Wednesday, January 25, 2012

OSR Dragonbone

Years and years ago, I saw this ad in The Dragon...

I always wanted one, but I never did buy one.  Too expensive for my high school student budget.  Of course, I could use my programmable calculator to generate random numbers as well, so...

This past weekend, I was at the Dollar Store and I saw this:

It's a large, plastic "take your pill" reminder case.  I had an idea...

You can put a set of dice in there just fine.  There's plenty of room to shake them around.

You can see the dice very easily through the clear bottom of the container.  I plan to make one with 7d20 (of different colors) in it to rapidly generate "to hit" and "saving throws" for multiple monsters at once -- or to roll multiple attacks at once.

I'll let you know how it turns out!


9 comments:

Greyhawk Grognard said...

I've still got my original Dragonbone. It still works perfectly, and I still use it during games. It's perfect for times when I need to take another player away from the table for a minute, and might need to do some dice rolling where there might not be a convenient table.

Pere Ubu said...

D'OH!

Use smaller d6s and you could roll D&D stats for a character in one shot, or roll combat totals for Tunnels & Trolls.

I've been carrying around a set of d6s in a pill vial so I can roll them without chasing after them... but your idea I hadn't though of.

I (heart) our Dollar Tree. Lots of gaming goodness there if you look.

Restless said...

How much are Dragonbones going for? I wonder if anybody would pay for DIY Dragonbone kit...

Anathemata said...

That's remarkable. I gotta try it myself!

Desert Scribe said...

I made something similar to your analog device in order to handle multiple d% rolls for a spaceship combat game. I call my device the BOX O' DEATH™:

http://supergalacticdreadnought.blogspot.com/2011/07/introducing-box-o-death.html

Lord Thanatos said...

THE DRAGONBONE!!! That was the golden chalice of gaming back then. Very high tech. I couldn't afford one either, but was amazed by it. Sweet technology, right up there with the pocket football game, little blips of light.

Very cool idea though; accomplish the same thing for a whole lot less. And in a year or two you can start using it for your metamucil and blood thinners ole timer!

Telecanter said...

Dude, that is so sweet. I love your relentless re-purposing. Bless you.

Nick said...

Hey, that's pretty cool!

Jim said...

@Everyone -- thanks for all the comments. I'm looking forward to seeing if these help me with "dice control" this Wednesday... :)