I've Created A Monster : Part 2

So, my plan for today was to get up and go back to the gaming store with Sunny so she could get her dice, then maybe a battlemat and a couple of minis.

Turns out Sunny had other plans and left for work early yesterday, specifically so she could stop by Cornermagic because she absolutely, positively had to have that particular set of pink and black dice and she was afraid they’d get sold.

I guess she missed that the guy opened a single box from a stack of about fifty to show all the different sets he had available.

You know, I could laugh at her for running to the store in case the last fifty or so sets of pink and black dice got sold in 24 hours…but you know that scene in at the very end of Star Wars Episode 3 where Anakin completely flips out because he thinks he’s killed Padme, and the Emperor does that really evil grin behind his back because he knows he’s finally got him?

Welcome to the Dark Side. I sense much potential in this one.

She has just crossed the line from being one of the ‘mundanes’, to ‘Geek Apprentice’ at the very least.

Sure, she likes a lot of geeky stuff, from Magic: The Gathering to Doctor Who …but this was her first truly geek moment. Everything else, I’ve had to talk her into and ease her in gently. This is the first time she’s shown some true geek obsessiveness. One 30 minute dungeon crawl, and she ran out, on her own, because she had to have that set of dice…and not just any dice, but this exact set.

But the thing about Sunny’s latest blog post (where I learned about her trip to the gaming store, she’s still sleeping after working last night), was her questions about dice superstitions. She said:

“I know you told me that you rolled your die first because if I had rolled them first and rolled a natural 1 it would have been a bad thing.......but- if I picked up MY OWN d20 and rolled a 1 first thing.....would that have been a bad thing too?”

Welcome to the wonderful world of gamer superstition.

Like most people, when I played my first game of DnD, I thought the other players were insane about their dice. They’re dice! That D20 has as much chance to come up on 20 as it does on a 1 no matter what.

…then your favorite die, that never lets you down, gets 4 natural 1s in a row, and even though you know it’s just a statistical anomaly and there are no such things as curses, you just have to swap it out…and then you find you don’t want to put it back in your dice bag in case it ‘contaminates’ your other dice.

There are various schools of thought on this, for example, some people will roll a string of bad numbers before the game and count this as a good thing because they’re getting the bad rolls used up before the game…others will roll a string of bad numbers and decide the dice is ‘depleted’ and all the good rolls are used up, so it needs to be retired.

For example, rather than buy sets, I used to buy loose dice…and you can bet your ass I gave them a test drive before buying them. I’d take a die out of the case, roll it on the counter, and if it came up on a natural 20, it was a definite buy, even if I was on the fence previously about the way it looked. If I got a middle-of-the-road roll, it was a ‘normal’ die and I’d buy it if I liked it. If it came up on a natural 1…it was cursed and went back in the box.

Heh. It’s like Harry Potter buying a wand: “The die chooses the gamer, Mr. Potter.

Like I said, there are various schools of thought and levels of insanity, from players who don’t care to players who will throw a shit-fit if you so much as touch their dice. I once played a one-shot at a gaming store where a guy completely flipped out because someone touched the DM’s dice and theirs at the same time.

He seriously held up the game while he went to the front of the store to buy new dice, and then argued that the other guy owed him for them, because he’d cursed his old ones.

Anyway, here are some basic rules that will put you in good stead:

1) Don’t touch another player’s dice unless he/she deliberately hands them to you, even if you’re touching it to stop it rolling off the table.

2) NEVER touch the DM’s dice, no matter what.

3) Gamers be crazy.

4) Everyone thinks this is nuts, right up until someone else handles your dice and you have a run of bad luck.

5) You can never have too many dice.