The cornerstone of any geek’s gaming arsenal is their dice.

Dice, in all of their multi-sided variations, come in a plethora of colors and patterns - as well as materials. Most dice tend to come in plastic and in either solid colors, translucent colors or mottled/marbled patterns.

But some dice raise the bar - and thus geek-factor.

Let’s take a look at a few of the options that we got.

Metal Dice

Plastic is for chumps. Dice that are made from injection molds are weak and pitiful. Once you’re pouring molten metals or machining them on a lathe, you’ve graduated to prime time.

The most common metal dice you see are steel - usually marketed as “brushed steel”. The “brushed” part is just the finish on it. They’re shiny, weigh a heck of a lot and make some neat noise when they bounce across the table. (I think pewter may be more common than steel, but who really wants pewter? Blech!)

But why stop at steel? Isn’t the whole point of pimping out your dice to be the most pimp-tastic you can be? What’s wrong with copper, brass, silver… or gold (well, gold-plated anyway - solid gold would be insanely expensive)?

Here’s some shots of these four metals in order:

(pictures of metal dice copyright AdvancingHordes.com - used with permission)

Pretty, no? I prefer the look of the brass, personally.

The brass and copper also have “brushed” versions as well, which changes the finish a bit and gives it a different color. Both versions have a certain charm. It all comes down to personal preference.

Kick It With Colored Glass

Metals are all well and good, but what about gems? There’s plenty of semi-precious stones available; hematite, lapis, adventurine, amethyst, rose quartz, etc.

(pictures of semi-precious dice copyright AdvancingHordes.com - used with permission)

This is only a small sample of what you can find if you’re looking for it. I’ve even seen synthetic opal - which looks nothing short of amazing. While I haven’t really looked, I haven’t come across any dice made of precious stones. I’m sure they’d look awesome, but I’m also sure I’d have to sell my car to afford them. High bling factor, but equally high impracticality factor.

Back To Basics

We don’t call dice “bones” for nothing. As you probably know, dice used to be made from bone and also ivory, which is where the name came from.

Unless you got some antique dice, you won’t be able to find anything in ivory for all of the very obvious ethical reasons. Most modern bone products I’ve seen tend to be either buffalo or walrus. You may or may not find any comfort in that - but it’s the closest that you’ll get.

Where To Buy Dice

The first place to go is your local gaming store. Most game stores are small and locally owned and if you like the owners or managers, then you should try to support the shop.

Moving on from there, the internet is obviously a great resource. If you’re looking for bulk dice, you might want to first hit up eBay. With a minimum amount of effort, you can find more than a few decent auctions with a bunch of dice.

If you’d rather spend a bit less effort, here’s a few links for some shops that have some good sets to choose from:

• http://www.advancinghordes.com/ - Full of dice & miniatures (they have a great selection, good prices and come highly recommended!)
• http://www.chessex.com/ - Home of the Pound-O-Dice
• http://rpgshop.com/ - Fun collection of novelty dice

If that doesn’t get you on the right track, hit up Google and see what you can find.

What To Look Out For

The only bad thing about fancy novelty dice is that a lot of them will be smaller than the “standard” dice you’re used to. This is due to basic economics - if you’re making an item out of an expensive material, the less of this material you use, the more affordable the item will be. Less raw materials = lower cost. (and really big metal dice weigh a hell of a lot!)

I’ve seen a lot of sites that don’t list the size of the dice or don’t give a references for judging size. Good sites (like advancinghordes.com) will give you a frame of reference. If you took a look at the synthetic opal dice and clicked on the thumbnail to view the larger image, you’ll notice that the bigger picture included a coin as a frame of reference. In this case, it was a penny - though quarters are often used for larger dice.

Since you know how big a penny is, you know relatively how big the dice are. These dice, for instance, are small. They’re absolutely gorgeous, but there’s no way to gauge their size without that frame of reference.

Some sites will also list the size in mm, but this doesn’t really help me. I’ve never measured the dice I have and don’t know what the “standard size” is (I think it might be 16mm, but I could be off). Some people may find this helpful, but I tend to only see an actual size listed less than 50% of the time.

What’s Important

At the end of the day, the important thing is rolling high (or occasionally low if you’re still playing 2nd edition). Supposedly, dice you buy today should give a totally random outcome. No matter how much this is asserted, I don’t believe it.

Some dice just roll better than others.

Yup, there it is. I’m not superstitious - I’m just speaking from experience.

I see some cheat dice from time to time. I came across this set which just increases your chance of high rolls. I’ve also seen d20’s where each face is a 20. If you try to throw one of those in a game you’ll get caught right quick. I don’t advocate cheating and I wouldn’t do it myself, but if you’re one of them shady types, you can probably get away with the set I linked to. Just don’t let me catch you throwing some wonky dice in one of my games!

No matter how you play, if your dice isn’t doing it for you, go and get some new ones. Whether it’s superstition or just a little gift from you to you because you’ve been a good lil’ gamer this year and haven’t killed any fellow PCs, you deserve something nice - treat yourself.

Posted by Mike on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 7:15 am.
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