I don’t know about you, but I love a new bag of dice! It’s more than that though, really, because my newest bag o’ dice was bought specifically because I wanted to have a specific number of different polyhedral dice on hand for the newest game I am running: The Northern Isles.

For new readers, the new game is being run as an infinite game and with all of the game rules behind the GM screen – at least, that’s the experiment we have agreed to attempt for the first few sessions. We are seeking deeper Otherworld-immersion and greater Character-immersion. Focus on the emerging narrative rather than the mechanisms for all except the GM. They don’t even know which rules I am using… a deliberate and agreed approach.

Why get this bag of dice? I mean, I already have lots of dice.

Well, sure they look nice: good-sized numerals, strong contrast (I am colour-blind) and an appealing feel. But I went looking for dice because I was sick of fishing a random mix of D4 and D6 dice out of my dice bag… especially the D4, of which I needed seven.

Some of my D4 dice go back to 1983. I remember buying them. I have stood on them – to howls of pain – more times than I can count. Honestly, I used to truly hate the humble D4 because it simply doesn’t roll. But I have learned to put up with them because mathematically the bell-curve of multiple D4 dice is pretty neat. But that’s still not the reason I bought new dice.

The true reason I bought new dice is that yes, I wanted a set to make fishing in my dice bag a thing of the past – I can keep this set on my computer desk for gaming online – but also because I can actually get to roll nice dice while I play online.

You see, we are not using a virtual tabletop (VTT) for the game. At least, not yet… and if we do, I won’t be using the dice roller because I know just how much I love rolling dice. As the players aren’t interacting with the rules, well, they don’t need to roll dice either. It was one of the first things we discussed in Session 1.

A new bag o’ dice. That I get to roll during play. Which are rather nice to read and use.

Game on!