Never Again

The last time I bought dice on the internet, I was mildly disappointed because the readability was not as good as the photograph made it appear. But it wasn't too bad, but I promised myself that I wouldn't buy dice online again.

So much for that idea.

I had been wanting to get some Gamescience dice for a while. My poor die rolling (though Brian teases me to the contrary) has been a sore spot for a couple of years now. Gamescience dice tout themselves as being fairer than other dice and they do have this whole rough retro quality to them. So, I broke down and ordered two sets online. And when I got them, I was not disappointed.

I did not buy them pre-inked because Gamescience dice have to be inked by hand and buying them pre-inked greatly increases the cost. [The inking process is the thing that causes edges to be rounded and possible inadvertant loading of the dice.] You know you can't buy a single ultra-fine Sharpie at Office Depot? I tried an india ink art pen, but it was not permanent when applied to the die. Eventually, I found the pen I wanted in a 2-pack at Longs.

While I was applying the ink, I noticed something that frankly pissed me off. The dice were numbered wrong. We all know* that the opposite sides of a 6-sided die add up to 7. Modern dice manufacturers apply that same principle to other polyhedrals. On a d20, for example, the 1 and 20 are opposite, as are the 2 and 19, 3 and 18, etc.** The Gamescience dice did not follow this "standard." While irksome, I could have lived with it. Maybe. I'm pretty anal about these things. But what really cheesed me off was that the d6 was wrong too!

I finished inking them (I couldn't just stop in the middle), and put them back in their plastic box, but I don't know if I'll ever use them. Anyone want to buy 2 sets of Gamescience dice, one white opaque, one purple translucent, pre-inked, for $10 plus shipping?

This week, I went to my FLGS***, which had a couple of sets (but not the ones I bought online, so don't go thinking I don't support my FLGS). Those sets had the d6 and d20 correct, but not the other dice. I didn't buy those, either, even if one was the cool glow-in-the-dark set.

*: And really, if you are reading this and don't know this factoid, why are you here?

**: For the d10, I accept two different methods: adding up to 9 (counting the 0 as zero) or adding up to 11 (counting 0 as 10). So, the 1 could be opposite the 0 or the 8, depending on the method used. Of course, a given die has to consistenly use the same method. Damn it.

***: Again, if you don't know what that stands for...****

****: Man, I'm being snarky. It's easy to do when you know maybe 3 people, at most, read this.