In Praise of Polyhedrals...

Our first system, Pits & Perils, was developed in late 2002 as a thought experiment and a way to introduce Robyn to the hobby, although it was my re-introduction as well!  I'd been away from the games for a good fourteen years, and I didn't have my old stuff, meaning we were literally starting from scratch. 

One consequence was making a d6 system.  When you've been doing college (the adult and working full time variety) and spending too much time deployed, life is about other things, meaning the only dice available are the ones you fish out of the Monopoly game in the hall closet.  But that actually suited us...

For one thing, it felt more like the amateurs of old creating a hobby out of nothing, and since I had close to zero contact with the larger gaming community, we sometimes felt like we were, and this fact, alone, inspired us to stick with six-siders exclusively.

Little did we know a d6 revolution was already brewing, and I can only assume for similar reasons...

But after being re-immersed (and a few conventions later) I realized something important: I MISSED those polyhedral dice!

Yes, technically, polyhedrals provide a greater range of outcomes and greater variability.  The traditional d20 breaks things down to tidy (and easy to manipulate) 5% increments, while the d10 allows percentile results that are actually the simplest and most intuitive reckoning of probability anywhere.  So yeah, we get that.

But it's something else.  Something less tangible.

It's the way they LOOK on the table.  I mean, you have the almost spherical d20 and the strangely hive-like d12.  But there's also the d8 and pyramidal d4, bane of bare feet after an all-nighter! 

Their NUMBERS stand out (a good thing for older eyes), with no boring pips here.  You get straight up numbers!  Even the d6 in this context uses actual numbers, which just works better.

Oh, and the COLORS.  You get solids and marbled, swirly patterns, sometimes flecked with speckles.  And when you buy them individually and over the counter (vs. a packaged set), there's many different colors in play, each as distinct as their varied shapes.

Finally, there's just a different HEFT to a bag of polyhedrals, something harder to quantify, but true.  Maybe it's the rounder dice that sink like miniature cannon-balls to the bottom.  Or the way many different shapes feel when you reach blindly for the one you're looking for.  Or maybe it just brings back old memories...

Either way, polyhedrals are special.  So much so that we're incorporating them (formally) into our upcoming title: The Maze of Memory, which should be out sometime this fall.  Expect us to preserve our trademark simplicity, but also look for the greater randomness these dice permit.  And look for something a little more lethal than our previous offerings, although still lots of fun!