Dice.
Any table top RPG geek will always have a healthy collection of all shapes and sizes of dice.
The oldest known recorded reference to dice, is Sophocles the Greek writer. Sopocles lived between 496-406 BC, and being Greek, he claimed that the Greek invented dice, but there is no way to verify his claim. I’m not saying they didn’t invent them, just that the Ancient Romans and Greeks do want to seem to take the creadit for inventing almost *everything*.
Apparently, before standard cubical dice became common, ancient peoples would use fruit stones, sets of flat sticks, sea shells, nut shells or even marked pebbles to get random results for games. Hmm. Fruit and Nut. Which leads me neatly to my favourite subject – of cake.
The cake pictured below is fashioned after the ever plentiful D20 – the twenty sided die. Every table top gamer I have ever met owns at least ten of these babies.
Used in numerous systems from original D&D to Warhammer, to World of Darkness to GURPS, dice are the universal RPG signature accessory.
Doesn’t it look magnificently delicious?
I love the fact that the cake looks HUGE!
Original images, can be found at: RPGdigest, the blog of Bob Younce – a hobbiest gamer since 1979!
Thanks for reading.
See you all again on Friday!
[*At various points in history, small animal bones were used as dice. Playing with dice is still sometimes known as "rolling the bones".]
