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Holmes Dice, courtesy of eBay
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Dice have a very long history, humans have been using them to play games, as
parts of a game or to generate randomness since prerecorded history. While the
6-sided cube or hexahedron (d6) has always been the most popular die shape
used, it is not the only shape used to generate random numbers. It and other
four platonic solids, the 4-sided Tetrahederon (d4), the 8-sided
Octahedron (d10), the 12-sided Dodecahedron (d12) and the 20-sided
Icoashedron, have
long histories
in this application. It is their earliest employment in role playing games,
namely those dice originally sold for Dungeons and Dragons and included with
its original (Holmes) Basic Set, which interests me and the ability to
replicate that experience at a reasonable cost. Today I will explore the
history of the so-called "Holmes Dice" and two such products which aim to do
so.