, D7, D14, D16, D24 and D30. They are named after roleplaying game legend Lou Zocchi, who sadly passed away earlier this year, here is good article about him. 

https://goodman-games.com/lou-zocchi-the-man-who-made-the-dice-roll-true/

He also created the Zocchihedron, a true 100 sided dice. It is like a golf ball and while I had one I prefer to use two dice for percentile rolls these days. 

As for the Zocchi Dice sets I don't mind them, I know people complain about speciality dice but these are normally easy enough to get through the regular supply channels and there are ways to use the platonic solids to take their place if needed. Koplow actually makes a knock off of the Zocchi Dice called "Who Knew? Dice Sets" that are available in easy to read color combinations. 

When it comes to true proprietary dice which use symbols like the D6s that came with the WEG's Hercules & Xena RPG I can take or leave them. At least you can easily substitute a regular D6 and still play the game. Edge's fancy dice for Star Wars and Genesys are more of an issue for me. Not only are they harder to substitute but they belong to a play style that I have not entirely embraced. That is probably a topic for a future post.

Like most of us I have all the various speciality dice (wound locations, weather, scatter) but tend to not use them preferring to use tables or in the case of scatter dice just using a standard D8. 

What are your thoughts on dice?