Dice, Dice Baby!
By Cape Rust
If you have ever played an RPG, you know about dice. For most gamers, dice are more than just something you roll at the table. Dice can reflect facets of your personality and often have myths and superstitions associated with them. Like rally caps in baseball or a pair of socks an athlete refuses to wash until they lose a game, dice have power!
I have been gaming for a few minutes and have seen some interesting rituals and superstitions associated with dice. I will confess, I don’t like other people touching my dice. I don’t have a germ phobia. I am convinced that if anyone else touches my dice at the table, it jinxes them. I am a rational, educated person who knows that the mere physical contact from another player causes harm to my ability to roll the right numbers. Such is the power of dice.
I eluded to interesting rituals I’ve seen with dice. I realize that MY ritual is completely logical,but there are some strange folks out there…. some people believe that blowing on their dice will make them roll better. This particular ritual is enhanced if this dice are blown on by a member of the opposite sex. Henceforth, this method shall be known as the blow hard method. Some players feel that the distance that they throw their dice will increase their chances of success. I like to call this the javelin method.
A secondary effect of the javelin method is the joy you get in watching exactly where the projectile dice land.
I know one player who uses the anvil method. This player believes that the harder they throw the dice, the better they will roll. This type of rolling can lead to a secondary roll method known as the bank shot or pinball method. These methods validate the fact that a dice will not roll well unless they come into contact with no less that five objects on the table including soda cans, other player’s oversized stacks of books and normally coming to rest at an angle that necessitates re-rolling and going back through the entire process.
For me one of the most annoying rituals is the long roll. This roll generally takes between a minute and an hour. The fundamentals of this ritual are based on the thought that the longer it takes to roll the dice, the better it will roll. The nice thing about this method is it allows you to hold an involved conversation while waiting for just the right time to roll the dice. If you enjoy hanging out with your gaming group, this kind of dice roller can increase the length of a game by at least a few hours.
One group of dice rollers that is absolutely horrible are “the racist” rollers. These are the folks who prefer one color dice over another. Some people in their dark, dark little hearts believe that their red dice are better than any other color of dice they have. People like this should be treated like the criminals they are! Why should we add to this world that is already filled with hate by tolerating this kind of behavior? Why is a purple dice better than a blue dice? Can’t we all just get along?
There is a smaller, less well known cult of rollers called the “Darwins”. A Darwin likes to cull their dice herd to select the dice that they know will roll the best. These people will seldom give any other dice a chance to succeed. Darwins are good in the fact that they seldom judge a dice by the amount of sides they have or their color. The Darwin has no qualms about pulling out a weak die in the middle of a gaming session in favor of one that might roll better. The Darwins truly understand that only the strong survive.
I know that are hundreds of different dice rituals out there and everyone knows that their ritual is the most effective. No matter what dice rituals you and your fellow gamers use remember, don’t touch MY dice!
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