Dice, Fate, and Happenstance

There are a few different things about roleplaying in general and D&D in particular that I just love, and dice is one of them. You know you’re really in the club when you have more than one set of dice. Ownership of a 30-sided die is the final nail in the geek coffin -- a coffin I sleep in every day with a big post-braces smile on my face.

One of the great things about teaching people to play D&D is watching them get deeper and deeper into it until they finally become one with the hobby. Jess Lebow, our Magic: The Gathering line editor, was only a casual gamer before the start of the Tegel Campaign. Now he has a big dice collection of his very own, including weird little experimental dice that never stop rolling, and his very own d30. I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me, here’s a picture of Jess’s dice:

But having a big collection of dice is only one part of the D&D experience. Once you’ve played for a while, and become attached to a character in the way the Tegel Campaign players have become attached to their characters, you begin to develop a package of superstitions and delusions regarding the physics, probability, and pre-destination of certain dice.

A long tradition in the D&D community is the transference of anger, guilt, or other negative emotions onto a d20. I myself have flung these high-impact plastic pseudospheres across rooms and out of windows in anger and frustration. Among the Tegel Campaign players, Jess is the one most angry with his dice, as the next photograph demonstrates:

It is important to note that this photograph was merely a recreation for illustrative purposes. When a d20 actually fails Jess, he looks much, much angrier.

As it happens, though, Jess’s dice tend to do reasonably well for him. If anyone should be angry with his dice it’s James Jacobs, the only non-Book Department staff member currently embroiled in the Tegel Campaign. James can’t roll to hit to save his (or, well, his character’s) life. One of his d20s seems to be weighted so that it only rolls a four. This is nice when he’s trying to roll under his Intelligence to figure out how to open a secret door, but in combat it results in his really powerful enchanted halberd causing little more than a gently blowing breeze and a subtle whirring noise in the face of his perplexed and increasingly unimpressed opponents.

Peter Archer has similar problems with dice. His character’s got an enchanted helmet that has a different magic effect every day. If he rolls an even number it’s a bad effect (blindness, a deep sleep, etc.). If he rolls an odd number it’s a really good effect (the ability to fly or shoot lightning bolts out of his eyes, for instance). He’s rolled maybe three odd numbers all together and has slept through more adventures than he’s flown through.

I, on the other hand, roll all of my dice behind my trusty DM screen (pictured above) so I’m free to cheat. And cheat I do.

Phil Athans is a senior editor in Book Publishing at Wizards and the author of the successful novelization Baldur’s Gate. For more about Phil, read his author biography.

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