How we roll: Wil Wheaton on dice

Wil Wheaton (a wonderful writer and general geek, who got his start by playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: TNG) writes a funny entry in his blog on the superstitions all of us gamers have about our dice:

I stabbed the top of a Tofu pouch and drained its water into the sink. I dumped the tofu block out into my hand, and set it on the cutting board. While I sliced it in half, I said, "Anyway, in our second encounter, I had to roll a d20 for something, and while I was shaking it, it hopped out over the top of my hand, rolled across the table to my left, and came to rest against this other guy's stack of dice."

The pan warmed, and I dumped curry powder into the rapidly heating oil.

"It was like time stopped for a second, and the only thing any of us could see was my d20 resting against his d4 -- that's the one that looks like a pyramid."

"Oh, the one that's so fun to step on," she said.

"I said I was sorry about that," I said. I stirred the curry around, and put my tofu into the pan. It sizzled, and a delicious cloud of curry-flavored steam billowed into the kitchen.

"So while the other end of the table continued resolving their combat, he looked at me and said, very seriously, 'Uh, your dice are touching my dice.'"

In my local gaming group, there's one member who we have deemed as the "one-who-sucks-out-the-life-of-dice." We're all absolutely convinced that should he ever touch your dice, they will be cursed to never roll well for you again.

Sure, my intellectual side knows it's a gambler's fallacy, but that doesn't mean I'm going to risk his life sucking hands touching my dice!