Dice Superstition

[anest1s]

I have a black d20 with white numbers- I can do the impossible with them. But only when I do something I don't really need so succeed doing.
The white d20 with black numbers is not even used, except when I DM. It is a holy dice. My PCs are CE.

A fellow player who always sits next to me has a set of what we call cursed dice. Coal black ice with black numbers. We even have a hard time spotting what he rolled. For like 3 sessions in a row they roll terrible. We even offer him our dice some times. He never accepts. Every 4th session they start rolling critical deaths though. And he doesn't cheat.

 

[Swedish Chef]

Just today I was cursed soundly by my players for dice rolls.

The party had poisoned a well in a small town (they are playing Evil this campaign). They waited a few days and then went to loot the town.

I decided that the process had resulted in a Plague Spewer (MM3 3.5 ED) being created. It attacked the party while they were looting.

The party had actually defeated the PS and were about to finish off a swarm of rats that it had unleashed before dying. The fighter was standing in the swarm. The cleric moves forward and attacks the swarm, rolling a 1. Based on our house rules, and subsequent rolls by the cleric, he winds up hitting the fighter in the swarm. The fighter then attacks the swarm, rolls a 1, and criticals against the cleric, leaving the cleric with 5 hit points.

I look at the third player (running the DuskBlade) and say, "Anything but a 1, and the swarm is dead. Don't be like your companions!"

He rolled a 1. And criticalled the fighter in the swarm, leaving him with 5 hit points as well.

They just about lynched me for that comment.

 

[scourger]

My biggest dice superstition is having a level, contained area in which to roll. It started several years ago with a character death that I attribute to an uneven, cluttered rolling area at someone else's table top. So, that very next week, I bought a dice rolling tray and kept my dice bag inside it in the cardboard box. You may have seen them--a wooden octagon with felt on the bottom. It worked, but it got heavy and cumbersome to unbox everything and then unbag the dice.

The next step has been a wooden box that I found that opens flat. It originally had wine tools in it, but I honestly bought it just for the box. I lined it with self-adhesive felt cut to fit. It is awesome. I keep my dice for a given game in it in my bag. The sounds are muffled by the felt. Then, when it's time to roll, I open the box which lays flat on the table. All my dice are stored on one side and I have a defined rolling area on the other side. I love it.

As a DM, my players hate some of my dice. I have an orange d20 from the Star Wars minis game that has been the bane of one of my players. A bunch of red d6s from a casino scare them, too; especially when we play Savage Worlds with aces (exploding dice).

Lately, on the player side, I've been using all my green dice. Some arrived as a gift that week, which I took as a sign. I put them in the dice box for a St. Patrick's Day game that I ran, and I just left them in the box. They've been rolling really hot for the past few weeks, which is fine with me.

When I kept my dice in bags, I kept them in certain bags. My playing dice were all blue and lived in a white leather shaman's bag from Montana. My DMing dice were kept in a blue canvas bag from a sailmaker in the Bahamas. Both were gifts so each has sentimental value too.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I, myself, don't believe in dice superstitions but my players have built one up with one of the d20s I use for Mutants & Masterminds. Its a fairly large d20, blue and is known as 'Big Blue.' I think the superstition is built up around the idea that they seem to remember every time it rolls a 20 against them but forgets when it rolls poorly.

I do have some fun with it. Though the superstition has built to the point where Big Blue often goes missing on game night . . .