Of Dice and Grown Men

Etsy has what you need. Don’t reward Bezos.

Look at these beautiful dice. The black and red twenty-siders are actually 0 - 9 twice over (once with filled in numbers and once open). The original percentile dice rolled in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns were likely of this type. I prefer the way these roll compared to the standard d10 which is not a platonic solid. Much like I prefer rolling a twelve-sided die that is actually numbered I, II, III, IV thrice over.

The black and red dice come from Tower House Creative on Etsy. Two of my sets are “misprints” which you have to look at long and hard to identify the minor flaws. The third set is perfect, of course.

The other dice are dAverage. This means the dice do not have ones or sixes. dAverage dice have been used in wargaming for ages, going all the way back to version 1 of the Ancients rules from Wargames Research Group published in 1969.

More recently, The Killing Fields by Memorium - Stephen Smith (aka Purple Druid) also leverages dAVG dice. So I figured I’d pick up a set. Although I could have bought from Bezos’ Shopping Emporium, I picked these dice up on Etsy as well from Caveloot.

Game on!

Originally published on Substack on October 2, 2025.