The dice collection

It started with Chessex speckled loot

A photo of all of our dice, inside the lid of the D&D starter set box, along with the dice roller and mini dice, harrow deck of many things and our D&D toys Simon and Lotus, the giant fly and demodog, munching on pieces of paper in the middle.
It began with a green speckled dice, the only green dice available in the gaming store that my friend J1 took us to. We were playing L5R, Legend of the 5 Rings. I actually ended up giving a lot of those away, bit of a story behind that. Y'see, originally in playing L5R, that game only uses D10's, and so over the four year campaign, I ended up collecting a lot more of the same dice pattern, in order to collect enough 10 sided dice. This is how we came to create a two, three, five, and seven sided dice of that set, because we had SO many extra dice that weren't being used, that I used our family's table grinder to turn a number of those into the aformentioned dice. A little bit wonderful, and over time, when the rest of the dice collection came to be (also J1 gave each of us our L5R clan dice sets), I ended up deciding to give away the extra Chessex speckled loot dice (keeping one set for myself, and the modified dice) to a random person in the Goblin Dice Hoard facebook community (private group, just search for it), and happiness was had by all. Chessex Speckled Loot, the very first dice set I ever owned, sitting on a grey and white leaf-patterned fabric.

Four hand-carved dice from the Chessex speckled loot set, a d7 dice, d5, d3, and a d2 dice coin.
The dice collection grew and grew, after the L5R days, beginning with of all things, the teensy tiny dice for the harrow deck of many things. An accidental loss of a D4 there led to a second set of those, now with the miniature dice roller, and the chonk, of which we strangely also came to have two of. The first order hadn't arrived for 5 weeks, so I messaged the seller, offered to pay for a new one, giving them my story, and they said no, and just sent another! And then, the original DID show up after like 6 weeks, as well as the second. I once again messaged the seller offering to pay, but he waved it off and wished me a good day! So that was awesome. After those came the Chessex gemini black & pink, Chessex opaque grey and black (numbers recoloured to bright grey/white, to look more like a city grey), and blue starter set dice, prattled about in my song-a-day here (and the dice generally prattled about here and here). These three sets were actually purchased in August 2022, which is why more dice are featured in those videos, the hollow metal dragon d20, the Chessex speckled recon gold (aka my swarmkeeper dice), a set of Little Dragon Corp february serpentine (aka my sparkly dragon dice). Of course in that same area we have the cube, the homemade dice/cube of acheron, that we protected for the ant queen! Check out that cube link for a ton of awesome videos pertaining to it, also side pic. Dark green dice of the Chessex speckled recon gold pattern, which has very small and many black speckles throughout it, with gold lettering, sitting on a character sheet.

The cube of Kolyoral, a rough silver-grey cube with many small black speckles, and showing the garden and the iron fortress of Zandikar. A housefly is perched on top of the cube, guarding the fortress.
It was soon after this that we decided to try hunting down one of the original D&D dice (that came with the box, tho I wouldn't turn down a GameScience if I stumbled across one, these had to be purchased seperately from the game). I wanted a nice, good, beat-up looking original dice, that looked like it had been rolled a thousand times. And so, I hunted around on the Goblin Dice Hoard Acquisition group, and asked around for it. Lo and behold, someone came to my aid, and found me the most heavily worn, most rolled-looking D8 that he could find (I wasn't picky on which dice, just worn looking). And not only that, with that Holmes dice he sent me a Moldvay and a Mentzer as well, to get my collection going for those, and to help me tell them apart! WOOOOOH! So that was all kinds of awesome. I had decided early on that I wanted to recolour the numbers on those, as they were about to begin a new life of rolling again. I decided to make the Holmes with yellow numbering, which looks INCREDIBLE, and eschew the idea that the original Holmes dice were all just numbered in black marker, again because it was beginning a new rolling life, but still used crayon to a) not have paint or marker seep into the microcracks in the plastic, and b) kinda give a nod towards the original dice still. The Moldvay we gave orange, not one of the original crayons (red, white, dark blue, yellow, green, and black), again as a nod to the current age rolling it will do, and the Mentzer we kept the same colour, just refreshed. Oh my goodness the original 3. It was also about this time that I began the Simon and Lotus dice-eating series, where Lotus attacked these dice in episode 4. And, as with all dice goblins, the collection carried on. The original Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer dice inside separate ziplock bags, each one labelled. The Holmes is a heavily worn green d8 with black lettering, the Moldvay is a light blue d4 with white lettering, and the Mentzer is a slightly lighter blue d8 with white lettering, all sitting on a wooden table surface.

The three original dice, recoloured and sitting in Kabutroid's hand. The numbering on the Homes is now yellow, the Moldvay is orange, and the Mentzer has fresh white numbering.
At this point, we obtained the Diceling beholder (aka: Khorgah, who's eye was replaced with that of a Nothic, carried through to here), and were now more focused on looking for specific individual cool dice, instead of entire sets. We had throughout all of this gotten random map generator dice, random weather dice, the HeroQuest dice, and a handful of others. Obligatory crystal dice (specifically looking for dice that looked homemade rather than cnc machined, mission accomplished, also green aventurine and purple agate), an orange dice, a brown dice, a DeeDee dice from One Shot Questers :D ! We also obtained a homemade resin dice representing the swamps, and a d4 in the shape of a healing potion bottle, bit of a story behind that. I really only wanted one, but it came in a set of 10, so the remainder were given to my gaming group before moving, spread the love :D

With our dice bag filling up (though recently replaced with the bag for the Hive tile game, giving us more space lol), we had just about run out of specific dice to hunt for. Most recently was obtained a translucent spindown dice (technically a spinup dice for my one-shot), and my beautiful wife's first dice set, Critical Kit dragon eye multicolour dice. And thus brings us to our set, so far, as of May 2023. The only things left on the to-get list are a liquid-core dice, and otherwise it's gotta be pretty cool (or just catch my eye I suppose lol) for us to get more. But we're dice goblins, so we'll see.

The tile game Hive pocket, spread out overtop of the bag and instruction manual, on top of a dark blue fabric.The Hive pouch now filled with regular dice, and the Hive tiles and instruction sheet now inside of a translucent mesh bag that used to be the main dice bag.

The Critical Kit dragon eye dice, resting in the palm, with several of the eyes visible through the clear dice.
--Oohhhhh, and the dice saga continues. On Sept. 20, 2023, I managed to find a copy of Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer issue 1!

Now, I'm not planning to collect the *entire* set, that's just not in my list o' goals here, but when the ads started showing up for this, I wanted just one piece of memorabilia. Like any of them would be cool, but it would really have to have dice as an issue gift. Like I'm planning on getting the OneDND/5.5e core rulebooks when they come out, so getting the full set of magasines isn't on my to-do list, but oooohhhhhhhh, getting the issue 1 dice. Like, I'm normally not a black-colour type person, but it can at least hearken back to the metal side of me, and it feels like dice that a barbarian might use when swingin' their big ol' axe. So my next axe-swinger (or sword-swinger, who swings it as brutally as an axe) now has their next set of dice :D.

Yah, I probably would have preferred a different colour, but again justifying this, when else will I ever get a set of black dice (aside from the gemini black/pink below, which have a completely different feel), for £1.99 yet, AND, it's the set of dice that come with Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer #1!!! Like I cannot stress that enough, that is SO cool that I found this, on probably the last day they'll be stocked in stores! There's a new issue every week, it was released on the 13th, I ran out and got it on the 20th... literally 7 days from release... so it probably would have been replaced with issue 2 tomorrow! WOOOOOOH, ISSUE 1 DICE!!!! Colour aside, I will gladly have these (also for my future barbarian) for that alone! NO complaints! AND, AND their very first roll was a 14, not too shabby! So we're happy. We have an unexpected new set of dice, from an iconic magasine issue, we have a colour that I always kinda wanted but didn't think I would ever pick up, and they are limited release! The storage tin for the dice is kinda cool, but since these dice will be staying in ye olde dice bag, I'll come up with something cool to do with this later, probably expect to see it on the AD&D page lol.

But yes, SO excited about this, strangely. Like I said, ever since seeing this come out, and then seeing posts about people not being able to find it and being sold out, I went out, on a rainy, windy day (walking the hour to save a few quid), and came back, only slightly damp from drizzle, and missed the heavy rain by like... 10 minutes! WOOOOOOOH, limited edition issue 1 dice set, NO complaints, ALL the awesome :D :D :D.

And then came a pile of random generator dice, kinda completing my set of those so to speak. From the original room generation and weather dice, we added NPC attitude, class, and species (the reroll on the species dice modified to be Thri-Kreen), trap, monster, and treasure dice, and my wife got me a set of Aruohha metal dice for my birthday! At this point, we were starting to get close to the "goal" (said the dice goblin) of having at least 12 dice of every shape of dice (numbered), mainly because the highest rolls in D&D generally go up to 12 dice (like 12d6 Sunburst for example). And we were getting close. We needed 2 d4's, 2 d8's, and 4 d12's, I picked up some random dollar-a-dice (or pound-a-dice in England, not to be confused with pound-of-dice lol, something I plan to pick up for my shop), the birthday dice showed up, and then my rubber arm was twisted by a shop in England to get a set of Mystery Dice Goblin dice (Slush-puppy purple)... and that left us with a single d12 being needed. A single d12.

So naturally we're going to have to get more dice lol. I still want a liquid-filled dice, a plain opaque pink dice, a coloured transparent dice, and a hammer-forged dice, in my list of "things to complete the set". If one of those happens to be a d12, all the better, but expect more pics to come up over time lol. But which will be the final d12...

An image split into four pictures, the Dungeons & Dragons magasine issue 1 in its plastic packaging, the magasine removed from the plastic sleeve, the very first dice roll on the cover for the dice that it came with, a 14, and then all 7 dice spread out on the cover, black with red numbering.

A set of nine random generation dice for npc's, dungeons, and creatures, sitting on top of the dm screen that came with the planescape box set.Three random dollar a dice finds, a dark grey d4, possibly chessex borealis smoke, a plain white with black numbers d8, possibly DiceRoll UK plain white, because I didn't actually have a plain black and white dice until then, and a colour splattered d12, DiceRoll UK splatter rainbow, all sitting in Kabutroid's hand.

The zinc alloy metal dice set that looks a lotus flower, Aruohha purple blue leaf design dice. They're sitting on top of the planescape dm screen with the dice box, a black metal tin with a purple dragon on the front.A set of pink and purple dice from Mystery Dice Goblin, slush puppy purple, sitting on top of the bag they came in, a very light green bag labelled mystery dice, with images of various coloured dice and a red d20 mimic which is drooling with it's tongue and teeth out, all on top of the main orange dice bag.


Collection started around 2014, and ongoing

A closeup of the hollow metal dragon dice, showing each face as being a green dragon with wings outspread, and the number over the front of the dragon.The diceling beholder, with repainted eye for Khorgah in the AD&D section of the webpage. It isn't visible, but the numbers on the diceling have been repainted purple like the & symbol's colour on the 20 spot.The swampy homemade resin dice with sharp corners, showing the gold on one side, representing the soil, and a murky, swirly green through the middle leading to a more solid green on the other side, representing the swampwater and plantlife inside.

The dice collection, showing two giant grey chonk dice, the orange diceling of the beholder, the and the majority of the dice spread out inside the box lid of the d&d starter set. Beside it is the tiny dice roller box with tiny dice inside of it, the Hive tile game bag that acts as our dice bag, Simon and Lotus, the giant housefly and demodog, eating from a pile of scrap paper pieces, and the Harrow deck of many things, with tiny dice and dice bag on top of it.



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