Dice: A Collector's Rant.

Photo from http://www.gnomestew.com

In the spring of last year, I took up tabletop role playing games. At first, I played FFG's Star Wars RPG with some kids I was helping to babysit. The older one seemed to take to it well, but we had some issues during the story and the younger one bailed out because it was intimidating, which is fair. We moved on to No Thank You Evil, before I moved back to NY. While we did those games, we didn't really worry about dice as the two we played came with them, but I had bought dice in anticipation for more hijinks.

And it wouldn't stop.

I should've known better.

When I was a kid, I played every CCG during the first boom: It started with Overpower (Marvel, then DC) then moved over to Star Trek, then Star Wars, and then onto the granddaddy of them all: Magic The Gathering. I bought as many packs as my occasional $5, $10 and $20 allowances would allow. I was a maniac. To this day, I'll still pick up the bundle for the newest set of Magic, the habit just unwilling to be let go.

And that's to say nothing of my comic collection, my calling card, the way I got into the business. How can you work at a comic shop for 7 years and not: A) read a lot and B) have a huge collection? The answer is you don't, and approximately 100 shortboxes and countless crates later, I may be ready to admit it's time to reconsider my habits. With dice, however, it's different.

CCG's constantly update and produce new cards. Comics are either bi weekly or monthly these days. Dice? You only really need one set if you play D&D or any D20 based games. You need a d4, a d6, a d8, a d10, a d12, a d20 and a percentile die.

Oh, but the options. Luminous die, metal die, aluminum die, different colors, different sizes. Dice tied to an emotion. Dice tied to a character's color scheme or theme.

And then there's the superstition. I currently have in active rotation eight d20 die: black with gold numbering, sparkling red, sparkling orange, translucent blue, translucent teal, a heavy large metal one, a Superman themed and a Batman themed one as well. Before each session, I will roll all of them and remove the lowest performing die one at a time... and choose the top 3. And the Superman and Batman die: they're supposed to be balanced perfectly. The heavy metal one is for my Starfinder game, when I shoot my ship's big cannon.

I recently started watching Geek & Sundry's Critical Role and found a kindred spirit in Laura Bailey, but her dice collection is far larger than mine... and it's entirely possible I will some day have a sizable dice collection, maybe not quite as big as that, but big enough.

Damn you dice....