Monday 15 March 2010

My Dice Lost their Mojo

Have you ever had one of those games when you can't roll for toffee? I had one of them Friday. The Dagenham Dungeon Delvers gathered for our regular bi-weekly D&D game and as usual we quickly found ourselves in trouble.

Our party of adventurers were given a new mission by our benefactor Minister Aldriac. We left the city, crossing a large lake on a ferry barge. We were on our guard crossing the lake but the attack came when we landed at the isolated jetty on the far side. That's when the dice started to misbehave. We were attacked by several Snaketounge Cultists and two Cockatrice in a prepared and concerted attempt to assassinate us. The jetty was sabotaged and in my first dice roll of the evening I failed to maintain my balance and my Dragonborn Warlord, Uthek, ended up in the lake.

As the battle raged on land (the rest of the party forced their way off the jetty) Uthek got to his feet, shook off his embarrassment and tried to fight his way out of the shallows. One failed roll after another followed. I used all my daily powers to no effect, I failed several saving throws and eventually I used up my encounter powers in an equally ineffectual manner. In fact I only had one successful roll during the whole evening.

After everyone had gone home for the evening I picked up my d20 and gave it a couple of test rolls... 2, 4, 1.... grrrrr. I was tired and angry at this point so I throw the dice across the room in disgust. With a deep sigh I decided I was being silly and went to retrieve my discarded dice. I found it sitting in the corner of the room and guess what? I'd rolled a 1!!

D20 V's Hammer = Hammer Wins.

6 comments:

  1. I have observed that wargamers have roughly 10x the number of dice they actually need to play the game on them when playing (check next time you play!).

    I have about 100 D6 when playing FOG - but at most need about 12 (for impacts or big melees) BUT when the dice aren't going for you, there is the option to change them.

    I was playing FOG - Romans vs Carthaginians last week. In a number of incidents I had about 2x the dice my opponent had yet still managed to draw or lose (grrrr).

    I also had his elephants surrounded by 3BG of velites. 12 dice vs 4 - and I drew the melee! The dice went back in the box - brought out new D6 and - boom! An 8-2 melee win, dead elephant, assured victory!

    So sometimes the only answer is to send the offending dice back to the box in disgrace, to give them time to reflect on their poor performance and come out better next time.

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  2. I'm afraid persistently poor rolling dice have two options in my house. Improve or die (no pun intended).

    I'm an unashamed dice tyrant.

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  3. I recently played a FOW game which my artillery was nailing the ranging in. But when it came to the killing shot ..... you guessed it "1"s ...

    Lucky for me my bazooka team had awesome rolls and sealed the game for me

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  4. My friend COL Jim often has bad dice too. After we caught him using average dice in a rule set that only uses regular d6 dice we started furnishing him his dice.

    Nice blog, would you like to exchange links?

    http://bunkermeister.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete

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