WotC biffs some D&D history

[Varianor Abroad]

Good question. I remember that the d10 came out later, but not when. Someone more knowledgeable will no doubt fill us in.

 

[rgard]

Shoot, those are nice dice. I never saw a set from that era that had multi-colored dice or pre-colored in numbers. All of my sets had cheap blue dice and a crayon. I still have the dice, but they don't get much use.

You're also missing a d10. Did TSR get cheap later, and go to lower quality dice without painted numbers, but added the d10?

I think we were to use the d20 as the d10. The d20 was numbered 0 to 9 twice. The worst die in my blue box set was the d12. One face had a huge outward bulge and you couldn't roll 12 as a result.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Ranger REG]

Were they the soft green ones? (from the Basic Set?)

They were of different colors, if my memory serves correctly. My Basic Set has Elmore's artwork (a loin-cloth wearing barbarian facing a dragon).

 

[Delta]

You're also missing a d10. Did TSR get cheap later, and go to lower quality dice without painted numbers, but added the d10?

d10's weren't invented yet. You'll notice the other dice are based on the classic Platonic solids ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solids ), which is what inspired polyhedral dice in the first place.

As mentioned above, at the time your d20's were dual-purposed: they had labels 0-9 in black, and 0-9 in red. 0 counts as 10. If rolling d20: add +10 if red. If rolling percentile, as shown. Only later did they invent a specific new shape for d10's.

As a mathemetician, the shape of d10's still sort of bothers me, actually.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Chits were little numbered pieces of card used to generate random numbers when TSR suffered from a shortage of these babies.

Gary has said the chits were the result of the Blumes going cheap.

 

[T. Foster]

The dice sets you could order directly from TSR in the 70s (and which were included in Holmes Basic Sets before they went over to the chits, and early Gamma World sets too, I believe) had 5 dice (no d10, d20 numbered 0-9 twice), were pre-inked, and in my experience always came in the exact same color-scheme -- yellow d4, orange d6, green d8, blue d12, white d20 -- though some folks have reported dice in other colors than these (and, of course dice not sold by TSR came in different colors as well). You could also buy "percentile dice" sets of 2 d20s -- one white, one pink -- these dice were also included in Boot Hill and Top Secret, IIRC. These dice have great old-school nostalgia cachet (and I own several sets, both sealed in their bags and opened for use) but as dice they're really terrible -- very sloppily molded, with obvious flaws and biases, and made of cheap soft plastic that easily chips apart (probably a good thing for the d4, since otherwise they were dangerously sharp, but not so much for the d20, which would quickly become a virtual ball that would roll around the table forever before stopping).

Later, around the time of the Moldvay Basic Set, TSR switched to a different style of dice -- 6 dice (d10 included, and d20 numbered 1-20), smaller, not inked, and packaged with a crayon for coloring in the numbers. These came in various different colors and it seems to have been completely random what colors were in any given set -- I've seen red dice, green dice, orange dice, brown dice, yellow dice, light blue dice, and dark blue dice, and I've seen sets where all the dice were the same color, and sets where 2 or 3 different colors were mixed. Games that included 2d10 percentile dice (such as Star Frontiers and Marvel Superheroes) always seemed to include one red die, though the other one might be any other color. These dice were also available for sale separately from the boxed sets as "Dragon Dice" (though I can't imagine why anyone would have bought them, since by this time it was possible to get much better quality dice from other manufacturers for only a bit more). These dice were more uniformly molded than the earlier dice, without the obvious flaws and defects, but they were still made from cheap, flaky plastic.

In the later 80s I believe TSR switched over again to higher quality pre-inked dice for their boxed sets, but I never owned any of those myself, and am just going from vague memories.

 

[Arkhandus]

Only later did they invent a specific new shape for d10's.

As a mathemetician, the shape of d10's still sort of bothers me, actually.

How/why is that, exactly? I'm curious.

 

[Ranger REG]

In the later 80s I believe TSR switched over again to higher quality pre-inked dice for their boxed sets, but I never owned any of those myself, and am just going from vague memories.

Yeah. I bought mine early 80's, so I had to color my numbers in with the provided crayon.

 

[Galethorn]

How/why is that, exactly? I'm curious.

(Even though I'm not the one you were asking), all of the dice other than the d10 are platonic solids; they're made up entirely of equilateral shapes (perfect triangles, squares, and pentagons respectively), a trait the d10 does not share.

 

[Ranes]

Gary has said the chits were the result of the Blumes going cheap.

Then I'll take him at his word. What I'd heard, TSR encountering a shortage of these, is not entirely incompatible with Gary's explanation. Anyway, thanks. I appreciate the info.