Day 13: Sunday Morning Coffee and Chit Chat #2

Mr, Keurig ready for Halloween gamers

     Ahhhh….my coffee tastes extra good this morning. We joined everyone else and bought a Keurig yesterday.  They were on sale at Costco. It came with 60 K-Cups so I am set for a while. I say I am set because I am the only coffee drinker. I think there will be a lot of hot chocolate and apple cider made this Winter. Hopefully a lot of games will be played along with drinking coffee and hot chocolate! Well, today’s topic is not coffee. It is about one of my absolute favorite things…DICE!

Besides being key in many games, dice are just plain cool. I like the different sides and how they look just laying in a pile! I keep trying to think of ways to decorate with dice. We have two distinct dice memories. The first year we went to GenCon, a national gaming convention, we saw the dice vendors. Travis (10 at the time) and I were mesmerized! There was section after section of dice. Any color combination you can imagine. They were also any size! From teeny weeny to about the size of a baseball! There was even a huge bin filled with dice and you could buy either a mug or pitcher full! Another memory was just last year at a local gaming convention, MACE. There was a vendor who had a big old timey gum ball machine converted to a dice machine! Yes, you put in .50 and turned the knob and you could get anywhere from 1 to 5 dice! So much fun! It was our equivalent to playing the slot machines in Vegas! It was so much fun to hover around each other and then the excitement when the flap was raised and out poured dice!

     Besides having a lot of dice laying around, we have personal sets of dice. There are seven dice in a set. Each die has a different number of sides. They are:

Our family dice sets

     Four sided – d4
     Six sided – d6
     Eight sided – d8
     Ten sided – d10 (x2)
     Twelve sided – d12
     Twenty – d20

    When playing different games the dice determine if you defeat a monster, gain a treasure, explore an area, or any number of other possibilities. The dice are also used in determining how strong, wise, agile, or other characteristics your character may have. Example, in the game we are currently playing I am a barbarian and my strength is a d12 + 2. That means whenever I come across a situation in the game and I need to test or use my strength I roll a 12 sided die and add 2 to whatever I rolled. Now my wisdom is a d4 so…not so smart. I usually fail those checks 🙁  I used to think how can people remember all the dice and what to roll. Never fear there are cards with everything written out for you.

     There are so many games with dice as a main feature. Tomorrow I am going to talk about some of our favorite dice games!