Just when you thought you had enough dice in your bag ... Harley abuses his powers for evil.
Way, way back in the lost history of RPGs, a man named Louis Zocchi created the Zocchihedron, better know as the 100 sided die. I had the honor of meeting Lou at GenCon, where he gave me a bag of his dice --- though none that I could recognize. He's made d3, d5, d7, d16, d24, and 100, all statistically accurate. (Haven't tested that claim out myself. Buyers beware.)
Lou is something of a legend amongst the older designers. He shows up to all the conventions, but hasn't moved on to the web yet. To buy dice from Lou, you have to find Lou.
Sure, you're thinking, I'd love to help out a guy that was around when the first D&D booklets were being hand assembled in a basement in Lake Geneva. But what's the point? Some games call for a number in the 1-3 range, but I don't know of any that call for 1-5 or 1-7. ("What day of the week is it? "Roll 1d7!")
But wait. You and I write games.
Muhahahaha.
Expect an adventure soon calling for a 1d7.
//H
7 comments:
"Roll 2d8?"
"Roll 2d12+2? Who's got that kind of time? That's an entire extra shake of cupped hands before you throw down."
"What if I want to make a 4th level Wizard? I actually have to find 4d4 just to calculate my hitpoints?"
Lou* is a man ahead of his time. Gamers are a busy, schedule driven-lot. They need to be able to quickly move from Pen and Paper to LARP to MMORPG, and they certainly can't afford to be weighted down with extraneous dice bags.
1d7?
-- Days of the week.
-- Number of fingers lost while handling that vorpal blade.
-- Number of extra limbs grown after drinking that cursed potion.
~ J.L. Collins ~
www.jl-collins.com
*Post author claims no actually knowledge of, relationship with, or association with Louis Zocchi.
All future posts by post author should be considered the result of paranoia and emotional distress due to Pen and Paper gaming withdrawal.
"Behold!"
:) :) :)
~Tank
I actually have a d100, though it's for novelty, rather than actual use. Mostly because I'm afraid: waiting for that thing to finish rolling is tense, I'll tell you that. :)
Other suggested uses:
d3 - Well, that's obvious
d5 -
- Which side of the pentagram the demon breaks out of
- Which of your fingers the drow gangster cuts off with his cigar clipper
- Which limb (left leg, right leg, left arm, right arm, head) the Sword of Improved Sharpness cuts off
- Which one of the five adventurers gets the randomly aimed death ray: Will it be Ajax the Fighter, Irie the Thief, Borbos the Wizard, Jonklin the Cleric, or Bob. . . the hireling. }:>
d7 -
- The damage on a really crappy longsword, or an alchemical silver battleaxe without bothering with the whole -1 business and without any other bonuses.
d16 -
- We've made this CR 1 encounter into CR 5 by increasing the number of orc barbarians for you to throttle. Pick one for your first arrow!
- "The spell turns you into a squalling child; roll your age. [roll. 14.] Oh no! You're an emo!" (Ok, ok, that wasn't nice of me. ;) )
- Meat Shield -- it's a new base class, with d16 hit points!
d24-
- Introducing the new DOUBLE sized undead. ;)
- "AC 29!" "Wow, Dave! How could you hit its AC? Did you roll a natural twenty?" "Um, no." "But Dave -- your attack bonus is only +5."
- Watch as I take on six adventuring parties at once with my single death ray!*
* No hirelings were harmed in the making of this joke.
....
They were all dead already. ;)
Cheers
I went to one of the seminars Lou held. Very entertaining storyteller. He shared how he developed the d100.
A friend gave me a d100 as a gift about 9-10 years ago.
It sounds cool (and looks cool, except it's basically a golf ball. And the table we gamed on, it turns out, wasn't exactly level.
So the first time we used it ...
"Roll d100!"
Roll, roll, rollllllllllll ..... THUD.
Screaming of the cat as the d100 fell off the table and smacked it square in the back.
It's been in my dice bag ever since.
roll 1d7 to see how many ladies saurus met in the red light district this past week!
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