For as long as I can remember, I and my fellow tabletop gamers have argued that it is not possible to have too many dice. It is known. This is The Way. It is only logical. Yabba dabba doo. And so on.
What I think we may have meant is, it is not possible to acquire more dice than any one of us would be happy to own. Obviously, if you can’t open your front door, you have too many dice. But how many dice tips it over from “this is cool” into “dude, you are a hoarder, but for dice” is unknown.
So about 10 years ago, I began a project to find out if it is possible for me to reach a point where I thought, “No, I don’t need that. I have enough dice.” Over the decade, people have given me various amounts of dice at conventions and personal appearances to support my research. (It’s been awesome to receive dice that come with stories of heroic battles, Wheatonesque probability breaking, dice that are almost as old as I am, dice from special events, OG color-them-in dice, and so many others.)
In addition to accepting these contributions, I pick up sets of dice the way I always have. The annual GenCon dice set, for instance, or the occasional “OH WOW THAT IS SHINY I MUST HAVE IT AND THREE OTHERS JUST LIKE IT BECAUSE OF REASONS” purchase from a game shop or random vendor.
Since the project began, I estimate I have collected a few thousand dice. Maybe around five thousand? I haven’t looked too closely because this is one of those very scientific studies that are about vibes, not numbers. These studies are very popular among think tanks.
The study remains ongoing. I did a vibe check this morning, and again just now. After measuring the vibes, I do not yet have too many dice. Looking to the future of the study, I suspect I could have two or three times this many dice, and still feel like there was room for more. If I acquire dice for the rest of my life at the rate I have acquired them the last decade, I will likely approach some value of “okay, maybe this has gotten out of hand” around 2060.
But now that I have all these dice, what do I actually do with them? Mostly, I just look at them and think about all the games they represent, all the hours of collaborative storytelling and strategizing, all the time spent around tables making memories with friends. I feel good about my game room being the place these dice live, now. I mean, from one point of view, it’s all just hunks of resin or metal, right? From another, though … I don’t have to tell you. You get it. For me, it’s humbling, and it’s an honor, to sort of keep watch over these polyhedral symbols of time well spent and remembered.
Okay, that’s nice, Wil, but what do you do with them? Looking at them isn’t doing anything.
Sometimes, I pull out a couple fistfuls and see how badly I roll random dice when there is nothing at stake (quite badly, as it turns out). If someone needs dice for some reason, I pull out what they need and let them keep it. It’s a version of paying (rolling) it forward.
Last week, though, I found something new (and obvious) to actually, physically, deliberately do with them. I was playing Galaxian in my arcade, and I had this idea to sort some dice into shapes and colors, and then use them to lay out a simple 8-bit sprite. (I had this fun idea about stop motion animation that keeps pitching itself to me. It’s getting a lot of support in the room, but I’m not sure it can pass a full vote.)
Because it’s what I’d been playing, and because it’s incredibly simple, I assembled a Galaxian guy, and I gotta tell you that I really, really like how it turned out.
My next attempt will be a slightly more complex sprite. It’s bigger, with four colors, and if it works … well, maybe I’m gonna make a lot of these things. I guess we’ll see.
I sometimes roll a set in the morning to see what kind of potential the day has.
I can see it now. The birth of an entire new art form – Dice Art. Take a photo or graphic and digitize it into 16 bit color and construct it with dice. Epoxy it to a nice piece of laminate and viola! (cello?) You have your next holiday gift for a loved one or friend that might appreciate it. And if they don’t, tell them their mother is a gelatinous cube.
Thanks for sharing the role of dice in your life. That’s a cool thing.
I think I have Enough Dice. (Enough Dice = one gallon ziploc bag.) I could get more, but when offered the opportunity, I usually say to myself, “no, I have Enough Dice.” And I’m cool with that. I’m at peace with that. If I got more dice, that would be okay, too.
My favorite dice are the percentiles I bought when I was first learning D&D first edition white box. But I play 5e with the metal dice that the family gave me for Christmas. Those are also my favorite dice.
It helps that dice are quite small and lightweight, as well as shelf-stable and generally low-maintenance. If you were collecting, for example, credenzas or cannonballs or cheese, you would probably reach the breaking point much sooner.
Genuinely love this little guy (big Galaga/Galaxian fan as a kid), and might I say that a Nick Nocturne / Night Mind dice creature would be excellent as a later project.
My favorite dice are related theater and gambling, not gaming, “I had the spots taken off for luck. But I remember where the spots formerly were.” [I adjusted a pair of standard ones while working crew on a production of the show]
Wil,
For a charity event, you could fill a gallon jar with dice. Instead of guessing how many dice are in the jar, sell guesses as to the total on the dice when they are dumped out.
Wow. I have no dice. I should get some dice.
You might enjoy this and the following handful of pages of this old webcomic.
Here there are rules for a game, where you actually need several hundreds of dice.
https://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=196
Hi Wil, just in case someone ever tells you that there IS a limit to own dices… check this out: I own a game created in the 70s and not sold any longer. You can find it on the Bay. It is called “Le Jeu, the Game, das Spiel” and it comes with 281 (!) dices. https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/das-spiel-le-jeu-the-game-el-juego/2401311071-23-3057
Does the dice curse transfer? Or do you do a few little cleansing cantrips before passing them on?
My gaming group has a communal dice chest. We’ve all added to it over the years, I’d estimate a modest collection of 150-200 pieces. We take turns as its keeper. During one stretch where we all went out into the world to build our lives, it lived with me for five years. I didn’t do much with them, but they did occasionally see the light of day.
It’s been a while, I might ask to have it back.
OMG I want to dry-hump that Tron game.
On a less problematic note, I don’t have 5,000 dice, but I do still have my original 4- and 8-sided dice from the 1978 D&D Basic Set I got for (Xmas? my birthday? something) that year. My first character was Torko, a Dwarven Fighter. He died to a Minotaur in the Caves of Chaos. My second character I played for 10 years before discovering GURPS, Paranoia, Lords of Creation, Villains and Vigilantes, Traveler, ad infinitum, ad funnium.
Wow. If there’s an afterlife where I get to go back and play RPGs with my friends… I’d probably pass. We were all white male teenagers in the 1980s, almost certainly bigoted in numerous ways, and probably nowhere near as funny as I remember. I’ll still take the laughter, though. So much of that.
Oooh! I like that dice-guess idea @B. Monte. A combination of visual-spatial estimation, combinatorics, and Wheaton escotericism.