Hi everyone,
It struck us recently that the old school clear, sharp-edged, crystal-looking D&D or other RPG dice seem to be pretty much a thing of the past.
Here's our original set from the days of the first D&D edition. (Always wished that one of these was red to make the full rainbow.)
And, so started looking on eBay. Sure enough some people are selling "old D&D dice" -- or "vintage D&D dice."
And, so, for a reasonable sum, we got the following just this past week.
There was always one issue with these dice. Very hard to read them!!!
My friend had showed me the white crayon trick. You srcub your dice with white crayon to fill up the imprinted numbers with white wax. Suddenly, "pop" -- you can read them clearly.
[Had never really thought through the fact that this just might change the balance of the dice a little bit. But, since the imprinting removes material - and likely makes them asymmetrical. By loading up with wax we're just fixing that a bit!]
We never really had a great solution for d20s. We'd scrub crayon into one set of 0-9 -- and those would be the high numbers. And, the non-scrubbed ones would be the low numbers. And, yes, the low numbers were still hard to read.
Here's our process:
Problem with the crayon method. The crayon usually wears off over time. Bits fall out. And, then you need to repeat the process in order to see the numbers clearly again.
And, remember this old fellow? The edge-roughened d12 which - also very hard to read - had been marked up with a good old black pen!!
Have to say, do miss these. The new ones come in great colors and roll nicely. But, the sharp crystal edges were very cool!
And, here is our set with the red die added! Yay! A full rainbow :)
It struck us recently that the old school clear, sharp-edged, crystal-looking D&D or other RPG dice seem to be pretty much a thing of the past.
Here's our original set from the days of the first D&D edition. (Always wished that one of these was red to make the full rainbow.)
Our original 1980's sharp-edged crystalline dice. (Never had red.)
And, so started looking on eBay. Sure enough some people are selling "old D&D dice" -- or "vintage D&D dice."
And, so, for a reasonable sum, we got the following just this past week.
The lot of old dice we found on eBay. (Look, a red d12!!!)
There was always one issue with these dice. Very hard to read them!!!
My friend had showed me the white crayon trick. You srcub your dice with white crayon to fill up the imprinted numbers with white wax. Suddenly, "pop" -- you can read them clearly.
[Had never really thought through the fact that this just might change the balance of the dice a little bit. But, since the imprinting removes material - and likely makes them asymmetrical. By loading up with wax we're just fixing that a bit!]
We never really had a great solution for d20s. We'd scrub crayon into one set of 0-9 -- and those would be the high numbers. And, the non-scrubbed ones would be the low numbers. And, yes, the low numbers were still hard to read.
Here's our process:
Scrubbed the faces of the die with white crayon. Then rubbed off excess with paper towel. Sometimes this required some repeats.
Here are the d12 and d8 after we've done a few of the sides.
Problem with the crayon method. The crayon usually wears off over time. Bits fall out. And, then you need to repeat the process in order to see the numbers clearly again.
And, remember this old fellow? The edge-roughened d12 which - also very hard to read - had been marked up with a good old black pen!!
Old school, edge roughened d12 with black pen highlighting!
Have to say, do miss these. The new ones come in great colors and roll nicely. But, the sharp crystal edges were very cool!
And, here is our set with the red die added! Yay! A full rainbow :)
Our dice with the red d12 added to the mix.
