Dice. The mere mention of the word generally brings smiles of pleasure and a relaxed posture to nearly all gamers. Some even rub their bellies in satisfaction. And if you look hard enough, you can almost see the various thoughts and memories of "dicial" pleasure resurfacing in their heads.

What is it about these little polyhedral shapes of colored plastic that make us gamers so happy? When you think about it, dice should be the enemy. I mean really. Here your favorite character stands in the midst of a critical battle. This is the character that you've cared for and slaved over for months, and if he misses this next swing or shot, he may die. And what do you do? You reach for a tool that does nothing more than throw a random, uncontrollable element into your character's life. One bad roll, and months of work are gone. Why do we think this is okay?

Ask any gamer if they remember the first die they purchased and you could end up with an earful of recollections that should rightfully belong to the very old. I remember mine (see? Here I go... ). It was a large blue gem D8 (or d8 for you lower-case fanatics), with sharp points. It rolled pretty well (of course it was tested before the actual purchase), and the inking in the number grooves eventually wore out, but were dutifully refilled. But even today, over 13 years after I purchased it, I still use it, and it's one of my favorites. I even bought it a mate of the same size and different color.

That's another point. Our favorite dice. We all have them. The dice we use for years. The dice we name. The dice we never change from, unless such a long bad rolling streak (were talking months here) occurs that forces the issue. That's only happened once to me, and with a D20 (or d20). Friends of mine have their favorites too, but sometimes it was a nightly favorite.

A good example of that was my friend Scott. When we were heavy into playing Battletech (which only uses D6s, for those who don't know), both Shayne and I had certain favorite D6s that we would always use. Scott, on the other hand, didn't bother with such favoritism. Every night we sat down to play, Scott would take out his collection of six-siders, roll a bunch, then choose the ones that brought up the highest numbers. He would then take those and continue this process of elimination until he had the two he needed. This was a ritual of his for years.

That, of course brings up another point. Collecting dice. As gamers, we like collecting dice. We think they're cool. We think their neat. They often can hold as much, if not more, meaning as miniatures. Walk around the vendors area at Gen Con and look at the huge array of dice sizes, shapes and styles that exist; order a catalog from Koplow or Chessex and be amazed.

Eric (whom I've made infamous in previous columns) was good for collecting dice. He had this huge mason jar that he liked to store his growing collection of dice in. His favorite to collect was the D6. He would acquire them from anywhere, and of any type. He had the cool round d6, those real teeny ones, "authentic" casino dice from Vegas, this really huge wooden pair that would sometimes be rolled across my parents' basement floor, and the list went on. One of Eric's favorite dice-rolling tactics was to roll the entire filled mason jar, then dump it out, saying which single die counted (much to the annoyance of the current gamemaster). That didn't stop until my parents started complaining about the noise level.

Then, this dice fixation only stretches out to the bag you carry it in. Whether it's leather, cloth, or some other contraption, each gamer invariably hears the comment, "Hey, nice dice bag."

I guess on a certain level, there is some connection made with rolling dice. Whether it's rolling maximum damage, or getting that critical hit, or making that clutch roll that makes your character, and by default you, the hero of the night, gaming dice have that magical appeal. There is just something about them that can't be resisted.

I never saw more evidence of this than the time when there was a significant amount of downtime between Shadowrun campaigns I was running. One of my players asked me when we were going to play again, because as he said with a evil grin of satisfaction, "I want to roll a fistful of dice."