Why Does D&D Use a D20? (and which game used it first?)

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Oh, you're a "dice goblin"? Then how did the first polyhedral dice make their way into RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons?? ▶️ More below! ⏬

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Clearly, the ancient Egyptians used the dice in their variant of duel monsters.

arlibrarian

It's interesting that in the Futurama clip Gygax rolls a d20 and a d6. It reminded me that back in the day the d20 weren't numbered 1 to 20. There were numbered 0 - 9 twice. The dice could be used for percentile rolls as d10 are used today. When used as a 1 - 20 number generator, the 0 would be treated as 10 and some method used to determine whether the result was 1 - 10 or 11 - 20. Some people colored one set of 0 - 9 with crayon or marker to denote that these numbers represented 11 - 20, but others, like myself, would roll a d6 along with the d20 and on a 4 -6, add 10 to the number on the d20 to get 11 - 20.

chthonicmusings

Fun fact: critical hits with a d20 was lifted by AD&D from Empire of the Petal Throne.

Great short video, Bob.

steppeone

My first D&D box set from the 80s came with 5 dice and 2 crayons, there was no 10 sided die and the d20 had 0-9 twice. You the purchaser were to color the sides of each die with the crayons then wipe the face off with a napkin to leave the wax in the numbers, then when rolling the d20 you would have to declare "the red is high" or such before rolling to determine if you had rolled a 5 or a 15.

jasonfauci-wills

I have the dice I bought in 1978 from a "Head Shop". We had to use nail polish on 10 sides of the d20 to denote Hi and Low as the numbers went from 0-9.

nctinman

I was a well established historical wargamer when I first encountered D&D in 1974. At the time, 20 sided dice numbered 0-9 twice, sold in one black (tens) and one red (units) pairs, were known as Percentage Dice, and widely used in UK rules, particularly for skirmish games and micro-armour games. I remember them in TableTop Games Western Gunfight rules, plus Leicester MIcro-Armour's 1/300th WW2 rules, and several others.

johnorange

Nice video, with lots of cool history! Also of note is that the Magic 8 Ball debuted with a d20 inside in 1950.

The d12 is the King of Dice, though, as it can represent 1/4 and 1/3 in whole numbers. Also it rolls quite nicely, so we should be using 12-sided d6 (with 1-6 twice) and d4 (with 1-4 thrice) for a better illusion of randomness.

Mr.RobotHead

A crucial detail is that Gygax liked the funny dice because they represented a way to make people buy more stuff. If I recall correctly, they actually intentionally made the first d&d dice with cheaper plastic so that the corners would wear off and people would have to buy more dice. Gygax was, above all, a businessman– and a rather monopolistic one at that.

Salsmachev

The original polyhedral dice that TSR used were from the scientific supply company Creative Publications. There were two issues with these dice. The first being that the "D20" was actually a "D10" i.e. it was number 1 to 0 twice. Early players either colored in the number two different colors with the 2nd color representing 11-20 or.. rolling a d6 with the d20 and 4-6 meant reading the result as the 10s, the 2nd being that they were made of a soft plastic and after a lot of use the edges would 'wear away'. I had a friend whose d20 rolled like a marble. 🤣Jokingly, gamers referred to them as 'Low Impact dice". Later on when Lou Zocchi produced his Game Science dice, he advertised them as "High Impact Dice."

In addition, the popularity of the Holmes Boxed set resulted in a dice shortage, and for a time TSR included 'Chits' to put into a cup to get the expected results in the game and a coupon to send away for polyhedral dice.

captcorajus

You filled in a couple of gaps for me, but I knew that the "maths rocks" were literally that once.

There was something called the Royal Game of Ur which was a race game which used d4s. Which makes the d4 around 5, 000 years old.

southron_d

The five shapes (pyramid d4, d6, d10, d12, and d20) are the only regular polyhedrons definable as "platonic solids" (requiring, among other features, all faces to be congruent and themselves a regular polygon) that can exist. There are "fair dice" of different numbers of faces, but none of them will follow the same rules of form. Note the 'teetotum, ' barrel dice, mixed polygonal dice, chamfered multifaceted, etc as potentially statistically fair but of a notably different form.
The reason those five shapes were in the educational supply catalog is because they share this unique and interesting property, thus being coveted by math nerds.

TrojanManSCP

I designed a game that used the bell curve on 3D6 as part of the game mechanics. The goal wasn't to roll high, it was to roll average. When you're aiming in front of you, you're trying to hit the center. If you roll a 3, that's a wide miss to the left, and 18 was a wide miss to the right. But a 9, 10, or 11 was a dead hit. 8 and 12 were grazing hits that did half damage. It was fun.

kevnar

That was awesome! That cool ancient Greek dice at the end is so cool! Feels kinda time-travellery.

Turabbo

Thank you for another great video Bob! I really appreciate how active you are in this community. You are always posting comments on other creator's channels and seem genuinely interested in building a sense of community within the TTRPG space!

oldestmate

in the book "Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D" it is said that originally the rules said to use a bag with 20 numbered chips inside a pick one out, then when gary discovered the existence of the icosaedron he changed the rules to that dice.

MUNTraiano