The world's oldest d20!

Zoombie

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So, a d20 (for the uninitiated) is a twenty sided die used for Dungeons and Dragons, Mutants and Masterminds, that reeeeeeally shitty Babylon 5 RPG, Pathfinder and a few dozen other systems.

And now we found one...that is more then 2,000 years old.

My bet? The Jaffa played during off hours.
 

Gale Haut

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I didn't believe it until I followed the links to the museum listing. This thing was big, too, about an inch and a half diameter. Very cool.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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A few years ago, the Met offered a transparent lead crystal version about 3 inches or so across. A gamer friend of mine bought it out of the now-defunct Museum Store in Scottsdale AZ. It is beyond cool.

I've got one of those. It was a present from Alessandra (arty gamers. You can't beat them for cool ideas).
 

MattW

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My THAC0 is too low for even the most ancient d20.
 

Bookewyrme

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Rrgh. That cNet article irritated me, but I was too tired to post about it last night. I know what they were trying to do, but it drove me batty. Those dice (they've found more than one) were certainly not used for gaming (although I would totally roll to Hit with a replica of that...for one thing it'd force me to remember my greek alphabet!) but rather for divination and things of that sort. The Egyptians and Greeks did play games, but not usually ones involving dice as we think of them (Romans on the other hand LOVED dice). And all 20 sides have actual greek letters (minus the last four of the alphabet because...well...only 20 sides!).

Anyway, sorry for the history-nerd-rage. They are unbelievably cool!
 

Rhoda Nightingale

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I didn't even read the article--I can't stop staring at that picture.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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I'm betting it's something Pythagorean. The Pythagoreans venerated the regular solids, of which the twenty-sider is the largest. It certainly suggests some sort of divination rather like a Ouija Board, since it has most of the Greek alphabet on it.

My THAC0 is too low for even the most ancient d20.

"THAC0?"

Oh man, you are sooo behind the curve in D&D.

(TBH, I got the same thing from our children. The whole family plays D&D together -- is anyone surprised? -- and I got the blankest of blank stares when I mentioned "THAC0.")
 

Kaiser-Kun

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No wonder their civilization collapsed. They played those satanic things.

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Note: Real anti D&D propaganda