My friend sent me these dice from the London Science Museum. Each one is a d6 inside a d6 and, as can be seen, they roll independently of each other so you get a 2d6 roll with each die. I guess they’d be very useful for backgammon, but they could make high-level fireballs a little easier to roll as well.
They also solve the eternal conundrum of the RPG pedant everywhere. One of these babies is clearly “a dice,” while more than one are clearly “dices.” So, no more nitpicking with your friends over pronunciation.
As an aside, one of my players was particularly fanatical about this pronunciation (he was, unsurprisingly, German) which led to this amusing conversation between said player (let’s call him “German Pedant,” aka GP) and another player (“the bastard”) who likes to stir him up over this:
- The bastard [with a sly look at GP]: GP, could you pass me a dice please
- GP [fuming, through gritted teeth]: how many dice would you like, Mr. Bastard?
- The bastard: I don’t care, so long as I can have at least one dice.
No such ribbing would be possible if every die was a dice, and all dice were dices. Who can fault such technological workarounds? I wonder if they could do the same thing with d10s? Then one really could roll a 100-sided dice.
November 19, 2011 at 7:54 pm
It’d be great if you could get d20 with d6, or d8 instead, and use them for attacks: to hit and damage rolls all-in-one 🙂
November 19, 2011 at 9:38 pm
someone should design an app for this, maybe using html-style or latex-style code. So you type “/d20d8” and get the die roll for hit and damage.
Maybe *I* should design this app. I’d probably make at least $3!