The Blogo-Bet

Thanks everyone for taking the time to select your favorite D&D die in the first ever Cross-Blog Poll Contest doohickey, the Favorite Die Poll. It was close for the first few days, but the building block of gaming managed to pull ahead of the tetrahedron and ultimately claim victory in the Sham vs. Arcona Blogo-Bet. The loser of the little d6 vs. d4 Gentleman’s Bet has to write a post on his blog using a D&D theme selected by the winner…me! Here’s the comment I was going to send to Arcona aka Matthew of The Dwarf and the Basilisk fame:

Matthew

Here’s the theme for our Gentleman’s Bet on that so called Cross-Blog Poll thingie:

The theme is a simple one that I’ve been giving some though to of late; a 10’x10’ room with an Orc guarding a chest. How would you incorporate such a description into a ‘real’ room in your own campaign? In other words, that is what’s seen at first blush, but what is actually awaiting the players?

No time limit to your post, and most importantly, use your creativity and have fun!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

I’m posting it here because I don’t have Arcona’s email address, I didn’t see an appropriate place to leave the comment on his blog, and I’m sure he’ll see it soon enough.

Matthew will post his article sometime in the near future on his own blog, so keep a look out for it there. I look forward to seeing how he handles the theme.

Here’s a copy of the poll results:

d20: 14 (21%)
d12: 18 (27%)
d10: 7 (10%)
d8: 9 (13%)
d6: 11 (16%)
d4: 6 (9%)

Further comments about the Favorite Die Poll:

I had assumed the d20 would win going away. It had a late flurry of votes, but still finished second to the 12-sider.

The d12 has long been a favorite of a couple of members of my old gaming crew. It really only ever saw much action in our older games of AD&D when a character was wielding the ubiquitous Long Sword against a Large monster. I did home brew in a lot of magic items that used the d12 for damage in my past campaigns, since I like the d12 as well.

Before coming to my current appreciation of the d6, I was long a fan of the d10. Maybe because it was ‘new’ back in the early days. You youngsters might not realize that the d20 used to be marked 0-9 twice. So it could be used as a d10, d20 and d00, among other things. Players would normally color one half of the old d20 to represent the 11-20 numbers. Poor old d10 only bested one of the other dice, though, in this scientific research poll.

The d8 surprised me. Maybe it’s all those AD&D weapons that deal 1-8 damage that helped it’s cause. I had assumed that the d8 would be the ‘middle child’, or forgotten die.

The d6. I think I’ve beaten that topic into the ground. Third place behind the d12 and d20. I had no idea where it might end up, since my opinion of this die is skewed.

The d4. Poor tetrahedron. One of them had to finish last, and it was the plopping d4. It’s unique qualities weren’t enough to garner further votes.

It’s clear that lots of people love dice, myself included. Session One of my campaign didn’t use anything other than d10’s and d6’s. As I progress, I’ll come up with ways to incorporate all of the dice into the game. Each has it’s merits, and playing with the numbers and possibilities is what makes using them satisfying.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee