I used "Lab Markers" - archival quality permanent acid-free markers. Had them in red and black.
Dice
- Thread starter Supplement Four
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I used "Lab Markers" - archival quality permanent acid-free markers. Had them in red and black.
saundby
SOC-14 1K
Crayons came after I had all the cheap TSR Basic Set polyhedrals I could ever use. Mine came with black numbers, mostly, but some came with no paint.
I started with pilot "razor point" permanent markers in red, green, and black. It needed renewing about once a year.
I tried enamels and Polly-S water-based paints on them, which chipped off in about 6 months.
I finally went with epoxy-based paints when I went to work for an electronics house that built and labelled their own components (using the epoxy paints). Most of those still have their colors from 1981, in spite of the best attempts of the sharp-edged d8s stored with them.
In fact, I need to give my newer dice the same treatment.
OK, who here remembers playing D&D before polyhedrals were added to the game? My original D&D dice were some small d6s that came with Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
I started with pilot "razor point" permanent markers in red, green, and black. It needed renewing about once a year.
I tried enamels and Polly-S water-based paints on them, which chipped off in about 6 months.
I finally went with epoxy-based paints when I went to work for an electronics house that built and labelled their own components (using the epoxy paints). Most of those still have their colors from 1981, in spite of the best attempts of the sharp-edged d8s stored with them.
In fact, I need to give my newer dice the same treatment.
OK, who here remembers playing D&D before polyhedrals were added to the game? My original D&D dice were some small d6s that came with Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
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spinwardpirate
SOC-13
They put dice in D&D? When did they start doing that?!?! 
Practically all of my early d6s came from the family Yahtzee game. The flaky plastic polys I either bought via mail, or picked up at The Compleat Strategist in Baltimore city.
Did EPT come with dice? Or Gamma World? If not, then I would guess they first game I bought that included dice would be Chaosium's Ringworld.
Practically all of my early d6s came from the family Yahtzee game. The flaky plastic polys I either bought via mail, or picked up at The Compleat Strategist in Baltimore city.
Did EPT come with dice? Or Gamma World? If not, then I would guess they first game I bought that included dice would be Chaosium's Ringworld.
I'm not sure "added to the game" is accurate, unless you're talking about pre-D&D campaigns such as Dave Arneson's Blackmoor game.
While the original D&D from 1974 didn't come with dice, the rules were all written assuming that you had them (although many parts of the game were designed to use d6's). The 1974 D&D rules came with two versions of combat, one using the Chainmail miniatures game (all d6's) and one using d20's (the one that continues today). But even the first printing of D&D suggested poly dice in the "reccommended equipment" (p.5 of Men&Magic). I know that I was playing with poly dice as early as 1975.
For a while they had cardboard "chits" as randomizers (as used in older wargames) but I think that was later with the "Holmes" edition of Basic D&D.
I believe that all of TSR's boxed set games after OD&D came with dice, so yes you probably got some with both EPT and GW. (However, I just looked at my '75 EPT boxed set and I don't see a list of contents, so my memory may be wrong. I believe it came with 2 d20's -- one white and one pink.)
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The boxed "Basic D&D" set had them - really crappy ones, too. I had the original white boxed little tan books and my original dice were swiped from my wargame boxes and bought separately. I remember the polyhedrals were so exotic that in '76 I felt like I was entering some exclusive club or something.
People would ask - "How do you ever roll a 4-sided die?"
Now it's just normal pop culture.
People would ask - "How do you ever roll a 4-sided die?"
Now it's just normal pop culture.
Yellow d4, orange d6, green d8, blue d12, white d20. I'd love to have a set just like this, only in the high quality dice found today. Hmmmm. Maybe I should start searching....
C&C Whitebox has a set like this... Wait... might not be the exact same colors... Mine's red d4, gree d6, blue d8, orange d10, yellow d12, and purple d20...
spinwardpirate
SOC-13
I just looked in my EPT box, and found this!
I suppose this was the advert on the back of the box, held in place by the shrinkwrap when new. So it seems the answer is no.
spinwardpirate
SOC-13
Yep, that's them awright! In the D&D game I ran back at the beginning of the year, one of the players brought his set. Mine are around here somewhere.
Really? Yours has pretty colors?
My C&C Whitebox sets (one numbered, one not) don't have pretty colored dice at all, but some really ugly blue and orange soft plastic ones. (One of the sets is all two colors, the other has a cream one and green one mixed in, but none of the dice are at all nice.)
yep... hard-edge, uninked dice
Finarvyn,
Randomizer chits... ugh, did that bring back memories...
SPI used them for years in their ziploc, folio, and even boxed wargames.
We used them very early on for D&D too, at least until someone was able to find poly-sided dice which were then treated with great care.
Regards,
Bill
Randomizer chits... ugh, did that bring back memories...
SPI used them for years in their ziploc, folio, and even boxed wargames.
Ugly memories indeed, ...of a tank platoon in the middle of some convoy suddenly driving off at some random direction in Panzer '44 due to wacky random C&C rules.
saundby
SOC-14 1K
I guess you're right, as I recall now the "Alternate Combat System" used them in the books when they got published, which uses d20s. It wasn't until Greyhawk that there was a stated use for any other dice (optional rules for variable weapon damage). Our group didn't start using polys at all until well after Greyhawk--about the time Blackmoor came out, it was all d6's for us. We'd used Chainmail for combat, as in the rules.
Certainly the polys weren't required for the original.
Anyway, added to the game was my perception, but the group I was with started before the rules were published, too. We started in '73 from photocopies of GG's notes. I forgot he mentioned them in the first books. But at that, I don't recall the polys being listed in the Recommended Equipment originally, I think that got added later. Unfortunately, my books from the wood grain boxes fell to pieces many, many years ago and the loose leaves were cut up fr reference sheets that got tossed when I made better ones out of loose sheets from a later set of white box books that came to pieces, so I can't check on it. I remember the original list as saying just "dice" or "lots of dice."
You'll note that outside of the Alternate Combat System the rules simply refer to "dice". This is because of the assumption they'd just be ordinary dice (d6s.)
So yeah, I guess "added to the game" may be technically inaccurate. But aside from optional rules there were no polys needed in the original game--it was straight d6s.
For those who read me as saying the dice were included in the box, that's not what I meant by "added to the game," I'm sorry if that was unclear.
I did mention the awful dice that were included in the original Holmes Basic Set. Originally they just had the dice with blacked-in numbers that lost the black easily. Some a bit later had no coloring in the number depressions. The first I heard of the crayons was the Moldvay Basic set, though they may have appeared earlier. *shrug* I never bought, got or traded for one of those sets. I bought one Holmes set, and had others give me the dice out of theirs since they already had better dice. so I know a bit about what came out of those boxes in the first couple of years.
You wouldn't still have these, would you? I've been looking for pre-'74 notes for a long time and so far all of my leads have been dead ends.
I have great numbers of dice for a reason! Usually I play with newer players who haven't gotten their own dice so over the years I got enough dice for 7 people playing D&D spellcasters. And I keep it all in an old hamster ball! I call it "The Orb of Dice" or "Orb of Plastic Rainbow".
saundby
SOC-14 1K
No, I've been trying to get ahold of my former ref to see if he still has them.
Here are some highlights from memory:
There was a thief class (my first char was a thief.) Thief task resolution was based on 1d6 and 2d6 rolls, no percentiles.
Very little different for other classes, except low level mages seemed a bit more powerful. Part of that really didn't go away until different hit dice by class and differential weapon damage came into the game after publication. After all, mages originally had a d6 hit die like everyone else, and a dagger did 1d6 damage like all hand weapons, it just struck last because of its strike rank (from being such a short weapon.)
Races didn't have class level limits that I recall, just some class restrictions (no dorf mages, no elf clerics.) Hobbits were there (my first char was also a hobbit.)
There were some general rules for representing creatures as D&D monsters, with tips on buying minis by going to the five and dime to get sacks of kid's plastic critters.
Most of the rest escapes me. My main shock on opening the published rules was no thieves, no hobbits, and gimped non-humans otherwise. Because of that we drug our feet on moving to the published rules in our group. When Greyhawk came out, I was surprised by the percentile-based redesign of the thief. Low level thieves seemed weaker, and high level thieves a lot stronger. I rolled a character up on the Cugel the Clever mold using the new thief class (Cugel was one of the stated inspirations for the class, along with the Grey Mouser), but I was never happy with how he played so I did a last glorious act of defiance and rolled up a cleric.
Thanks for the highlights. Certainly having the thief in the rules before the white box was published is unusual, and the first I'd heard of this.
ThunderChilde
SOC-13
My first polys came in a boxed Ad&d package. d6 had been raided from yatzee and other games. My first D&d experience was Chanmail by the way.
AD&D at summer camp and Traveller in the fall of 77. My first polys got so rounded off it wasn't funny.
Has anyone else expreinced Dice Migration? Going to a Con, keeping your dice infront of of you and still come home to find strange dice in your bag and a some missing friends?
I lost a favorite d10 at a CyberPunk 2013 game demo at GenCon East and got it back 3 years later at Balticon. I'd used a very special epoxy paint I got from a friends dad who worked at DuPont. The odds were way long on getting my die back, I still have it. A sharp edged clear red inked die that I carefully emoved the sprue marks from. That die dates from 82-83
enough rambling
AD&D at summer camp and Traveller in the fall of 77. My first polys got so rounded off it wasn't funny.
Has anyone else expreinced Dice Migration? Going to a Con, keeping your dice infront of of you and still come home to find strange dice in your bag and a some missing friends?
I lost a favorite d10 at a CyberPunk 2013 game demo at GenCon East and got it back 3 years later at Balticon. I'd used a very special epoxy paint I got from a friends dad who worked at DuPont. The odds were way long on getting my die back, I still have it. A sharp edged clear red inked die that I carefully emoved the sprue marks from. That die dates from 82-83
enough rambling
