Comments on: Roman D20 https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2003/12/02/roman-d20/ My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things. Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:15:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Greg https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2003/12/02/roman-d20/comment-page-1/#comment-156 Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:06:29 +0000 http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/?p=52#comment-156 Yep, it’s a Platonic solid. The dice that were originally shipped with the brown-box edition of D&D were, in fact, a complete set of Platonic solids manufactured for educational, not gaming purposes (tetrahedron, cube, octohedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. (They also sucked as dice; the plastic was quite soft, and they wore down very quickly. Once the game caught on, hobby games manufacturers started making more durable multisided dice.)

The British Museum has had Roman gaming dice on display for some decades, including an icosahedron. So this isn’t “new news,” per se.

]]> By: real icon https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2003/12/02/roman-d20/comment-page-1/#comment-148 Tue, 02 Dec 2003 15:26:10 +0000 http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/?p=52#comment-148 Oops, maybe I should add a few more words: a d20 dice is obviously an icosaeder, i. e. a Platonic body (regular convex polyhedron) – and as the term suggests, they are known at least since Platon. Quite a long time, actually. And the people in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire loved to play games, even if it were not really RPG at this time. So it seems quite natural that already they were using icosaeders as dice.

]]> By: real icon https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2003/12/02/roman-d20/comment-page-1/#comment-147 Tue, 02 Dec 2003 15:17:47 +0000 http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/?p=52#comment-147 Try this link …

http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~pelo/s1e/sa1/sa11.shtml#HistMod

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