The die above is one of my first polyhedral gaming dice. I am not sure what game it came with; likely Gamma World. I forget how much dice were back in the day, but they were cheaply made. They were just poorly cast plastic, often with stem points and occasionally bubbles. The numbers were not filled in, so you would take a crayon and rub it in to the numbers, then polish the excess wax off (or if you were serious, or had no crayons, Armory made die marking crayons). Of course, we do not have these dice issues anymore. Here is what we are used to, just as a comparison:
That is pretty snazzy, eh? These dice were certainly around when I was a kid, but I seemed to have the crumbly dice for quite a while. Of course, my memory is shit.
Since we have been playing Basic D&D lately, I remembered the little yellow crumbly die and got it out for the game. Just for nostalgia. Being a four-sider, it doesn't really roll, and for some reason one of the "1" sides has an "A" which I never understood. I still have the d12 somewhere, which is another oddity, as it is smaller than a d6. It is also so worn that it is practically a sphere!
BTW, if you are interested in following along with our time-travel, Basic D&D experiment, check out The Riders of Lohan!
4 comments:
I remember the d4 with the A! You are right, it was Gamma World. I have some blue ones that are the same as that one. All crumbling and worn. I think my d20 is more of a ball now.
I wonder what the "A" is for...?
I remember when the red box set was delivered to the shop I managed. I fielded a hideous number complaints about those disintegrating dice. One mother came in demanding a refund. She had bought two sets and left them in her car in the middle of a Miami summer. When her sons opened the boxes, nothing but dust remained.
Was the d4 with the A from Gamma World? I vaguely remembered it indicating that it was manufactured by The Armoury.
Hmm... Maybe they are Armory dice? That was is easily from 1982, and maybe I bought a set of disintegrating dice by themselves?
That's sort of funny about the dice vaporizing in the car. Not that the kids lost their dice, but that they were that fragile :-)
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