Dice, dice, my kingdom for some dice!

Okay, I've talked my players into trying out [[http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/dogs.html|Dogs in the Vineyard]]. It wasn't hard. Karen was already interested in it before I ever mentioned it, Bill had gone and looked at it when I mentioned it on the Fudge List, and Chris will try just about anything.

So I looked at the state of my dice. Dogs requires lots of polyhedrals, recommending fifteen to twenty d6's, and eight each of d4, d8 and d10. Dogs conflict resolution requires throwing huge handfuls of dice at a time and then keeping the result on the table.

Have I mentioned that I essentially haven't played anything but Champions and Fudge since about 1987? I have buckets of d6's for Champions and a bucket of Fudge Dice (which are basically d3 labelled minus, blank and plus). Of the dice I own and am willing to play with, I fall woefully short of meeting the needs of Dogs. I've got a bag of old crystal dice and even some original D&D boxed-set dice from the early eighties… but none of them are "play quality" by today's standards.

I like to collect dice, and this being a chance to collect types I've not had an excuse to buy for ages, I thought I'd just buy a bunch of new ones. I've got a lot of d6's, but they have pips, and if all the other dice I'm using have numbers, I'd like them to match. And to make things easier, I thought I'd get each type of die in only one color… all the d6's ivory, all the d4's blue, etc.

So I go searching for dice on the web. Probably the best place I found was http://www.dicepool.com/. They've got a great selection, but their stock is shallow… I couldn't find any style in which they stocked 20 d6's with numbers instead of pips. In most cases, down in the basic solid-color, they couldn't even give me five of a particular color.

Looks like I'm going to have to go straight to Chessex. They've got an online catalog, but no shopping cart. I'll have to email them my order and phone in my credit card number. But at least I'll be able to buy 20d6 all in the same color. :)

Of course, I got this far without thinking about price. At fifty cents a die, 46 dice plus shipping is $28.95. Ouch… double what I paid for the PDF of Dogs.

I'm almost tempted to buy a couple hundred bucks worth and sell "Dogs Sets" on eBay.