Even More Dice Lovin'

Carried on from yesterday's article:

My first set of non-standard (read as: not just six-sided) polyhedral dice came in my Moldvay Basic Dungeons & Dragons set in 1981. I didn't know it at the time, but these were apparently uncommon colors for the TSR dice: they were a combination of solid red dice and pink-and-white marbled dice.

Unfortunately, although I still have my first dice, they are tattered and worn, having fallen victim to a poorly conceived dice-bag-as-hacky-sack affair sometime in the mid '80s. I was bummed out, but not distraught over it. I had mostly moved on to playing Top Secret at that time, and I had several other sets of "Dragon Dice" that fared far better in the aforementioned incident and which could take the place of the damaged dice. Also, by then, my first wave of gaming had almost reached its end, and my renewed interest in the hobby wouldn't arrive until the end of the decade - by which time, dice were no longer hard to come by. (And were better made and came in more interesting variations.)

So I never really felt at much of a loss over my D&D dice - until the last several years.

Over the course of the least eight years, I looked every now and then to replace these dice. And although I was able to locate many Basic and Expert sets with their dice sets intact, I was unable to find any like the ones I had originally owned. I hadn't realized when I was in my late teens just how hard it would be to replace the damaged dice. (Isn't that always the way?)

Finally, last year, I found a Moldvay boxed set on eBay with a set of dice that was almost exactly like mine - they were all marbled, unlike my mixed set of solid and marbled dice. But having spent so long looking for a set even close to mine - with no luck whatsoever - I barely hesitated to pay the rather hefty price for the boxed set.

I've now mostly replaced my original set of dice, and that makes me happy.

New dice on the left, original dice on the right
. . . . .

Comments

  1. I love these dice, also called "mud dice", and it is all I use if I can. They are hard to get a hold of now though.

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  2. @adeptgamer: That's interesting - I always thought "mud dice" was a specific reference to the beige versions of the old TSR dice. Thanks!

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