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The Bones: Us and Our Dice
This isn’t about math. It’s about unlucky breaks and victory against all odds.
This isn’t about percentiles and probabilities. It’s about late-night game-ending rolls where everything hinges on that climactic moment when one single die skitters across the table and determines the fate of a hero, a city, an empire…
The Bones gathers writing about fandom and family—about gamers, camaraderie, and memories— and ties them together where they meet: our dice. These are essays and anecdotes about the ways dice make us crazy, about the stakes we play for and the thrill we get from not knowing what the next roll will bring.
Step back and look at how we play with dice.
Contributors include game designers Mike Selinker, Kenneth Hite, and Keith Baker, writer/actor Wil Wheaton, writers Ray Fawkes and James Lowder.
Published in conjunction with GamePlayWright.net
This isn’t about percentiles and probabilities. It’s about late-night game-ending rolls where everything hinges on that climactic moment when one single die skitters across the table and determines the fate of a hero, a city, an empire…
The Bones gathers writing about fandom and family—about gamers, camaraderie, and memories— and ties them together where they meet: our dice. These are essays and anecdotes about the ways dice make us crazy, about the stakes we play for and the thrill we get from not knowing what the next roll will bring.
Step back and look at how we play with dice.
Contributors include game designers Mike Selinker, Kenneth Hite, and Keith Baker, writer/actor Wil Wheaton, writers Ray Fawkes and James Lowder.
Published in conjunction with GamePlayWright.net
215 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
6 people are currently reading
220 people want to read
About the author
Will Hindmarch
57 books19 followersWill is a writer, game designer, graphic designer, producer, and mooncalf aiming to write one of everything. He's got a lot of work to do.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 28, 2013
Gamers have a peculiar relationship with their dice. When I first joined my current gaming group, one of the other guys had a transparent box you might use for keeping threads or fishing tackle in an orderly fashion, brimming with dice of all shapes and colours. When I commented that is was an impressive collection, he looked at them, shook his head, and said, "And every single one of them has betrayed me."
The Bones: Us and Our Dice is a collection of essays that run the gamut of dice history and folklore, exploring the love/hate relationship we share with these plastic (or metal or wooden, semi-precious stone or, sometimes, actual bone) polyhedra, and the psychic, spiritual or anthropomorphic energies we attribute to them. Essential reading for people who want to understand the crazy gamers in their lives.
The Bones: Us and Our Dice is a collection of essays that run the gamut of dice history and folklore, exploring the love/hate relationship we share with these plastic (or metal or wooden, semi-precious stone or, sometimes, actual bone) polyhedra, and the psychic, spiritual or anthropomorphic energies we attribute to them. Essential reading for people who want to understand the crazy gamers in their lives.
March 14, 2013
The book was better than I originally gave it credit for.
It is a collection of essays about dice and specifically how they relate to gaming culture. The book starts out with a couple of essays on the history of dice and then moves on to essays about how dice are used both practically, theoretically, in games, why they're used in games, how this came from divination, etc. It includes interviews with folks who have created dice or how they have used dice in various areas. One essay - "1d20 Places I've Found My Dice" - I found to be pure filler drek. Right next to it - "Who Am I To Say No? - I found philosophical gold.
If you game, if you have rolled the polyhedrals through your life, this book is worth picking up and reading at least through inter-library loan.
It is a collection of essays about dice and specifically how they relate to gaming culture. The book starts out with a couple of essays on the history of dice and then moves on to essays about how dice are used both practically, theoretically, in games, why they're used in games, how this came from divination, etc. It includes interviews with folks who have created dice or how they have used dice in various areas. One essay - "1d20 Places I've Found My Dice" - I found to be pure filler drek. Right next to it - "Who Am I To Say No? - I found philosophical gold.
If you game, if you have rolled the polyhedrals through your life, this book is worth picking up and reading at least through inter-library loan.
August 28, 2018
This doesn't start well. It's not badly written, but a lot of the tales of dice feel quite identical early on. This does improve at about the half way mark, where you get more interesting stories. I don't have much else to say beyond that.
April 3, 2016
I loved "Things We Think About Games" and quickly decided to read this as well. I liked the earlier book more, but there is more than enough to love here. My favorite, and the one I think best exemplifies what this collection does well, is Jess Hartley's "Rolling in the Aisle" in which she discusses how gaming can echo real life by focusing on an insight that came to her during a friend's wedding. I would love more collections such as these.
July 23, 2010
A worthy follow up to "Things We Think About Games" this book is all about the dice we use to play hobby games, from the history of dice in general to individual anecdotes of the times that the roll of a die led to interesting events in a game.
February 3, 2013
A collection of anecdotes and essays from amusing to not, well-written to... well, not.
A couple of the pieces are outstanding, though!
A couple of the pieces are outstanding, though!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews