Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A D&D Sapphire Anniversary Dice Set has been announced as one of the world's largest pencil-and-paper role-playing games celebrates not one but two anniversaries: it's been 45 years since the release of the original Dungeons & Dragons and five years since the release of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition.
Upon its announcement Franchise VP Nathan Stewart had the following to say:
When the D&D team realized the sapphire is the traditional anniversary stone for both five years and forty-five years, and that adding a laboratory-created sapphire to a twenty-sided die wouldn't jeopardize the integrity of a roll, we couldn't pass up the chance to make something really cool to celebrate the milestones, the team put together a fun product for our fans that includes art and newly updated stats for sapphire dragons, making these classic dragons ready for play in your next D&D session.
For the enthusiast with $299.99 to spare!
Source: https://techraptor.net/tabletop/news/dd-sapphire-anniversary-dice-set-celebrates-25-years-in-style
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:51PM (4 children)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kgx2b1sIRs [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:09PM
Please, I have Satan over for boardgame night every month, and he enjoys a wide variety of games. Puerto Rico for the slavery, Diplomacy for the backstabbing and betrayal, and Monopoly because of a general enjoyment of suffering.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:27PM (2 children)
If I can summon a succubus in real life by rolling enough D20s, so be it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @12:17AM
You can summon one on plenty of street corners by waving pictures of dead presidents.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday November 15 2019, @09:51PM
This guy did [wikipedia.org], somehow. Not to disparage his wife, though.
(Score: 3, Informative) by damnbunni on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:09PM (6 children)
I'll stick with my Gamescience Ugly Dice. Gotta have those sharp edges and excellent randomness.
(They're deliberately made in horrible colors so no one steals 'em!)
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:31PM (5 children)
That is hilarious. Love the idea and practicality of the product.
I find the ones with no paint/contrast for the numbers to be especially obnoxious. Nobody would want to steal those. :P
(Score: 3, Informative) by jasassin on Friday November 15 2019, @04:53AM (4 children)
Any hardcore AD&D dice thief knows you just have to rub a crayon color of your choice into the numbers and rub off the excess.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:43PM (3 children)
This being the 21st century, I use an ultra-fine-point Sharpie to ink my Ugly Dice.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday November 18 2019, @12:27AM (2 children)
Or you could just buy dice that aren't ugly...
(Score: 3, Funny) by jasassin on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:10AM
I feel sorry for the ugly dice so I like to give them a makeover! They look and feel so pretty afterwards you are sure to roll more 20's.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Friday November 22 2019, @12:21AM
But then people might steal them. No one steals Ugly Dice.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:24PM (8 children)
I was kind of interested until I realized they also celebrate five years of 5th edition and threw up in my mouth.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @12:16AM (7 children)
5E is a hell of a lot better than 4E. On par or slightly better than 3E/3.5E, depending on your nit picks.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 15 2019, @12:52AM (6 children)
Them's fightin' words
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:39AM (4 children)
Try it. They're very similar, really. 5E just has slightly more streamlined math.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 15 2019, @07:16AM (1 child)
Are you thinking of second edition? Math? This is basic addition and subtraction not Attack Vector: Tactical
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:34AM
Math still slows down the story, even if it's simple. While there's plenty of fun to be had not knowing what a die is going to turn up in a crucial moment, the crucial moment is the important bit not the mechanics.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 15 2019, @12:52PM (1 child)
Life was simpler a couple years ago; 4E sucked so everyone used Pathfinder
Now its complicated; 5E is way better and Pathfinder is internally self destructing with the whole 2nd edition situation. I'm certainly not buying anything Pathfinder until the 1st/2nd edition thing settles out; that kind of "wait and see" killed many technology companies back in the old days. I'm not really "sold" on Pathfinder 2E anyway, there is some smell of "we just wanna sell the same books over again".
Seems to be best to figure out what the locals are using and join them. No longer a marketplace of whats best but a marketplace of whats locally popular. 5E seems to be winning locally, but just like internet discussion of cell phone coverage on a worldwide forum is kinda pointless without large scale statistical analysis....
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:37AM
Honestly, Fate-based games are more fun than D&D to me since I discovered them. Less math, simpler rules, all in an effort to the the mechanics the hell out of the way of the story.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Jay on Friday November 15 2019, @07:55PM
As others have noted, try 5E. I was in your shoes as well, until I visited a long lost group of gaming friends and sat in on a session. I was shocked because I never thought they would be the type.
Turns out I was wrong, and it is great.
5E gets the hell out of the way and lets you play. It lets DMs DM without looking things up most of the time. It vastly simplifies the rules for letting players do abstract things, allowing for insanely creative attempts at glory.
I had a player on a horse who wanted to ride past the wizard, grab him, and toss him onto a tree branch out of harm's way. No book needed. No break to look shit up. DCs made up on the fly, dice rolled, wizard thrown headfirst into a branch, knocked unconscious, then back to the ground with a satisfying crunch. (The orcs lost a round due to incapacitating laughter.)
I'm not sure we would have even tried that in 3rd or 4th edition, because just figuring out the rules would have discouraged it, and would have stopped combat for 15 minutes.
5E really feels like it's somewhere between 2.5E and 3E, but with the lessons learned over the last 20 years guiding that improvement.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @10:12PM
They look terrible and are obviously lower quality than the $99 aluminum WizDice you can get any time from Amazon.
Watch the video and you'll see up close how cheaply made they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @10:51PM
I just signed up and marked my calendar.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday November 14 2019, @10:59PM (1 child)
Kinda blatantly money-grubbing to launch a 45-year product, when 50 years is just around the corner. I can picture the gold-plated dice, books, miniatures, DM-Screens, Spell-cards and everything else already!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 15 2019, @12:56PM
Its been 5 years of 5E, the optimist says 5E will make it to 50, the pessimist says cash grab time will commence and it'll be 6E by then.
Different mindset than the old days; I'm old enough to remember AD+D and people bought it as a one time thing; the idea of buying the game over and over again with slight variation would be bizarre like insisting I continually buy the latest (annual?) version of "Uno(tm)" or "Monopoly(tm)"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @11:11PM
If $ > brains then buy;
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @11:16PM (1 child)
Since D+D players tend to live in their parents' basement, just charge the dice to your mother's credit card.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:37AM
Which is why TMB is doing it, since he likes Faux News so much :)
Seriously though, some people liked 3E, plenty of plebs like 4e or 5e, but if you wanted the 'Gygax Experience' that died between 1e and 2e, and 2e, as expensive as it was, was still the closest to the last time it was not a money grab (go look at the sheer content in 2e era boxed sets and consider the formatting/manual labor involved, compared to the later full color and much shorter books at 3x the cost, churned out on a 5 year interval to get suckers rebuying the popular subset of the same products over and over again as they rewrite the rules so you can't use old copies.
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Friday November 15 2019, @05:37AM
But, no it's just an inset sapphire for bling potential. Might be good for D&D players that love 'gangsta' rap culture though. Look good with some oversize untied Nikes and heavily branded clothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @02:39PM
Meh...
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 15 2019, @04:11PM
A mistake in the freaking headline
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday November 15 2019, @09:22PM
Pick your favorite color schemes [kickstarter.com] from these extra purty options for a sixth the price. Three weeks until the kickstarter ends!