Playing Cards

Obviously, the deck is a full deck of playing cards, as well as a dice bag and general curiosity shop.

The deck contains two jokers: one red, and one black, so you can play games involving wildcards too.

All of the different random things on a card are distributed across the cards. So there's no connection between the suit or number of the card and the values on the dice it shows. To roll any of the dice, simply draw a card from the shuffled deck, exactly as you would if you were picking a random card.

Not all dice and other bits are on every card. If the card you choose doesn't have the thing you want, keep drawing until you find one that does. You're not allowed to keep drawing until you get the value you want, though!

[Top]

Four Sided Die (d4)

The four sided dice is one of the staples of a keen gamer's dice bag, and one of the five so called 'polyhedral' dice.

The d4 can be tricky at first to read. Instead of reading the number on the top face, read the number on the top point. In this example the roll is four: all three sides will have four at the top, so it doesn't matter which way you are looking from.

The four sided die is rolled by twisting it out of the fingers: it doesn't cascade out of the palm very well. Some gamers think that it isn't very random because it doesn't roll, and instead they use an eight sided dice with 1-4 repeated twice. Of course, with Dice Cards, the randomness is guaranteed, so you don't need to worry.

[Top]

Six Sided Die (d6)

Okay, so the chances are you have a couple of six sided dice around somewhere. If you are at all into games you probably have tens, if not hundreds of them.

Well now you've got one more. But unlike the others this won't go rolling off under the sofa or get balanced on its end against the rule-book and cause arguments over whether it came up 5 or 6. Whether that is a good thing or not, its up to you to decide.

[Top]

Eight Sided Die (d8)

The eight sided die has, well, eight sides. It is the third of our 'polyhedral' dice. And there's not much more to say about it.

I say 'polyhedral' rather than just polyhedral, because anything with sides in three dimensions is polyhedral. A cube is polyhedral, as is the a book and a playing card. When a gamer talks about polyhedral dice, they are normally talking about the more obscure five, the d4, d8, d10, d12 and d20.

The d8 is a octohedron. If you filed away each of its points, and kept going, you'd get a cube.

[Top]

Ten Sided Die (d10)

Most sets of dice have two d10 in them. They are used both for random numbers between 1 and 10, and as d%: generating a random percentage.

To generate a random percentage with Dice Cards you need to draw two cards. The d10 on the first determines the tens and the second determines the units.

We thought about putting 2d10 on each card (with one having sides marked 10, 20 and so on up). But there are 100 combinations of 2d10 and only 54 cards. We thought it might be confusing and people would be tempted to read off the tens and units from the same card (which wouldn't be properly random). So instead we opted to just use one.

If you're really mathematically minded, you'll notice that even with the way we're suggesting there's a slight bias. If you draw a 4 for the tens, for example, you are slightly less likely to draw another 4 for the units (unless you shuffle all the cards again in between). This makes it slightly less likely to draw a critical in Rolemaster, for example. The bias is very minor, however, so its up to you if you mind enough to do the extra shuffle.

[Top]

Twelve Sided Die (d12)

The twelve sided dice rolls just about perfectly. It is more even than the ten sided, and stops more quickly than the twenty. It also (if you're the right age) might remind you of the space stations in the Elite computer game from 1984.

The twelve sided die is a dodecagon, and just like the d8, you could file down its corners. In this case you'd get a d20.

[Top]

Twenty Sided Die (d20)

The twenty sided die has been favored in role-playing games from the outset, and is a kind of icon for the hobby. When the makers of Dungeons and Dragons chose to name their rule-mechanics 'The d20 System' it cemented that reputation.

Because 20 goes into 54 (the number of cards) only twice, there are a lot of cards in the deck without a d20 on them. Just like all the other dice, you can either sort out the cards without (if you are only going to need d20), or you can just keep drawing cards from the deck until you get one with a d20 on it.

[Top]

Average / Normal Die

In some games extreme success and extreme failure is reserved for a particular set of characters or pieces. Everyone else is predictably mediocre (hence average, or normal). This is their die.

The die has sides with 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, and 5 on them. So it is heavily weighted towards the middle values. It has the same average value as a normal six sided die, and in multiple combinations it has the same average value as the same number of six sided dice. But in each case it is much more likely to return values near to that average, and it makes extreme rolls impossible.

[Top]

Casino Craps Dice (2d6)

Craps is the most raucous game on the casino floor, and regular gamblers know it has the best odds too.

The cards have a pair of craps dice allowing you to draw one card for each throw. Because there are 36 combinations of two dice, only 36 cards have the craps dice on them. You may want to either sort out those cards before playing, or just draw again if you come up blank (this adds to the tension if you're playing with others).

Even though we've made them look just like casino craps dice, there's no reason why you can't use them for any other 2d6 roll.

[Top]

Crown and Anchor

Crown and Anchor is very old game traditionally played by the English Navy. The die has the four playing card suits on four sides, then a crown and an anchor on the other two.

Crown and Anchor is a gambling game (which is also played in many other countries with other types of dice) where the player bets on one or more of the symbols before rolling. Then three Crown and Anchor dice are rolled. The roller gets paid out even money if they roll one die that matches their bet, double money for two dice the same that match, and triple money for three dice the same that match.

It is worth being the banker if someone wants to play this game: if they play long enough, the banker will always win.

[Top]

Attack-Defend Die

The attack-defend die is usually rolled in multiples to represent the attacking skill or defending skill of a game piece. Three of the sides have crossed sword symbols, two have a shield, and one is blank.

The swords represent attacking, and the shields defending. The attacker and defender both draw the several cards: depending on their attacking or defending strength, or the number of armies they are committing to the battle. The winner is the player with the most symbols of their type in the cards they have drawn.

Because there are more swords than shields, this gives a slight advantage to the attacker.

Two of the sword symbols have borders round them, the third does not. If you want to even the odds, just don't count the sword without a border. In the same way one of the shields has a border, the other does not. If you disallow the shield without a border you can further weight the battle towards the attacker. Just make sure everyone knows which symbols you are using before you draw the cards.

[Top]

Slot Machine Die

The slot machine die lets you re-create all the fun of a Vegas gaming floor in your own home. At least, that's the idea. There is one die (the image to the right has two so you can see all six faces) with faces showing: Cherry, Lemon, Orange, Plum, Bell and Bar.

There are several games you can play with the slot die, both on your own or with others. They all involve you dealing three cards to represent the three columns of the slot machine. The amount you win depends on the combination that comes up.

[Top]

Wargaming Dice

There are a couple of different kinds of wargaming dice on the cards. You can see both of them here.

The die on the left is sometimes called an artillery die. It has the numbers from 2-10 on five of its sides and an X on the sixth. The numbers are intended to represent damage, while the X represents a malfunction or a weapon jam.

The right hand die is sometimes called a scatter die. On five of its sides it has an arrow. This normally indicates that the attack has missed and the direction of the arrow shows where the miss landed. The sixth side has a target symbol, indicating a hit. Sometimes you may decide there is no possibility of scoring a hit. In this case there is a little tick in one of the bars of the target symbol, which can be used as another arrow to show the direction of the miss.

[Top]

Dreidel

The dreidel is a traditional spinner used in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. It has four sides with the Hebrew letters Nun, Gimel, Hey, and Shin on them. You don't need to be able to work out which is which to play the game though.

The dreidel is used to play a simple betting game. There are a couple of variations, but on our cards we've used the most common. Underneath the Hebrew letter is a value that says what to do: -1 means you pay one coin (or a toothpick or a poker chip) into the pot; 0 means you do nothing this turn; +1 means you get to take the whole pot, and +1/2 means you get to take half the pot (rounding down).

Like the Crown and Anchor game it is an old tradition, and one that can be fun to play in a boring moment.

[Top]

Ranged Attack Target

The target is probably the most complicated element on the card, but can be really useful and fun to play with.

The first thing to notice is that it comes in three different colors: gold, silver or bronze. We didn't have a game in mind for this, but we did it because the target kind-of looks like a medal. And because we're obsessed with packing as many neat ideas into the card as posssible.

Mainly the target is used to simulate an attack in a wargame or role-playing game. The arrow will be embedded into one of the four rings. There are two cards with the arrow in gold, eight with it in red, sixteen in blue, and 24 in black. The fletching of the arrow is always the same color as the ring it is stuck in (so you can see at a glance the result).

In addition, there are two cards where there are two arrows in the gold spot (shown in this image). Depending on your game you can take this to be another dead-center hit, or a critical hit. And finally there are two cards where the arrow is lying on its side with white fletching. This can be used as a critical miss such as a weapon jam, or a self-inflicted injury.

Normally you'd decide what the criteria for a hit is: it maybe blue or better (giving you about a 50/50 chance), red or gold (about a 1 in 5 chance) or it might be gold only (a roughly 1 in 15 chance).

Arrows in the red, blue, or black areas are also at different directions around the ring. So if black is a miss, for example, you can see in which direction the miss occurred.

[Top]

Random Direction Compass

The compass is designed to generate a random direction. This can be useful in lots of games, particularly where some character is moving around and the players are trying to catch them.

There are two parts of the compass. The regular compass needle on top points in one of the 8 directions (N, E, S, W, NE, SE, SW, NW). Inside the compass you can see another arrow with a hexagonal design. This is used to generate one of the six random directions when you are playing a game on hexes rather than squares. It assumes your hexes are arranged in vertical lines (most games are). If you are playing with hexes the other way up, rotate the card ninety degrees clockwise before reading the direction.

[Top]

Letter Tiles

There are 54 letter tiles in the pack, one on every card. There's at least one of each letter, but more for letters that are common. We've tried to match the usage in English as closely as possible (although we realise that's no use if you're playing in Italian!). We've also included a couple of asterisks for wild cards.

We often get asked why there are no score numbers on the tiles so you can play Scrabble with them. Well apart from the fact that the rights to make Scrabble pieces doesn't belong to us, there aren't enough cards in a deck to do a complete Scrabble set (there are 100 tiles in Scrabble). So we've gone for the best distribution you can do in 54 tiles.

[Top]

Zener ESP Cards

Remember that bit at the start of Ghostbusters? Well I always fancied having a set of those ESP cards, so I decided they'd be on the deck. Now you can practice your telepathy (with a friend) any time.

They're called Zener cards, after the guy who invented them. There are five of them: a circle (one line), a cross (two), three wavey lines, a square (four lines) and the pentagram (ten lines, but we get point).

As well as ESP experiments, they are the only 1-5 random generators, so you can also use them whenever you need a d5!

[Top]

Lucky Quarter

Okay, so you're not going to need a degree in randomology to work out what to do with this one.

If you look carefully you can see we've gone to the trouble of getting the quarter all tarnished and mucky, then carefully buffing up the head on one side and the eagle on the other. That makes is so much faster to see which side is up, and we all know that split second coin-tossing decisions can be a matter of life and death!

[Top]

Black Ball and White Ball

If you've ever wanted an ominous ceremony to vote someone into or out of your club, you've now got the balls to do it!

The white and black ball are most commonly used for generating yes and no answers. But they could also be used for working out who is going to play which side at chess, or which players will partner in bridge.

[Top]

Poker Chips

There was a time when nobody but the casinos needed poker chips. Now they're appearing on wedding lists. If you haven't caught the craze, then just get a pack of Dice Cards!

There are five denominations of casino chips on the cards: 1 (white), 5 (red), 10 (blue), 25 (green), and 100 (black). You can use a deck of Dice Cards as the chips to play poker, or you can randomly select a card to determine what the betting limit is each turn.

Notice that our chips are top of the range weighted clay composite with custom edge colors. We'll have none of those plastic chips on our cards!

[Top]

Capital Cities of the World

Its all very well generating all this randomness for every game you can think of. But sometimes you just want a challenge by yourself or with a friend.

Well we've got you covered there: the background of each card is a treasure map of the world, and on each card X marks the spot. In this case it marks the spot of a capital city. There are 54 capitals in the set, and if you're like us you'd probably have a hard time naming 54 countries, let alone capitals. So expect this to be hard sometimes (okay Washington DC is a gift, but do you know your Rangoon from your Bankok?)

[Top]

Erm... Different Types of Wood

We wanted to give you the opportunity to play the ancient Aztec game of wood spotting, so we made the backgrounds of each card out of a different type of wood.

Okay, so the Aztec thing is a lie.

In fact we got so obsessed with having things change in random ways that we got carried away and even made the background change. If you can think of a fun use for it, then you're a better gameophile than us.

There is one other kind of random feature of the cards, but it is slightly obscured, and can be difficult to see. We've put it there, not because we think it is useful, but just to see if you can spot it. If you're struggling, it might help to spread the cards out in front of you!

[Top]