Luck – a : a force that brings good fortune or adversity.
b: the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual.
If you are a gamer then more than likely you use dice. I’d be willing to bet that you own some dice. I personally have a set in my purse, just for those instances I might need some in a jif (You never know!).
Further still, I’ve seen a lot of gamers with rituals or rules for their dice. As a store owner and long time gamer, I’ve seen this as well. I’ve seen dice cullers, punishers (down the pants?), kissers and hoarders. Some people take a new set for every character, have special dice bags or refuse to roll dice of a certain color. These superstitions vary from person to person. I have even had a few of my own; No one else would be allowed to roll my dice and to that end I actually had a ‘community dice bag’ with loaner dice. I’m not as hard core about this as I used to be, but I DO still have a different set of dice for each of my 40k armies … and of course the colors match.
Are these rituals helpful though? That is certainly an arguable point. I personally don’t believe that luck is some intelligent tangible force manipulated by the midichlorians in our dice. Nor do I worship any luck gods, like Fortuna or Mork (or is it Gork?). Keeping to my personal dice rituals (like the differing dice for different armies) makes me happy. I’ve often wondered at this – does our own personal attitude and empathy influence the die rolls or chance in general? I’ve often seen (and had) a bad game and every game afterward seems to be an conflagration of bad die rolls.
Perhaps also, it’s all about each person’s outlook. If you are having a good day/game, you will focus on the successful rolls rather than the failed ones, and in the opposite situation, being frustrated or having a bad day in some other way (like being on fire), you only choose to see and remember the failed rolls. This would actually be a fun experiment, I think.
So what are YOUR dice rituals, if any? I’d love to hear!
I just bought my own since I’m fairly new to fantasy (haven’t played 40k yet) but I fully believe in not letting others touch my dice or using someone else’s dice. I also do not use failed die rolls in the same phase like I won’t use the missed to hit dice to roll for my chance to wound. It sounds silly and ridiculous to even me but I kinda think it works haha. It’s possible that my focus is aimed towards the successful rolls but.. More often than not, when I feel good I roll well. When I’ve given up I see many more 1’s than usual lol. Of course it doesn’t always happen that way, but I believe in the heart of the cards, er, dice I mean.
My thing is I only have one dice set I use, its emerald green marbled with gold numbers (pips only for the d6’s) but that is not for luck but because I have an obsession with emerald.
I have noticed I focus on the bad rolls when I am having a bad day, and focus on the cool things when I am having a good day.
I don’t have any particular dice rituals… I’ll use mine, yours, store’s, anyone’s dice really. I do have dice that match my armies, and the dice that match my sisters roll so poorly I consider them one of the reasons I quit playing that army. But aside from that, I’m pretty neutral on what I roll with.
I also keep a set of dice in my purse, just in case, and actually they came in handy today. I was asked to name a word that started with “tetra” and the only thing I could think of was “tetrahedron”….which of course brought the question “What’s a tetrahedron?” and so I pulled out my d4 to explain 🙂
Fantastic!!