Dice: Fickle Gods of Fate.

The vast majority of gamers that I have met have been rational, sensible and reasonable people, with one exception: their dice. Talk with almost any gamer about their dice and you will likely hear any number of superstitions about how they get their dice to roll well, or a horror story about how they have been betrayed by those very same dice.

Before I begin a general discussion of dice superstitions and their impact, I want to come clean about my own superstitions. While I understand that dice are designed to operate within well understood laws of probability, I hold to the following dice superstitions.

1) I roll better with dice that are cool-colored, preferably blue or purple. (Exception: Any die that is precisely the color of Mountain Dew is a player killer in my hands, and generally useless whenever I am not the DM)
2) Dice roll better after being charged. (Set on a flat surface with their highest number showing)
3) Dice roll better when they are part of a complete 7 die set.
4) Borrowed dice never roll as well as dice you own.

Right now, the non-gamers reading this are shaking their heads in disbelief. You are likely asking yourself how I came to such outrageous superstitions. First, I will state that as far as dice superstitions go, mine are fairly minor. I have seen people have specific "time out bags" for dice that are behaving badly, and even my wife buys a new set of dice for each character she plays and retires that set when she finishes playing that character. (She does the same with her miniatures, so we have a small shrine of her old characters and their dice in our bedroom)

As far as how those superstitions came to be, this is the crux of today's post. Roleplaying is very different from any other kind of game that one can play. I have played monopoly hundreds of times, and yet I don't have any special attachment to the sportscar piece. However, each character that I have played (and many of the NPCs) have been brought to life in such a way that I truly come to care for them as my creations. I think this added level of attachment is the foundation of many of the superstitions that gamers develop.

Dice represent the hand of fate, the one force that the player and their character has no influence over. Many times, I have seen a beloved character die due to die rolls. In such situations, it is very easy to put the dice into the role of the villain who mercilessly struck down a favored character. Spend any time in a gaming convention or a game shop and you will likely hear something to the effect of, "Those dice got me killed." It is easy to blame the dice when bad things happen, and many players will begin to take steps to combat that in the only way they can: superstitions.

It usually starts with a single event: a specific die roll coming out just as the player needs in a bad situation. It can then become a favored die, or whatever the player did with that die before the roll can become a lucky charm, and before long you are only playing with dice of a certain color, in full sets and charging them before rolling them.

The last thing I want to touch on, regarding this topic is, dice etiquette. As you can imagine, with the prevelence of supersitions among players how you treat the dice of other players can be a source of tension in a game. To combat this, I have always supported the following rules of dice etiquette.

1) Do not touch another player's dice without permission.
2) Do not mock another player's supersitions.
3) Be quiet when another player is rolling, specifically in high tension situations.

These are the three big rules that serve in most situations. There is nothing worse than a player constantly rolling your dice, or running their mouth when you are trying to make that one crucial roll. Keeping both the supersitions of your fellow players, and the general rules of etiquette in mind will help to make sure you are the kind of player that people will want to keep inviting back to game.