Have you ever played a character in D&D that own a specific kit or set of tools? As you look through the equipment in the player’s handbook that is available for PC’s to purchase and use, there is a lot of really cool stuff! Now some of these things are super common and you run into them quite frequently. Example: Bards use Musical Instruments in almost everything they do, Rouges/Thieves use Thieves’ Tools all the time! There are even Artisan’s Tools you can use. I once played a Dwarf Wizard that had the background of Guild Artisan, which allowed me to give him Brewer’s Supplies. I thought this was great and was excited to use the supplies.
Now, my personal experience with playing D&D in groups has been semi limited and have never, before the Dwarf Wizard, used any of these special tools or kits that my characters have had. With my Dwarf Wizard, I made sure to heavily include his brewing history in my story so I could play that into my character. It ended up being so much fun! I sadly didn’t get to play him very much, so I’ll probably end up playing him in another campaign one day.
With Gray Moonnight, his background didn’t give me any special tools or kits. Thanks to a gracious DM though, I included a dice set into Gray’s equipment. If you look in the Players Handbook, in the equipment section, you can find the details for the “Gaming Set”.
Gaming Set. This item encompasses a wide range of game pieces, including dice and decks of cards (for games such as Three-Dragon Ante). A few common examples appear on the Tools table, but other kinds of gaming sets exist. If you are proficient with a gaming set, you can add your proficiency bonus to ability checks you make to play a game with that set. Each type of gaming set requires a separate proficiency.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/equipment#GamingSet
Because Gray didn’t have a gaming set available with his background, I’m unable to use my Proficiency Modifier with his dice rolls. But that’s fine by me, it’s still fun to be able to actually play these games of dice in the game of D&D. As you have heard in Episode 4: Merchant’s Landing, Gray tries his hand at a game of dice, and due to some terrible rolls on my part, looses 10 gp. But that is fine, Gray is a sucker for a game of dice. I imagine he is going to lose a fair amount of money to dice games.
Our DM and I are both huge fans of the Wheel of Time book series, (no spoilers) and one of the main characters plays a lot of dice and has some amazing luck at his games. I decided to use that character as a bit of inspiration when I created Gray, hence his propensity for the game of dice.
Now, if your PC has a dice set and you want to include the use of your dice set in your game, rather than just rolling a D20 to see how the result turns out overall, why not actually play the game at the table like Gray did?
I spent a great deal of time trying to find the rules for the dice game played in the Wheel of Time to no avail. There were no clear instructions for playing the games they did. But I did gather that the games they were playing were very similar to real life Poker Dice. Good enough for me! I went online and found the rules for Poker Dice using standard D6’s and Voila! A dice game I could play at the table against our DM in-game as Gray!
In the process of learning to play Poker Dice, I learned there are hundreds, almost thousands, of dice games out there! And the website with the rules of play for most, if not all, of them?
http://www.dice-play.com/index.htm
Surprisingly, poker dice is very similar to Yahtzee. The winning hands are the same, and the rules of play are pretty simple.
1) Place your bet.
2) Roll 5 D6
3) Keep any dice you want
4) Raise the bet (if desired)
5) Roll the dice you didn’t keep the results of
6) Using the final results of all 5 dice, determine who won the hand.
7) Wash, Rinse, Repeat!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode! And I hope you look for ways to include your special kits and tools into your D&D game that you haven’t before!
I’d love to hear how you include your kits and tools in your games! Please comment below, send us an email (mail@eldritchdice.com), or find us on Twitter/Instagram (@eldritchdice).
As always! Thanks for joining us at the table, and we will see you next time!
– D. (Gray Moonnight)
For specific rules and details on Poker Dice.
http://www.dice-play.com/Games/PokerDice.htm