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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Dice Profiles: d6

Starting up now, I'm going to be doing a few blog posts that I call "Dice Profiles". They're a look at those little staples of gaming, those polyhedral solids we call "dice". Our characters literally stake everything they have on rolls of the dice, so I think they're at least a little important. And there's all manner of interesting information about it. Let me know what you think of these profiles, I'm aiming to make things a little more interesting around here.

I've decided to kick things off with one that should be at least a little familiar to all of you...

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Number of Sides: 6
Shape: cube
Famous For: Let's see, where to start? Outside of RPGs, of course, the d6 is the go-to for pretty much any game involving randomness. RISK, Monopoly, gambling...it does all of them. Within RPGs, it still has a pretty big usage. Obviously, it's central to the D6 System, but it also finds usage in the classic game Shadowrun, the roleplaying system GURPS, and the lesser-known Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard.
Element: Interestingly, each platonic solid (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20) is associated with a classic element. For the six-sided die? The element is Earth. It makes sense, because like Earth, it's solid, dependable, and familiar. The d6 is square and solid.
My Take: You can't go wrong with this one. It's been around in games for a long time, you can always grab more from Monopoly or RISK should you need them, and they stack really, really well. Seriously. You could build a house with d6s. A lot of d6s.

2 comments:

  1. Hahaha, love the humor in here... ;) You need pictures of these dice with your posts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, that thought didn't occur to me until later.

    ReplyDelete

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