Dice - do you use them?

I was shopping with a friend yesterday and we went to a small Comic Collectors shop. There was a little tray with game playing dice and I picked one of each shape and bought them.

I want to do something with them but am not sure how to at the moment. I am very interested in numerology.

The dice were -

One with ten sides - 00 to 90

One with 20 sides - 1 to 20 - nearly all the majors

One with 12 sides - 1 to 12

One with 8 sides - 1 to 8

One with 4 sides - 1 to 4

Any ideas of how many could be used together - or all of them?

LB

Six of the four sideds (6d4) make an excellent substitution for the coins or stalks of the I Ching.... throw them all, and then push them into line with the side of your hand, or get colors (red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white) and arrange them in the order of the spectrum (my fave method). Build the hexagram up from the bottom just like everything else (purple=bottom)

d4:
1=moving yin ( -- X-- )
2=yang ( ----- )
3=yin ( -- -- )
4=moving yang ( --O--)

What else... there's many different ways of using 3d6 as a divinatory method. A simple search for dice divination on Google will bring plenty of results.

I had a sheet of details for using dice as a sub for Tarot, but the sheet's gone and I can't remember what it was. You can use dice for just about anything that can be translated to fixed numbers.

Oh! Sabian symbols! Let me work up a sheet on that and I'll post it in a bit if I can find the time. Or you could use your own creativity and come up with your own method

Illy, proud (and obsessed) owner of 400+ polyhedral dice

wow. Dice!
This thread brings back memories!

I remember, for a while back in high school, I learned two different systems on how to tell fortunes using the standard two 6 sided dice.

then, because I played Dungeouns and Dragons...and had all thos edice anyway...I attempted to write my own system using many different sided ones...like you mentioned!

Didn't get very far though...

I did however write out a whole system (100 meanings!) to use with two ten siders (like percentages!)

None of this was really based on any numerology..or logic...but it was ptretty cool, and I remember it was great for silly party game questions about the future...(what will I be? Who will I marry?)
Never could memorize all those meanings though...had to keep them on this long list that I trumped out when needed.

I do still kinda remember some of the meanings from the 6 siders...I think I used Buckland's gypsy fortune telling books as one source.

But so much of it...like all that useless stuff I memorized for high school...is completely gone from my memory!

Good luuck with this project, LB...I am sure you will come up with something cool that works!

I don't use dice, but I had to throw out how much I love your photo of the dice! It's just a really nice monochromatic image...

I let others get back to answering your question now... (blush)

Ankou

divination with dice is called cleromancy. it's a direct descendant of casting with knucklebones, or lot casting.

traditionally, three six-sided dice are used, but i don't see why you couldn't use any combination of dice and sides you wanted.

i would be tempted to use the 12 sided one astrologically, and the 4 sided to represent the four directions and elements.

Yes, astrological was the first thing I thought of. 12 sides for signs and the 8 sided one for planets (7 traditional plus earth?). And with the 4 elements would be cool. Or another 12 sided one for the houses. I think I saw ones with the astro signs on them on a website once . . .

I love the picture. Have fun!

I would love to find more information on this subject. I've been searching for it and have only found some pretty simplistic articles on dice divination. Does anyone know the name of any books, or have any further info on this?

I think that all you're going to find is the simplistic divination that you already have, rodashod. Besides using knucklebones as an oracular tool - that's theorized to go all the way back to some pre-Roman civilizations, but no hard data that I am aware of - what you see is what you get.

Besides, polyhedral dice are new, as such things go. Reports have it that Gary Gygax made them popular for RPGs in the early 70s when he was developing Basic D&D, when he was looking for d20s and only found them through a school/scientific supply outlet packaged with the other sizes (presumably for use for math lessons regarding geometry and platonic solids)... there were apparently some English wargames that used d20 as well, but I'll still wager that they were not produced until after the 1950s at the earliest.

Got a dice collection? Want an excuse to collect the little buggers? Make up your own stuff. Tarot works 'cause you know that somehow it will, so why shouldn't a bunch of equally powerless shiny dice?

Illy

As well as tarot decks, I also collect dice, though I've not got as many as Ilithiya: about 350+ at last count but still growing.

My collection includes a set of Astrodice, which are just pretty d12s: one has symbols representing the signs of the Zodiac; one has symbols representing the planets of the solar system, minus Earth, plus the sun, the moon, the North node and the South node; and one has the numbers 1-12 for the 12 houses.
You could easily (and much more cheaply) mimic this system by using 3 differently coloured d12s and assigning them the astrological meanings associated with each planet, sign and house.

If you want to design your own 100-meaning system like Chronata, then you probably want to get another d10, this time with numbers from 0-9 instead of 00-90. Then you roll them together to get a number from 0-99.

Note that most existing dice divination systems use the total you get from rolling 3d6 (a number between 3 and18 inclusive), so statistically you're much more likely to get a roll somewhere in the middle of the range (e.g. a 10 or 11) than towards the lower or higher ends (e.g. a 3 or 18).

Koplow Games (a.k.a. The Nice Dice Company) make blank polyhedral dice, which you can attack with coloured permanent markers to make your own unique set of divination dice. They also make d24s, d30s and d100s. The other two major producers of dice are Crystal Caste, who create tubular dice, and Chessex who, IMHO, make the nicest and highest quality dice.

*stops geeking now*

Thanks for the info. I havn't actually used the dice yet as I am not very knowlegable about astrology and the houses. I may have a go on here as an experiment at some point.

LB