"$18K for a D20 anyone?" Topic

Apologies if this is old news, but I ran into this today:

link

Looks like RPGs have been around longer than I thought!

- Bob

I would be interested, but sadly, it is dented and chipped, so probably won't result in even outcomes.

Then again, on second thought, if betting, that might give me an edge……

That's why you pay $18K for it.

Bob just a note from the 1970s. The first game that I used d20 for was a historical rules game Empire and not an RPG. !!. The charts were percentile and back then a popular company was Zocci who had his d20s marked 1-0 wit ha + and 1-0 with a -. So we used them as percentile dice.

By the way a great find for a story and thanks for sharing it.

Wow, who'd 'a thunk it? I can just imagine a group of geeks sitting around and arguing the merits of the D20 system 1900 years ago.

I've seen that die before. I just want to know what happened to the rest of the set. It's probably a d20 that roll to many ones and got chucked out a window, like I've seen happen so many times before.

I think it is a fake personally. No scholarship has revealed what it was used for, advertised as Roman, found in the 1920's in Egypt, no other finds of this type – anywhere, and they want $$$ for it. Sorry, looks like a fake to me. You would think that there would be another find of this type somewhere at sometime given the number of finds, and there would be some reference to the dice somewhere.

There are several like it. Not a fake.
The Louvre in Paris has a few, if I'm not mistaken.

Though calling it 'Roman' is stretching it a bit. It was found in Alexandria, and has Greek letters (doubling as numerals). Roman times, yes, but Roman?

The shapes have been popular among mystics since before Plato, even if he's given them their popular name Platonic solids.
The Pythagoreans loved them, and are said to have called them dice of the gods.

'$18K for a D20 anyone?'

I thought for a moment this was going to be another GW bashing thread. Cool link. Thank you.

Check out this note on that Web page: "Lot Notes: Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used."

Obviously, someone from modern times time traveled back to that period, and bored, had some d20s created so he could play D&D.

And there I was thinking that the D20 had been invented by some of my colleagues in the Bristol Wargames Society back in the late 60s!
We certainly ran the club for a few years on their royalties.

I would be surprised if they were used for a game rather than for divination.

Divination is a game.
-Kle.

It works great for ancients games!

bobstro – thanks for posting this.

Interesting item.