Classic d00 Dice


These are my dice of choice when playing anything d00. The red-white set, with red as the tens digit, reminds me of the classic, ultra-cheap, red and white dice that came with my original Top Secret game. Those were also 20-sided dice but numbered 0 to 9 twice, and they were in red and white like these.

The supposed reason these were like this back in the day is that no d20's existed, and they needed to use a d10 plus a d6 to roll a d20. So a complete set of polyhedral dice in a boxed set was: d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 - five dice, plus whatever six-siders you stole from the family Monopoly or Yahtzee games.

My brother and I grew up with 1d100 games like Top Secret, Gangbusters, and Star Frontiers, so I can read these quick, and they have a feeling of rolling that I grew up with. They roll just like twenty-sided dice, so they are an incredible pleasure to pick up and toss. These dice are slightly oversized with larger numbers, so they read incredibly well. The contrast is excellent, and the numbers are almost in bold font.

The modern "tens" d10 die (0o, 1o, 2o...) always seemed a bit strange to me, like needing to carry around an extra die, finding the tens die, learning to throw the zero digit off the roll, and just needing a few extra mental steps to read the dice. These? Train yourself to find the red die and just read the number. I always read the colored die first as the tens digit, red-white, blue-white, black-white. Set a rule at your table which die comes first, and you will have no issues.

Wondertrail has white, red, blue, and black in solid colors, plus a few transparent sets if you look. And they are Koplow brand, so you are getting a quality set of dice.

Yes, you can use a tens d10 for a 3d10 damage roll, where you add the dice up, but it is clumsy. Here? The same dice used to roll percentages can be used equally for Xd10 damage rolls. You need to carry fewer of them; they read cleaner, and once you train your eyes to read your chosen tens color, they are fast and require no extra mental steps.

And since d00 games like Frontier Space have an advantage-disadvantage system where you can swap the numbers around on a 1d100 roll, lowest or highest first, these work incredibly well.

Overall, one of my favorite dice of all time, and it is super cool to find a modern recreation of a classic and slightly unique die with a little old-school history behind it.

Find them here:

https://wondertrail.com/new-products/wkp02290e4-white-opaque-d20-dice-numbers-0-9-twice-pack-of-4-koplow.html

https://wondertrail.com/new-products/wkp02287e4-black-opaque-d20-dice-numbers-0-9-twice-pack-of-4-koplow.html

https://wondertrail.com/new-products/wkp02288e4-blue-opaque-d20-dice-numbers-0-9-twice-pack-of-4-koplow.html

https://wondertrail.com/new-products/wkp02289e4-red-opaque-d20-dice-numbers-0-9-twice-pack-of-4-koplow.html

Comments