Merging my dice bags

I'm playing tabletop - dice throwing - gaming again. Dungeons and Dragons 4th Ed, is it? Jeez, I'm old. Anyway - there's two big stacks of dice that I had - the one in the old English candies tin, which I think has hella charm, but on the other hand is the velvet dice bag, that was FOR REAL SEWN CUSTOM FOR ME BY MY GIRLFRIEND. Who I met at Renaissance Festival. Where I became a Pagan. Which I was first introduced to by Dungeons and Dragons. My, how things are connected...

So - in addition to having to determine which dice container I will use, I have to customize the dice mix.

The reason for this - all those tabletop dice rolling games? They use a number of dice types. - not just your six sided dice but twelve sided dice, eight sided dice, four sided dice like pyramids. And the ones that they use vary by game. The candy tin, which had been the container of choice, had been used to play games that used lots of six sided dice (Champions, where a ten-die attack was common) and games that used percentiles like GURPS and Call of Cthulu, which were both excellent systems.

But now it's D and D, and that means not just 'sixers' as they are called - The primere gaming die, however, is the twenty sider.


The D and D standard is the D20 - the modern knucklebone, the geek die, the one they named the system after. It's a talisman for gamers, that one. The tin had a couple but not good ones, and I'd bought two at the gaming convention that I showed up at for an hour.

So those were the ones I would set aside, and decide what to base the set on. I had a couple of differnt color themes I could play with.
The dice are made with different plastics - transparent/translucent, solids, mottled survaces, green with white numbers, yellow with black numbers, and a set of big black sixers with deep red spots.

Actually, those two are looking good. The last set had had an emerald theme - clear greens, light greens and dark greens, green solids. But I think I have enough black dice to get away with a gothic underlay for this set.

The black sixers are in, and the really large dice are out. They're ok but they're just too big. The red set is black pipped, and I'm looking at them and omg - they're Gencon dice! The 'ones' side is a Gencon Origins 25 logo, which I don't even know for sure what that means. Could well be a direct connection to my geek prime; five years of a three round elimination AD and D tournament (creative team of five).

Yep - that was in 1992, which is what - now fifteen years ago? Oy, how we age.

I started role playing gaming when my dad was in treatment for alcoholism. No joke. We were up with my cousins who were gaming. This woulda been in 1977. This became VERY important at some point because it was cool to be into D and D earlier rather than later, when we played in highschool. Longer you were gaming, cooler you were. Joe was hardcore - been GMing at his highschool (this is college now) and had more convention experience. And has been hardcore to this day.

Anyway - I digress and the red dice make the cut.

The D20s get tossed first the ugly ones, then the smaller ones, keep the two new ones. Theres a long pause around the old skool low impact TSR dice (which you don't use but it's cool, they were crappy and in the first boxed sets) and then the D20 I played with the longest - a different plastic, light blue, totally did not go with the rest. I ditched that, but on restrospect I'm gonna dig it out.

I've clearly got enough black and red for a diabolic set.

All the green and white d-sixers are out. The vegas dice get tossed - very diabolic, but big and sharp cornered. There are a pair of d-12, which you don't use very often, are black and red, keep those but go with a legible one too. The old d8 from my first set, a red clear d8, and then I think about how Khaz has 2d8 on his dual attacks, so toss another one of those in. A red d4 from the early days, the other two go because the d4 is a hassle; you can't pick it up easily. They used to be called caltrops.

Then I toss them all into the tin, and see if the other black and red dee sixers can get included, and they can, and that's that!