Punishing Your Dice

[TarionzCousin]

When your dice roll poorly, do you punish them?

An old friend of mine got so frustrated with one of his d20's last session that he put it in the woodstove.

For the rest of the evening, before he rolled to hit with a different d20, he would turn and show the die to the woodstove and say "See? Do you want some of that or not?!?"

His die-rolling improved substantially.



He retrieved the die from the stove after about an hour. One of the corners had melted off.

It is now a d21.

 

[Crothian]

I use peer presure. If one die acts up they all get punished. So that way the other dice keep the bad ones in line.

 

[Hjorimir]

Back in the 80s we used to toss change into our die bags to appease the pagan die gods for good luck. Today I just fire my dice when they roll poorly (by announcing "you're fired" and then tossing them back into my die box to place them on timeout.

I don't actually believe in any of this stuff, but my players chuckle so it's worth doing it.

 

[falcarrion]

The bad dice get tossed in the freezer until I think they have learned there lesson.
Real bad dice that continue to misbehave, suffer the vise of death.

gives me a reason to buy new dice.

 

[stonegod]

One of my gamer friends punished her dice by freezing them. Left one in my freezer for three months after forgetting it. Have to ask if it rolled better....

 

[korjik]

If I start rolling badly enough, I get all the dice together, then take a hammer to the offender. Dosent help to have capital punishment if there are no witnesses.

I got to be pretty notorious at the local game store. It got to the point that when I went to the front of the store to get the hammer, I would have a human audience also

 

[MonkeyDragon]

Dice not currently being used are trained by sitting in a neat row, 20s up.

Bad dice generally get a warning or two before being placed in time out in the dice bag, and then other dice get to play.

REALLY bad dice go in the freezer. There's an ice cube tray for that very purpose. Our primary DM has had one bad d20 in there for a solid year.

 

[Wycen]

I find all these mentions of dice in freezers fascinating. Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, wrote in his collection of divine providences, named appropriately enough An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences about Robert Boyle, founder of the Royal Society of London, and other natural philosophers' experiments and observations with loadstones, first heating them up and then freezing them to note the change in properties.

So, I heartily encourage more dice to be frozen and fired up in the traditions of old scientists.

 

[arscott]

See, I make the best of a bad situation by swapping dice with the GM when he isn't looking. That way, either the monsters start rolling terribly, or I've encouraged my dice to roll well again (and subsequently steal them back)

 

[jbear]

I prefer positive reinforcement.

Love your dice, be nice to them, and they'll love you back.

Really though, I think the trick is believeing that whatever you have done to change the bad series of rolls, is going to work. The power of positive thought. There is nothing more likely to result in a poor roll, than fearing you're going to roll suck again. Probably difficult to prove mathematically, but it works for me.