Sorry about the small text, this blog is being kinda weird again. Anyway, for this piece I'm mostly curious to find out whether or not it is understandable to non-gamers. I tried to explain most things, but please let me know if anything is unclear I'm also slightly over the word limit, so recommendations for small cuts would be appreciated. Thanks!
What possessions does your family treasure?
Dice
are cool. Most people don’t realize this, because they’ve never seen the full
glory that is the polyhedral die. I had my eyes opened when I received my first
d20, back when I was a lad of ten. Allow me to educate you. Many think dice are
limited to the pipped cubes of Yahtzee and Monopoly, but those are just the
beginning. There are six main types of dice used in role-playing games like
Dungeons and Dragons, which are named for the number of sides they have: the d4
(tetrahedrons), d6 (hexahedron (or cube if you’re boring)), d8 (octahedron),
d10 (pentagonal trapezohedron), d12 (dodecahedron), and the noble d20 (icosahedron).
All of these dice save the d10 are Platonic solids, which are inherently
beautiful in their regularity. Together they look like a handful of
strangely-cut jewels. The d10 is awkward and I personally dislike it, but
everyone has to deal with them. Maybe this explanation is just making dice
sound even geekier to you, but hear me out. It gets cooler, I promise.
One
of the neat thing about dice is that although there are only six main types,
there’s an almost infinite variety of styles.
Most dice are plastic, but they still come in all conceivable colors and
patterns: from gold-flecked purple to bloody scarlet swirls across a black
void. Sometimes the shape varies to yield knucklebone or crystal shapes, and
the more outlandish designs include dice within dice or even spherical d6s. If
you’re willing to pay some real money, your dice don’t have to be plastic
either. It’s possible to obtain wood, bone, stone, iron, gold, obsidian, opal,
jade, and mammoth tusk dice, all of which are beautiful in their own ways. Some
dice light up, while others dent the tables you play on if you roll too
vigorously. This variety makes dice individually lovable and infinitely
collectable.
Still not convinced that dice are
worth loving? If we don’t care about their usefulness (which we don’t), there
are plenty of bizarre alternative dice out there. There’s the d3, which allows
you to play rock-paper-scissors without
playing rock-paper-scissors. There’s the irregularly shaped d5 and d7, which
look like they can’t possibly roll fairly yet somehow do. There’s the d14, d16,
d24, and d30, which have no redeeming qualities aside from their quirkiness.
There’s the d100, which looks like a numbered golf ball and rattles when
rolled. And there’s the d1, a Mรถbius strip wrought from metal for when you need to make a
choice with only one option. It has been conclusively proven by many a gamer
(myself included), that one can never have too many dice. I have jars of them.
There are few things more fun than building up
an admirable dice collection. As you go, each die accumlates stories and a
reputation of its own. There’s the d100 bought on a rainy day from a game store
tucked behind the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the d6 that never
fails to deny you healing in times of need, and the striker d20 that always
manages to roll high enough to hit tough bosses. You laugh with your friends
about the time you collapsed the ceiling of a cave upon yourself with a
critical hit from your light-up die in the name of Science, then remind them of
when they bluffed their way through the guards by summoning the Holy Baritone
of the Great Quartet with a few lucky rolls from a famously lucky die. Some
dice have to be pointed towards true magnetic north to roll well, while others
can only function when rolled with at least four other dice and others must be
shaken for exactly five seconds before release. Every die has its place in the
set, ready to be used in an hour of need. When you gaze upon your collection,
you don’t just see dice. You see jewels, each with stories waiting to be
remembered, a lifetime of gaming.
