I’m sure everyone who reads this who has gamed for many years has a ton of D6’s. They are the most common of the die, and us gamers tend to bleed off the dice from board games like Monopoly into our RPG dice collection as time goes by.
Towards the end of my 90’s campaigns, I was running a lot of Champions in addition to my AD&D and Cthulhu games. As a matter of fact, I think the very last game I ran before my several-year semi-retirement was in 2000, and it was Champions.
Champions uses D6’s for damage. Sometimes LOTS of D6’s. If you have somebody like Galactus show up, you can bet your ass you will be a living black hole, gathering up every single D6 you and your players can possibly muster from dice bags and backpack pouches. A dice roll including upwards of 50 dice was not out of the question when the big boys were playing on the board (although I have to admit, I usually preferred the street level games with more down-to-earth heroes and a lot less D6 rolling).
So for several years after that, my dice bag, a big sock really, sat with some D20’s, D4’s, D8’s etc and a big honking shit load of D6’s. Probably around 60 of them in there.
No big deal really, but when I started a new AD&D campaign last year, I just toted along the same bag with all the same dice in it. So each game, when I needed to roll a D20 or what-not, I had to grabby grab and hope I got lucky, or pour alllllllll those dice out on the table and sort through for what I needed. This pain in the ass continued on into this year, and even into a Star Wars KOTOR game I am running for another group. Players just sat there with mouth agape as I yanked out handfuls of D6 hoping to find a 20 amongst them. Often after a few moments a disgusted player would toss his D20 at me “use this, dude.”
Why didn’t I just eliminate all but 5 or 6 of them (let’s face it, for D&D you don’t really need more than 4 or 5 D6 max)? Well, when I had some kobolds attack the other month, and ran out of goblin-size miniatures, those D6’s came in damn handy to represent the little bastards. Not only that, I had them with 3-6 hit points, and you can actually face-up the dice with the appropriate number of points, and if the thing gets hit and lives, you just turn it to the number of hit points it has left! Genius!
Still, I guess it would behoove me to maybe at least put the 6’s in their own bag. But somehow, in some twisted way, I think I am getting used to having a gagillion D6’s in the bag. Let’s face it, as soon as I don’t have them I might need them for something. Maybe Tiamet will show up and blast the party with 50 dice worth of breath weapon. It could happen.
Need at least 10d6 for fireballs and such. Personally I keep 20 of them on hand at all times for big fireballs and such.
ReplyDeleteI still cherish my D6's above all other dice and indeed I have about 3 times as many as I do all the other types combined. I'm a big fan of systems that only use 6's such as Champions, D6 Star Wars, Traveller, Faery's Tale Deluxe, InSpectres, Mouse Guard...
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Barking Alien
there can never be too many d6. I got to roll 18d6 last night all at once for a fireball and the look in the players faces was great, it was even funnier when they all realized they survived.
ReplyDeleteOh man, I forgot all about fireballs, lightening bolts, and dragon breath. Now that the characters in my game are hitting 7th level, I guess I better keep more than 5 or 6 of those dice.
ReplyDeleteI stole the clear red six sided dice that the attacker uses from my Risk game and they are what I always use when rolling up attributes. Dunno why, just tradition. I always keep at least 20 d6 in my dice bag, as I have players roll double damage dice with a critical hit and the higher end plasma rifles in my Mutant Future campaign do 10d6 damage.
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