We asked the question,
Why are your favorite dice your favorites? Is it the look, the size? Do they seem to roll luckier than others? Do you associate them with a particular ttrpg memory?
Here are the answers we received:
My favorite dice is not because it rolls well. I prefer the chaos. I have two favorites really. I have this set that is truly hideous. Deep yellow, orange spots, and vibrant green text. It’s a little hard on the eyes. I love those because of those features though. They stand out. My other favorite dice don’t look fancy at all. In fact they’re done of the worst made dice I own. But they’re also the first. Despite what my groups called “the law of migrating dice”, I managed to hold on to a few of my original dice. And sometimes when I hold them, it takes me back to those days when I started.
Qedhup
My favorites are my favorites because they have some special meaning tied to them. My favorite set is a purple glow in the dark set that was a gift. My second favorite I bought at a convention and they just seem to roll well. My other favorites came from a friend’s Kickstarter.
GamerMomLuna
The d20 is the ultimate die. It’s percentile dice, rounded to the nearest 5. It’s super easy for the GM to assign a difficulty number —8 is a 65 percent chance of success. Critical hits on natural 20 are exciting. So are fumbles on a natural 1.
Professor DungeonMaster
My favorite dice is the d8. If the d8 was used instead of a d6 – Cypher would be better in my mind just because octahedrons are cool and 8’s are hexidecimal. They connect to the I Ching and The Futhark and both have very different but compatible storytelling traditions. The three lines of the eight Ba Gua of I Ching, and the three Aett’s of the 24 Elder Futhark (one Aett (Eight) for Freyr, another for Heimdall, and the last for Tyr) all play so well together. My own system uses three d8’s where normally only two are read. I also have special dice that connect to these mathematically pure and traditionally narrative systems.
Charlie
My favorite dice are made of rose quartz- they have a really nice weight to them and stay cool in my hand. The color is pretty as well, but all my dice are pretty so the weight and temperature set them apart. Metal dice are usually a bit too heavy and roll slightly too loudly to be my favorites.
rositalagata
A set of hollow metal dice. They jingle when you roll them around together in your hand, it’s so soothing (to me, at least). At this point I only use other dice when I need to roll a lot of them at once.
Morgan
Do they look cool and can I read the numbers
Rick F.
The Challenge: I run a game for 8. But the size of the party is just the beginning of the challenge. These are kids aged 10 – 12. But wait – there’s more! Two have Autism and four have ADHD. I need combat to be fast not just for immersion, but simply to avoid having to get everyone to refocus – no small feat!
A larger party typically demands a larger number of opponents, and resolving combat and saving throws for that large a group is daunting.
Accordingly, my favorite dice are plain old solid color dice that I assembled from a “bag o’ dice”: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Clear, White, Black.
With this set, I can roll for 10 bad guys at a time. The dice order matches (typically left-to-right), my bad guys. So I know instantly who hit, who made saving throws, etc.
Using Professor Dungeon Master’s tips on using standard damage, I can resolve all the baddies’ combat in about 5 seconds. “A, hit twice for 12 damage. B and C, no damage, D, 6 damage. E, 6 damage. F, no damage, G, hit twice for 12 damage, H, no damage”.
The kids only care about immersion when they are on the offense, so resolving enemy attacks allows them to stay on-track. And stealing two other ideas from PDM, I encourage “cinematic” attacks (they absolutely love coming up with cool attack ideas), and when they deal a killing blow, they get to describe it. I’m not going to lie, if I heard some of those descriptions outside a gaming table, I’d be more than a little disturbed.
Jon T.
So shiny, so pretty….my precious…es?
Or to lay upon them until they become my body armor like Smaug
Kevin T
Thanks to everyone who participated! Leave your opinions below.
