So, Dice Towers?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Some of my dice shatter on occasion, but they got ran over by a car a while back for the most part.

Explanation: I lived in a college town. In every college town, there's a balck market for stolen books. Someone stole my backpack out of my car and walked about a block, realized they were D&D books and not textbooks, and dumped it all on the ground, even emptying my dice bag in a way that can't possibly have been by accident. Since all that was in the middle of the road...

[Agrinja]

Some of my dice shatter on occasion, but they got ran over by a car a while back for the most part.

Explanation: I lived in a college town. In every college town, there's a balck market for stolen books. Someone stole my backpack out of my car and walked about a block, realized they were D&D books and not textbooks, and dumped it all on the ground, even emptying my dice bag in a way that can't possibly have been by accident. Since all that was in the middle of the road...

Dude....that just....sucks.


Random note, the kind of dice tower I'm going to make is relatively small, less for purposes of 'better randomization' as much as I like to play with dice and fiddle with things...my desk is tiny. So something that takes up a footprint of roughly two coffee mugs would be great for random number generation for the hell of it.

[Prak]

Some of my dice shatter on occasion, but they got ran over by a car a while back for the most part.

Explanation: I lived in a college town. In every college town, there's a balck market for stolen books. Someone stole my backpack out of my car and walked about a block, realized they were D&D books and not textbooks, and dumped it all on the ground, even emptying my dice bag in a way that can't possibly have been by accident. Since all that was in the middle of the road...

Dude....that just....sucks.


Random note, the kind of dice tower I'm going to make is relatively small, less for purposes of 'better randomization' as much as I like to play with dice and fiddle with things...my desk is tiny. So something that takes up a footprint of roughly two coffee mugs would be great for random number generation for the hell of it.

Hey, follow your bliss, man. Sounds like fun, honestly. And you could do some really interesting things with the inner "workings"

[Clutch9800]

Back in the day I used to play in my basement in San Diego, which had a smooth poured concrete floor.

Alot of times the higher quality dice (believe it or not) would fall off the edge of the table and bounce about a foot and a half high off the floor.

One Bounce-Two Bounce-Boom. They'd shatter.

The cheap dice never did that, only the nice ones.

Clutch

[RobbyPants]

gamers almost always have their superstitions about dice

Best ones I've heard:
[*]Dice are social creatures. They roll better if you roll them in groups - include a handful of (different type/obviously marked) support dice with your rolls.
[*]Commissar theory: when a die goes rogue, arrange the others in a circle. Place a transparent glass of boiling water in the middle of the circle. Drop the offending die in. The others will learn.

I used to game with two wiccan gamers. They would claim they'd do something to attune their dice or whatever, putting their own personal energy into it. It was a big no-no for anyone else to touch their dice, because it'd screw up the energy.

So I asked them what effect the energy had on their dice. I figure if it has no effect, then what's the point? If it's supposed to have a positive effect, then they're willfully cheating, as the point of the die isn't to roll 20s all the time, but rather to give an even distribution of numbers over many rolls.

[Crissa]

I do have dice made from glass and natural stone, too. They would shatter if they hit a hard surface with too much force.

-Crissa

[fbmf]

I figure if it has no effect, then what's the point? If it's supposed to have a positive effect, then they're willfully cheating, as the point of the die isn't to roll 20s all the time, but rather to give an even distribution of numbers over many rolls.

I said something similar on WotC once, and was crucified for it. Seriously, I was told that i was "draconian" and that said poster would leave my table and not return if I said that in their presence.

No shit.

Game On,
fbmf

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I figure if it has no effect, then what's the point? If it's supposed to have a positive effect, then they're willfully cheating, as the point of the die isn't to roll 20s all the time, but rather to give an even distribution of numbers over many rolls.

I said something similar on WotC once, and was crucified for it. Seriously, I was told that i was "draconian" and that said poster would leave my table and not return if I said that in their presence.

No shit.

Game On,
fbmf

Probably for the best. The wiccans I have known have been head cases.

[Ravyn Dawnbringer]

As for the commissar theory, I did something similar with risk. But it wasn't the dice I blamed, oh no, it was the soldiers. And if I was soundly defeated a la 300, I would then bite the head off a plastic soldier. Little bastards didn't work hard enough.

[Clutch9800]

When I lived in Texas I once put the head of a really big Cockroach on the tip of a toothpick in a cabinet.

I didn't have roaches in my apartment after that.

Clutch

[Koumei]

We used to have a giant inflatable redback* spider hanging from a light. We joked that it would scare other spiders away, as the king spider.

Yeah, we started noticing actual redback spiders around the house. They must have been drawn towards their god.

*For the non Australians, it's similar to a black widow, but has an actual red/brown/orange dot, stripe or hourclass on the abdomen. Still considered a deadly Australian animal, but basically no-one ever dies from them. The venom is highly unpleasant with the regular effects: fever, sweating, cold chills, headache/migraine, nausea, the shits, shivering, local pain and swelling, blurred vision. But you could totally survive it unless very young/old/sick or if you're a Plant-type Pokemon. Especially with medical attention.

[Prak]

actually about the same as black widows these days, you have to be out in the damned sticks or young/old/infirm/whatever to be at any particular risk from widow poison these days, if i recall.

[Clutch9800]

actually about the same as black widows these days, you have to be out in the damned sticks or young/old/infirm/whatever to be at any particular risk from widow poison these days, if i recall.

Yeah. My San Diego basement was over-run with Black Widows. I never got bit and God be praised my kids never did.

Black Widows got kinda mundane.

Clutch

P.S. I still hate rattlesnakes.

[Crissa]

If you had brown widows instead (not as dangerous) they would displace the more poisonous spiders.

I have no idea what to do down under. You guys seem to have only bad choices.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I like black widows. I let them be when I see them.

[Clutch9800]

I hate them, with thier crazy inter-webs. All over the place.

Count. Let one bite you. Then you'll need a sandwich, a douchbag, and a Black Widow to accomplish anything.

[Ravyn Dawnbringer]

I live on Vancouver Island. The black widows we have here are (I've heard) the deadliest strain, and they show up all over the place. Never heard of anyone dying from one though....

[Count Arioch the 28th]

To put it in persepctive: The deadliest spider only kills about 1.5% of the people it bites. A spider bite is worse than a bee sting, but even the worst spider bite will probably just make you sick for a while.

EDIT: and before someone mentions the Brown Recluse and the infamous "bulls-eye sore", I want to say one thing: That's a staph infection, not something the venom is doing. Spiders often times carry staph in their digestive systems, it's harmless to them but not so good for anything else.

Pet peeve of mine, people claiming that they know someone bittne by a Brown Recluse. They don't live much farther north than South Carolina because they die if it gets too cold, no they don't live in people's houses because they hate people, and no they aren't able to transplant somewhere else any more than you can get an elephant to live in Antarctica.

[Crissa]

I've never heard of black widows in BC. But spiders like recluses do live there. I wonder if the widows are native or transplants like the others? They don't like people, but they like our dry areas we store stuff in.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Loxosceles reclusa prefers damp over dry in most cases. Not familiar with hobo spiders, although my spider contacts on the west coast say that as far as panicky people reacting they're about the same .

It wouldn't surprise me if there were some species of the Latrodecus genus that far north. I know there's scorpions as far north as VA, so I can imagine widows live pretty far north if they can find a nice warm hidey-hole to set up kip in.

Widows are the bane of Wastewater operators, because there are lots of pipes and vaults that are warm all year round and moist, as well as dark and private. I generally leave them be.

[Crissa]

Well, the black widows like dry, but like I said, false widows or brown widows can displace them pretty easily. We've kept a colony in our storage bins for... Well, fifteen years? Dunno if they'll make this last move, it's much cooler all year here.

Yeah, recluses were apparently blamed for hobo spider infestations and bites back in the Sound. They like cold and wet. Well, dunno about the cold, but they like it wet.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Everyone likes to blame poor L. reclusa for everything. I have gotten threats because I told people that they wouldn't be able to identify one if they saw it, most spiders are small and brown in this area. The so-called "violin marking" is so small you'd need a magnifying glass to see it and not present in every individual anyway. Even an arachnologist would need to have an intact specimen and a dissecting scope to identify one, they are that generic looking.

[Ravyn Dawnbringer]

I don't know if they are native, but the island sounds like their kind of climate, especially in the southeast parts of said island. It's warm (Victoria has the highest homeless population in Canada for this reason) it's typically dry in summer and there are a great deal of places for them to hide out. I have personally seen the red hourglass on their backs, but I understand that is not definitively a black widow trait

[Crissa]

Well, Victoria is strangely warmer than the coast of Washington and Oregon. I can say this, having grown up on said coast ^-^

-Crissa

[Josh_Kablack]

Everyone likes to blame poor L. reclusa for everything. I have gotten threats because I told people that they wouldn't be able to identify one if they saw it, most spiders are small and brown in this area. The so-called "violin marking" is so small you'd need a magnifying glass to see it and not present in every individual anyway. Even an arachnologist would need to have an intact specimen and a dissecting scope to identify one, they are that generic looking.

But the necrotizing wound they leave is (wrongly) regarded as fairly unique, so they do get blamed for a whole lot of "what the heck could have bit me to do this?" type bites, scrapes, wounds and infections