Post by Malcadon on Jan 8, 2017 23:13:50 GMT
I have to make note about the dice used in the '70s. As D&D was the product of the wargaming culture of the 60s and 70s, it and the early games that came of it assumed that players were also apart of that culture, and as a result, they would make use of specialized dice and terms that fell into obscurity over the years.
In the early years of role-playing, the commonly available twenty-sided dice used in the games were actually d10s, numbered 0-9 twice. Each pair of numbers were colored differently (or sometimes with a "+" next to half the numbers), so if you wanted to use in as an actual d20, you'll set one set of color "as is" (1-10) and the other as "plus ten" (1-10 +10 resulting in 11-20), or have both sets "as is" for a d10. This crops-up in a number of older rules that tells players/referees to "roll 2d20" as a percentile roll — you roll both dice "as is", with one die counting as "times ten" as with a standard d00 roll. Some rules are good enough to note that in the "how-to-play" area of the book, but others just assume you'll know.
It should be noted that early D&D rules (and a number of the early imitators) only used three types of rolls: xd6, d20 and d00. The twenty-sided d10s were used for the last two rolls. The use of the d4, d8, d6 (with numbers in place of pips), d10* and d12 came from a deal with a third-party dice company to provide d20s for the box sets, so TSR had to find a way to fit those dice into the game. (Although, this plan fell apart as they ran out dice for the latter "blue box" sets, so they end-up putting in numbered draw-from-a-cup cardboard chits, and dice that normally comes with the set are shitty as fuck!)
I must make note of this one, in case you run into it while looking through old-school RPG documents. There is an ironically named die called the "average die" that is anything but. This type of die is so rare in RPGs, as it was made specifically for wargaming, so it was only used in one RPG (but for the life of me, I cant remember). A "average die" is a d6 marked as: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 and 5. This is meant to be rolled as a set, and focused at producing average results (3s and 4s) without the extremes (1s and 6s). So, if you roll 3d6 with this set of dice, you'll get a result of 6 to 15, but with a vary high consideration of 9 to 12 (although, this could be ideal for rolling-up ability scores for fairly typical NPCs, like henchmen and the like).
*the current "pentagonal trapezohedron"/"deltohedron" shaped d10 dice most gamers are used to.
In the early years of role-playing, the commonly available twenty-sided dice used in the games were actually d10s, numbered 0-9 twice. Each pair of numbers were colored differently (or sometimes with a "+" next to half the numbers), so if you wanted to use in as an actual d20, you'll set one set of color "as is" (1-10) and the other as "plus ten" (1-10 +10 resulting in 11-20), or have both sets "as is" for a d10. This crops-up in a number of older rules that tells players/referees to "roll 2d20" as a percentile roll — you roll both dice "as is", with one die counting as "times ten" as with a standard d00 roll. Some rules are good enough to note that in the "how-to-play" area of the book, but others just assume you'll know.
It should be noted that early D&D rules (and a number of the early imitators) only used three types of rolls: xd6, d20 and d00. The twenty-sided d10s were used for the last two rolls. The use of the d4, d8, d6 (with numbers in place of pips), d10* and d12 came from a deal with a third-party dice company to provide d20s for the box sets, so TSR had to find a way to fit those dice into the game. (Although, this plan fell apart as they ran out dice for the latter "blue box" sets, so they end-up putting in numbered draw-from-a-cup cardboard chits, and dice that normally comes with the set are shitty as fuck!)
I must make note of this one, in case you run into it while looking through old-school RPG documents. There is an ironically named die called the "average die" that is anything but. This type of die is so rare in RPGs, as it was made specifically for wargaming, so it was only used in one RPG (but for the life of me, I cant remember). A "average die" is a d6 marked as: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 and 5. This is meant to be rolled as a set, and focused at producing average results (3s and 4s) without the extremes (1s and 6s). So, if you roll 3d6 with this set of dice, you'll get a result of 6 to 15, but with a vary high consideration of 9 to 12 (although, this could be ideal for rolling-up ability scores for fairly typical NPCs, like henchmen and the like).
*the current "pentagonal trapezohedron"/"deltohedron" shaped d10 dice most gamers are used to.
