The early days of RPG dice......

[Tuzenbach]

Tell me, who first started making RPG dice? For that matter, did any of the current big dice companies (Crystal Caste or Chessex or Koplow) "evolve" from the companies who originally produced RPG dice, or did the current ones just kind of "happen"?

Also, is anybody aware of any outfit out there that specializes in selling dice from the 70's (i.e., used dice)?

Thanks!

 

[coyote6]

IIRC, the first polyhedral dice were bought from education suppliers -- teachers used the dice for stats or probablilities or some such.

I don't know Crystal Caste, Chessex, or Koplow's histories, though.

 

[RichGreen]

Also, is anybody aware of any outfit out there that specializes in selling dice from the 70's (i.e., used dice)?

Those were the days! When d20s were....... well, they were round because all the corners wore down from rolling on the hard surface of the school playground. And you had to ink the dice yourself with compasses and a fibre tip pen. Or one of those official TSR crayons.

Marvellous!


Cheers



Richard

 

[Henrix]

I am fairly certain that polyhedral dice were available from other places than education supplies, even though that's where TSR got theirs.

I have heard old miniature wargaming grognards from Great Britain refer to them being in use in the sixties, though not, of course for RPGs. I think MiniFigs sold them before '74.

 

[Aaron2]

I have heard old miniature wargaming grognards from Great Britain refer to them being in use in the sixties, though not, of course for RPGs. I think MiniFigs sold them before '74.

The story I heard was that Dave Arneson bought a set of dice while on a trip to England and set about designing rules to use them despite the fact that they were the only such set in the US at the time.


Aaron

 

[Piratecat]

There's an article about this in the 25th anniversary Silver Boxed Set. If I recall correctly, the first polyhedrals were ordered from Europe and Gary et al had to remove an unused die from every box before shipping them out. Eventually they just created a reason for that die (the d12? I don't remember) to be in the game and sent the boxes out whole.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A friend of mine recently ended up with a set of dice from an original blue box he bought used. The dice were still in their little plastic bag, and the official TSR crayon was still in there. So I had the pleasure of explaining to him what the crayon was for and crayoning a few of his dice. Ahhhh...the memories that brought back.

 

[grodog]

The first true high-impact polyhedrals were created by Lou Zocchi of Gamescience fame (he was inducted into the Origins Awards Hall of Fame for his dice---in particular the Zocchihedron d100---and for being the first rpg distributor): previous to Lou's standards for quality control and manufacturing, rpg dice tended to round out over time (especially d20s), to the point that they would roll and roll and roll and roll and....

To the best of my knowledge Lou doesn't have a web site, but he exhibited at GenCon this year, selling his d7s, d5s, etc., as well as the usual suspects

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

To the best of my knowledge Lou doesn't have a web site, but he exhibited at GenCon this year, selling his d7s, d5s, etc., as well as the usual suspects

Lou doesn't have a website, sadly. Which is a shame; I really miss those classic razor edged dice.

 

[Wombat]

I got my first set two years (1973) before I heard of D&D, at the gift shop for the Lawrence Hall of Science. They sold them as "examples of the Platonic solids".

Didn't know exactly what to do with them until I got those Three Little Boosk