Cursed Dice

Dice Set

Reading about a guy who buried a set of allegedly cursed 10 sided dice in his back yard reminded me of our own set of dice related superstitions. You may think this guy is silly, but I can totally relate to that. I’m the least superstitious guy around. I usually laugh when people talk about black cats, broken mirrors and all the things that. But when it comes to dice – that’s a whole different story. Sadly, you have never played RPG or tabletop games you most likely will not understand this.

Here are some of the dice superstition from my gaming years:

  • There are lucky dice, unlucky dice and neutral dice. You should never ever mix them.
  • If you store lucky dice with neutrals dice, they will loose their power.
  • If you store unlucky dice with any other dice, they will infect the whole set.
  • Dice use up their luck when rolled repeatedly. Each time you get one or two desirable rolls you should retire the dice for a turn, and allow it to recharge before rolling it again. Otherwise you may tap out all the luck out of it for the rest of the game
  • If you treat your dice well, the dice gods will favor you. Never call your dice stupid, or curse at them. It guarantees bad luck.
  • Even the best dice will roll low once in a while. However, lucky dice usually yearn to redeem themselves after a particularly bad roll or series of rolls. A dice that just rolled 1 is likely to roll high the next time. This only applies to lucky dice though.
  • Dice gods hate to be taunted. You should refrain from saying things like “Anything but 1”
  • It is lucky to invoke the name of a relevant in-game deity before your roll. If you play in Star Wars universe, you may invoke the Force.
  • Sharing dice is very unlucky. If your dice get mixed with your opponent’s dice, they may turn against you.
  • You should have a pre-roll ritual – such as shaking the dice certain number of times, huffing on them, whispering to them and etc… It does help.

Statistically speaking, all of those things are bullshit. I personally do not believe in any of these things. But I do half-jokingly conduct my little pre-roll rituals, watch not to tap out my lucky dice, and segregate the good and bad dice.

As a side note, there are high and low rolling dice. It is virtually impossible to manufacture a perfectly random die. The cut, wear and tear on the corners, distribution of weight and etc are all important factors. Sometimes you get dice that are cut in a way that gives them minimal preference on certain rolls. Sometimes you get ones that have air bubbles trapped in them, or where the plastic is denser in one area. These effectively act as “loaded” dice even thought they are perfectly untampered with.

The superstitions, and rituals do help you keep track of those odd dice, whether you are doing it consciously on not. :mrgreen:

[tags]dice, rpg, games, role playing, dice superstitions, burying dice, lucky dice, unlucky dice[/tags]

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5 Responses to Cursed Dice

  1. I had a lucky 20, he served me well for a long time… I eventually retired him and turned him into a necklace… hopeing to have the luck of the die help me lead a better life.

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  2. Luke Maciak UNITED STATES Mozilla Firefox Ubuntu Linux says:

    Oh no! I hope you didn’t drill a hole in it or anything? That would violate the integrity of the dice, and make the dice angry. That kind of thing could bring you loads of bad luck. ;)

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  3. ACtually you would be surprised:
    Somehow it like… radiates it luck on dice around me… I always roll 15+
    and even now that i don’t wear it any more… I still do… so either the luck seeped into me… or I am just a luckly die master.. i don’t know.

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  4. Morghan UNITED STATES Safari Linux says:

    I’ve only had one super lucky roll that I can think of. Open ended d20 damage roll that dropped 136 points of damage on the big baddie and killed it with just one shot of a low level spell. Before he next week’s gaming session that dice had disappeared. Angry GM? Warrior pissed that he didn’t get to ash things? Or maybe, just maybe, the god die returned to the ether to materialize in some other campaign and ruin the best laid plans of GMs elsewhere.

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