Restless Dice

 I was looking at some of my dice yesterday. I have a lot of them. So I picked out the dice that reminded me of the original dice that came with the Holmes Basic Box back in the late 70s. Those original dice are quite valuable now, if you can get them. I digress. So I gathered up those that reminded me of the early dice and made a nice little array of colors and numbers on the desk. I found a couple of "weather" dice that I had picked up at one convention or another. Then they began to talk. The dice actually talked to me. They said they were getting restless just sitting around in that box. They said all of the dice were on the verge of a revolution or some nonsense. It was kind of spooky listening to those complaining dice. They wanted to roll man. But shit I didn't know what to do about it. Since we can't get out and do much face to face gaming in the COVID nightmare world we live in, I put a guard on those rowdy dice: A nice ancient bronze age fighter who looks as if he could slay his own grandmother if she got in his way. He's probably a good soldier. I'm not sure where he came from but I hope he will be loyal and guard those dice. Or die trying. 

On Weather Dice.

Weather is an “on-the-fly” detail that Refs can use to mess with players. Players probably should not ask the referee about the weather, lest he or she inflicts some on them. From my point of view as a referee, it's fun to drop the dice down on the table and see what they reveal about the day. Or night. Yeah, I got one for the day and one for the night. I also like to roll a couple d6s along with each of the weather dice in order to justify the intensity of the day's (or night's) weather. What's this? A brilliant (12 on the 2d6) sun in the middle of the night? If you want. But I'd call that a bright moon. Perhaps even a magical moon. A moon that invites the children of the fairy realm to dance around the toadstools and plan their next assault upon the realm of "law". Weather dice can be fun because they stimulate the imagination if deployed correctly. A Referee who can confidently “read” the dice without being tied to a table in a book, is a remarkable gamer. So find some weather dice and start using them. You may surprise yourself.