Bags of Dice

Somewhere, perhaps in storage, are two bags of dice.

One is larger.  The bag is tan suede and it's about ten inches long.  It holds a lot of dice.

The other is smaller.  It is black leather.  It doesn't hold as much.

These were my gaming dice, collected over decades.  They are dice of many shapes and sizes- four sided, six sided, eight sided, ten sided, twelve sided, twenty sided, thirty sided, and even 100 sided.

In that bag are two of the surviving dice from my original Dungeons and Dragons blue boxed set.  Their corners are rounded with use, all those years ago.  In fact, they've been rarely used since before high school.  I bought other dice with sharper edges and different colors.  But I saved these two.  My dear friend Dr. Dave has two others from this set.  Or at he did.  I don't know if he still does.

When we started playing D&D, Dave and I scavenged dice from all of our other games for use with D&D.  After all, one can have too many dice!  They are now in the dice bag.  There are dice from the games of my childhood there, the rest of the games long gone.

When I attended gaming conventions, I always bought at least one new die.  A memento.  One of the six siders is a special Gen Con Commemorative die, which has a dragon for a "one."  It is large and red.  It is in the tan dice bag.

I bought the black dice bag at Origins '91 in Baltimore, Maryland.  It was Wife and I's first overnight trip together.  The trip was July 4th weekend, and we watched the fireworks over the harbor while holding hands.  While at Origins, I met the people from Chessex game distributors.  A month and a half later, I had a job there, which I held until 1994.

The black bag holds my Gaming dice- the ones I used all the time.  There are two sets of dice in that bag, both sets a gaudy orange.  I figured no one would steal ugly dice.  I used to use those weekly at least.  Now, I haven't laid eyes on them in years.

Not all of the dice I own are in those bags.  The dice I used while playing at Penn State are glued into a display along with the miniatures used by the gaming group there.  I was the only one with miniatures, so we all used mine.  They are all in a small display: frozen in time.  In storage.

I have a couple of large dice in the apartment sitting on shelves as dust collectors.  One is a very large translucent yellow six sider that I bought at my first Gen Con, also in 1991.  The other is a large 20 sider that I bought at the local comic store.

I have a few dice in my car.  They belonged to my late friend Big Al, dead now these four years.  I keep them there in his memory.

All those dice- engines of imagination.  Random generators that determined the course of mighty stories.  Polyhedral memories.

I have no idea where they are now.  Somewhere in storage I think, in one of the many boxes.  I hope so anyway.  Haven't seen them since before I was thrown out.

Part of my life lost.  Missing.

I can't think of a better metaphor to close out a year that has been so horrific.

Be Well.

December 30, 2016- before work