WotC biffs some D&D history

[Mark CMG]

Shoot, those are nice dice.

Naw. They were all soft (low-impact, I suppose ) in that era and rounded after vigorous use.

 

[Korgoth]

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

I don't have the set anymore, but I do still have my first twenty-sider, expertly colored by yours truly. It's awesome. It's practically a sphere at this point, which means that it just keeps going and going (unless an obstacle or table edge intervenes).

I have a bunch of fancy-shmancy new and improved dice that I use for regular duty. But I'm sure I'll break out Ol' Spherey sometime for a special roll.

 

[Delta]

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

If you look at all the faces on the other dice (Platonic solids) you'll see that they're fully symmetric -- same length sides, same angles all the way around (regular polygons). A face on the d10 has two long sides, two short sides, different angles, etc.

So looking at the 6 dice together, it's kind of like I'm seeing 5 beautiful models and 1 guy with his nose growing on the left side of his face. I'm sensitive to the symmetry that way.

 

[Slife]

If you look at all the faces on the other dice (Platonic solids) you'll see that they're fully symmetric -- same length sides, same angles all the way around (regular polygons). A face on the d10 has two long sides, two short sides, different angles, etc.

So looking at the 6 dice together, it's kind of like I'm seeing 5 beautiful models and 1 guy with his nose growing on the left side of his face. I'm sensitive to the symmetry that way.

Just look at them point on. It'll look better.

 

[lrsach01]

1977, good sir.

Now, I'm not a DnD historian, but the WotC article might be correct. The problems my extend from the use of "Blue Box." Tracy Hickman has told the story several times about his wife buying him the original DnD boxed set in the early 70's. These were called "Blue Books" because they were little more than stapled together mimeographed pages. See wikipedia for more info on mimeographs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph. Any way, the term blue box may have been mistaken but the essentials of the article could be correct.

 

[Ranes]

That's a cute story but I don't buy it. I remember mimeographs (thanks for the link, btw). I even used them to create a science ficition fanzine (were they ever used for anything else?) but I never, ever heard anyone refer to blue books in association with them.

And the article's still in error. It refers to the 'blue book' set as including dice in '74. Even taking your Hickman interpretation into acount, the original boxed sets did not include dice. And, as I pointed out in the earlier thread (link in post 2), the article actually gets the author's name wrong in the byline, which doesn't do much to support its authority.

As for the missing d10, it's true that the original sets didn't have one. The WotC article is accurate on this count. We had a d20 numbered 0-9 twice. We used it as-is for 1-10 (two of them for 1-100) and either used a control die or, as others have point out, different coloured crayons to indicate the +10 faces when we needed 1-20. (And we liked it, etc...)

I wish d20s numbered 0-9 twice were still produced, as I've never cared for the modern d10, it being an imposter, as it were. I have one such d20 left. It's unmarked but high-impact. I lifted it from a long lost copy of ICE's War of the Ring that saw very little use.

 

[Zander]

The article on WotC's site is incorrect in stating that there are no d9s. They're rare but they do exist: Kevin Cook's guide to dice shapes.

 

[Ranes]

Thanks for that, Zander. (I was wondering when you were going to show up. )

 

[buzz]

Now, I'm not a DnD historian, but the WotC article might be correct.

Nope. OD&D was never released as a mimeograph, IIRC, and the article says "box," not "book." "Blue box" also has a specific, existing meaning in terms of BD&D editions. Also, "blue book" would refer to blue exam booklets, which gave us the Aaron-Allston-coined term "bluebooking," i.e., extra-session in-character writing projects.

It's just a simple biff on the writer's part.

 

[Vocenoctum]

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.

I think this is what I had.


I do remember sending in a coupon from Call of Cthulhu (maybe 3rd edition) for a set of dice also. The d20 was 0-9 twice, with one set of numbers having a + on it.