Dungeon Lore II: Platonic Solids and Horned Beasts [S2F2]

In this week's deep dive into the history of D&D, we talk about the origins of two iconic aspects of the game: the variety of dice and the extremely weird and specific monsters. Jake describes probability distributions, Reilly comes up with appealing backstories for creatures, and we take a brief detour into the concept of good and evil in fantasy worldbuilding. Throughout the episode we completely ignore the d10, which is the least aesthetically pleasing die shape.

Here are some links that we used in research for the episode:

• This video from Bob World Builder summarizes the history of the dice used in D&D.
• This blog post shows the chits TSR shipped out during the dice shortage era.
• Here’s the rules for Chainmail, which was a TSR combat system that used d6s.
• Here’s a list of all the US PTO dice patents, which includes some really ambitious dice designs.
• This blog post from Tony Diterlizzi includes pictures and descriptions of the figurines that inspired the monsters we talked about in this episode.

Also, in this episode, Jake implies that 3^8 is "about 6400". It's actually 6561. We sincerely apologize for the error and we promise to never attempt math on the fly again.

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What is Campaign Spotlight?

This show explores the creativity and originality of home tabletop games. Every two weeks we interview a GM to hear about the unique world they've built and the story they've told for their players. Between these interviews we take a deeper dive into the history of tabletop gaming.