When I opened and sorted the pound of Gamescience dice I ordered from their website (here’s the listing), I didn’t notice that there were some odd dice “masquerading” as ordinary dice.
At least for me, it’s hard to tell what’s on a Gamescience die until I’ve inked it — I see a decahedron, I assume it’s a d10. Not so! This assortment is weirder than I was giving it credit for, and I didn’t notice until I started inking some of my favorite colors last night.
Here are the first three oddballs I discovered — each has its highest face up.
From left to right, that’s a die numbered 00-40 twice, a decehedral d5 (a d10 numbered 1-5 twice), and a die numbered 10-50 twice.
The d5 I get: Before there were five-sided d5s, there were 10-sided d5s. But for the moment, at least, I can’t think of a situation where I’d need either of the other two — which, now that I’ve typed it, feels like a challenge.
Maybe for a d55, similar to wargaming’s d66?
Sounds reasonable enough.
The 40 I get. It’s a D50. (0 to 49)
But what good is the 50? The range would be…10 to 59?
d00-40+10? “It’s going to take at least 10 minutes, maybe an hour”? ;-)
I don’t know either.
I think the d50 is for a d55. Roll the d50 and d5 together, you get 11-15, 21-25,…,55
Which would seem weird except wargames do it already with d6s.
you get 25 uniformly distributed outcomes. Put em in a table.