Dice Shopping

As many of you are aware, I'm a dice collector. One of the most fun portions of the hobby for me are the shiny, colored bits of plastic and other materials. I loves me some dice!

A friend of a friend put together a Vampire game and I was invited. I couldn't make it due to a cold, but that's another story.

I have in the past had trouble playing Vampire and other World of Darkness games. Why? Not enough dice! Specifically, d10s. The Storyteller game system is d10 based. For whatever reason, I'm always short on d10s.

A few years ago, someone wanted to play Vampire. I raided my Black & White dice set and came up with ... four d10s. Sure, I could have gotten away with just one, just lots of re-rolling. But, it's better to have some extras.

At this point, dice were rare in this town. Wizard's of the Coast had just closed down their gaming shops. When WotC opened their shops, they drove most of the little mom & pop shops out of business and there were no shops on-line. I finally went to Barnes and Noble - I found a set of brown dice branded for Werewolf. That was the one and only set of dice they had. I just couldn't buy brown dice - I have a color coordination thing about dice. I'm a freak, yes.

I finally managed to find ten d10s in speckled blue. They were okay, but they were not my thing. They have sat on a shelf for years and I will probably donate them to the group once I get to play with them.

So, with this recent game, I looked around my dice again. I still have the blue d10s. I think I have fewer d10s in my Black & White set now than then. I then broke into my Purple set. How many d10s do I have? Five. Five!

Actually, I had 10, but they were matched sets of d10s and dTENS (numbered 10 to 00). So, either I was going to have to buy more d10s for one of my sets or .... !

I bought a ring a while back, it was delivered in a small, velvet drawstring bag. The smallest dice bag ever! In my Purple set, I have some mini (12mm) pearl dice. They are so cool, tiny and easy to carry and use. It occurred to me, I bet they make d10s in this size!



Of course they do! Good luck finding them!

My search began at an online dice shop that I found a while back and fell in love with: Advancing Hordes. They had a beautiful little shop and I loved their set up. However, by the time I had found them online, Uncle's Games had begun opening stores in the area, and they usually have a decent selection of dice. If you click on the AH link you will see the first stumbling block in my quest for the mini dice - Advancing Hordes is gone. I never bought a thing from them and now I almost feel responsible. I wish it hadn't been so.

As much as I regret the loss of a store I never shopped at, I still didn't have the dice. I went scouting around the Internet. I quickly remembered Dice Pool. They had the pearl minis! Yea! They didn't have the purple d10s! D'oh! I nearly bought the white ones and called it good.

I spent a whole night looking all over the place and came up snake eyes. The next day, I called Uncle's to see if they had any in stock. They didn't. Could they order for me - I had a number from the manufacturer's catalog (I just LOVE the Internet!). They said they would try to get something from their distributor and give me a call back.

Time passed. No call from Uncle's and it had been nearly two weeks. The game finally had a first date and I hadn't caught my cold yet so I wanted to have the dice before the game. I called Uncle's, but, to coin a phrase, no dice! They were just too rare to get from their distributors.

On a whim, I rechecked Dice Pool. They claimed to get new inventory about once a week. They had them!! I was hoping to buy 20, fill that little bag. They only had one set - so I bought another set of polyhedrals.

The dice arrived very quickly. I was totally impressed. Lots of email confirmations to let me know everything was going well - from order to shipping. In short, Dice Pool was great to work with and I would totally buy from them again.

I now have a bonsai dice set! It's very cool! I'll get a pic of it up soon.

For my birthday, I want metal dice!


Editorial Update:

I decided to alert DicePool that I had done a blog post about my satisfaction with their service. This is the email I recieved in return:

Date: Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: A Question About dicepool.com


Jericho,

I've been meaning to reply to your email, but we've been really busy.

Thanks for your positive feedback. Right now we're in the middle of
relaunching our store with a new set of features. We're down right
now, but we'll be back today or tomorrow. I just wanted to let you
know that if you or anyone else need dice that we're out of stock or
low on, let us know. We can even make special orders if you need
larger quantities that we normally stock, or we can tell you when the
dice you're looking for are back on our shelves.

Jack
dicepool.com

The Burden of the Undead.

I had an interesting weekend. Three friends and I spent the weekend in a camper watching geeky movies (Real Genius, Legend and Ghostbusters) and playing D&D. It was a blast.

Where I ran aground was the subject matter of the D&D game. Early in the game it was clear what was going on. The town we met up in was being attacked by skeletons and zombies. We went to the local cemetery to discover a cleric conducting necromantic rituals.

This isn't a bad scenario, however, it's starting to get a little common. One of the guys with us this weekend ran a D&D game that we played a few years ago. He started the game in a small town with a big set of catacombs. Lots of undead. We didn't stay in those catacombs for long, some doofus cleric destroyed the catacombs. I was the doof, but that's a story for another day.

A while back, I got nostalgic about D&D, right after Gary Gygax died. I started running a game. My game is, wait for it, a small town with a near-by necromancer cleric sending undead to attack the small town.

With a few minor differences, the scenario my friend ran this weekend and my scenario were basically the same. He and I played in the Catacombs mentioned above, but he didn't play in my Small-Town-Undead-Panic game.

Where I'm going with this is that the undead thing seems to be a very common theme and maybe it pops into people's minds a little too easily. I feel like I let my group down and maybe that's why, yet again, interest has waned on a game I was running.

Last night when all of this came to me, I was running around in WoW - I was playing a quest involving creatures that were essentially plants that grew from seeds. It occurred to me that that would be a cool way to transport an army. Show up near a town, scatter your seeds, call up a storm, then call up some sun - maybe even sun that lasted into the night! Then, blam! Little, violent plant guys running around eating each other and growing more powerful by the second! Cast some spell that allows you to control plants and you have a hell of a magic army that only required one wizard and a cart of plant seed.

SO, the point of this post: the next time you decide to run a game, let the dead rest. Try something a little different.

Plots are us!

One of you asked for it! (Thanks HollyKing!) This is Throw Away Plot #3!

Previously I threw away a plot for Star Wars and for Star Trek.

This time around, I want to throw away a plot with a Super Hero theme. This summer has been all about the Comic Book Movie. We have Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk and Batman movies dancing around our heads. In the past few years we have seen the rise of the Comic Book Movie with Spider Man, X Men, Fantastic Four and others ka-blaming through our local cineplexes. With teases at the end of some of these movies suggesting sequels and trailers for The Watchmen in the theaters - this trend will not end any time soon.

I have a spectacularly bad history with running Super Power games. I played in a great game while I lived in STL - but I should have taken a clue. While everyone else was running around in skin-tight suits, whomping people with mutant super-powers, my character had a Mac 10, a computer in his skull and shark cartilage armor. "Jakker" was more suited to a game of Shadowrun than a Supers game.

I played in a second supers game with the same GM. The game had a B-Movie feel to it - I think the GM had grabbed a copy of GURPS Supers and GURPS Atomic Horror and ran with it! The game was short lived but brilliant!

So, there I am, thinking, huh! I could run a Supers game!

I've never read comic books - I always thought they were over priced wastes of money. I would buy the omnibuses now and then - at $12 to $20 bucks, even in black and white - they were great ways to get some comic book into my life. But, really, I don't have a stack of omnibuses, just a few.

It boils down to the fact that I really don't get comic books. When I think super powers, for some reason my mind runs toward science fiction: powers would have some plausible explanation. In truth, comic books are pure fantasy. They are ancient myths with a modern spin. Superman would have been a god in another era. Spiderman is an animal avatar if there ever was one, same with Wolverine. Bruce Banner is a man possessed by a demon! The comic books have even pulled directly from myth, Thor and Hercules are still running around in pulp pages.

Yet, I have repeatedly managed to miss the point. I've run at least three Super Powered games - all failed. Proof that watching a few movies does not a good Supers GM make. The last was the most successful. It more resembled a Stephen King novel than something by Lee & Kirby and it lasted less than six months.

However, a while back I came up with an idea that I thought would be fun. It's almost Super Powers.

The story goes like this: NASA's SOHO probe detects a solar flare. The flare is pretty bad - so bad it burns out portions of the probe. The flare hits Earth and does lots of damage to the telecommunications system.

In the end, nothing is unrecoverable - the result is a day of interrupted communications but something that could have been MUCH worse. Life goes on and people have some great stories.

The NASA researches begin seeing some anomalies. First, the strength of the flare burned out the SOHO probe, why were the communication satellites not more damaged? Further, light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes. Yet, the flare hit Earth in under four. The leading edge of the flare touched Earth before the much closer probe's information reached Earth. The particles in the flare were traveling much faster than the speed of light!

The NASA information is largely ignored as vital info from NASA often is (but I'm not bitter!)

A few days after the flare, some strange things begin happening. Odd, unexplained accidents. Persons vanishing, appearing elsewhere, not knowing how they got there. A series of cat burglaries where nothing of real value goes missing.

Finally, a reporter pulls the threads together. His story begins with a string of beads that were stolen from the Heathrow airport. They were on display in the concourse. While digging an underground elevator shaft, a "kitchen midden" was discovered; essentially an ancient garbage dump. Archaeologists were called out to preserve what they could - they found some interesting pottery shards, bones indicating the local cuisine at the time and some other broken artifacts, including a broken string of glass beads. One of the beads was green glass and a bird had been cut into it. The burglar stole just the beads, worth no more than a few hundred pounds to a collector. A gold ring displayed next to the beads was left behind.

A 12 car accident in Chicago resulted in three deaths and dozens of injuries. However, one young lady walked away untouched. The reporter interviewed her and noticed a bead she wore on a silk cord, she found the brown, unglazed bead in an antique shop. The bead had been carved into the shape of a turtle. When the bead was carbon-dated, it was more than 3000 years old. The reporter goes on and on, detailing several incidents surrounding these beads.

In game terms, each bead gives some gift to the wearer; a power or some advantage. The beads can be any shape or size, made of any substance. Beads have been dated as far back as 10k years, but none newer that 2000 years. The beads often appear as a simple bead with a engraved design, some are cast into very complex and intricate designs, others are just a wooden bead with a painted on animal or pictograph.

Once the reporter comes forward, the race is on! It's about this point that I would bring in the players. Each player has a bead. The bead should be interesting but not super powered. Say, "underwater breathing", not "immune to bullets". Almost immediately, I imagine that the players would discover that they can easily trade the beads and the power follows the bead. They could also discover that the beads work together, so if a player had a bead that made him grow larger, and he put on a bead from his teammate that gave him fur and claws, he'd look like a werewolf! If he put on another bead, he could shoot lightning from his claws, etc.

Once this is revealed, the players are going to want more beads. So is everyone else on the planet! They will want to talk to archaeologists, collectors and antique shops to find more beads. Imagine buying super-powers, not to mention super fakes, on eBay!

We can then begin connecting all kinds of fun, historic, pseudo science and conspiracy. From crop circles to ley lines to Stone Henge to the Nasca lines to Atlantis. Where did the beads come from? Who made them? Why did they make them? Why did they reactivate? Will they be more powerful at a place of power, say an Aztec temple or Easter Island? Are they more powerful on a clear night with the whole Milky Way showering them with star dust?

Of course there are some, like our cat burglar, who got a jump on everyone else. "Scorpio", as she likes to be called, has the Heathrow Beads, as well as others she has stolen. She begins going after those that own beads, either buying, intimidating or killing them to get to her goal. Soon, she has a rather impressive necklace, not to mention an impressive collection of powers. She will be quite a challenge for the players.

I thought it might be fun to keep the astrological and astronomical associations going, introducing other villains with zodiological names like Pisces and Cancer. Even Aries and Mars could walk the Earth, and, for fun, Betelgeuse.

The great thing about beating a foe in this game: his powers now go to the group. The group increases in beads and thus power with each success. The group can also trade amongst themselves, changing and improving their powers as they go. I figured that eventually, certain beads would show up that enhance other beads or even protect them. Beads with just about any power imaginable could appear. Combining them could make whole new powers. One could even have "sets" of beads, each has a power, but as more of the set are brought together, other powers are unlocked. With the whole set, a large power is unlocked. There could also be beads that add no benefit to the user, but give benefits to the party, etc.

How do you control the power level of this game? A guy with a vest of beads will be darn near invincible and maybe without weakness. First, control the number of beads. There were only so many made, only so many can be around. Next, the beads are destroyable. Thus, in a fight, players might lose beads - but so might the bad guys! (This keeps guns and sharp-shooters in play!) In the end, I think a game like this could get very out of control unless the GM ran it with an iron hand.

Eventually, someone (player, NPC, villain) is going to try to make a new bead. They will likely destroy several to discover the technology, maybe dozens, even hundreds. Will they succeed? Will they create an even more powerful bead? Will their bead fail catastrophically? That's up to the GM and some rolls on "Craft: Bead".

The coolest part of this for me: props! I'm a GM that believes in props. In this game, each player could actually wear their beads! A bag of cheap wooden beads can be purchased at any big box craft store. A few minutes with these beads and a Sharpie or a paint pen and you would have some decent props. String them on some hemp or silk cord and BINGO! Cool props for your players!

I've thought several times of writing this up in detail and trying to get it published. I still reserve that right!