• milkisklim@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    This doesn’t make sense.

    Zeta isn’t the last letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega is. And Upsilon is the 20th if they could only fit twenty letters on a twenty sided die.

    • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Except for the post title I didn’t see any implication that zeta would be the highest value in the text.

    • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      16 hours ago

      I was able to find a source from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website. it seems that it would’ve actually gone up to the 20th letter.

      A number of polyhedral dice made in various materials have survived from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, usually from ancient Egypt when known. Several are in the Egyptian or Greek and Roman collections at the Museum. The icosahedron – 20-sided polyhedron – is frequent. Most often each face of the die is inscribed with a number in Greek and/or Latin up to the number of faces on the polyhedron.

    • LOGIC💣@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Here’s another thing that doesn’t make sense about that post:

      If you play Dungeons & Dragons, this object probably stops you in your tracks.

      If you just play Dungeons & Dragons, then it looks like the hundreds or thousands of other d20s you’ve seen. Barely worth a look.

      On the other hand, if you just like dice, like a lot of TTRPG people do, then it might catch your attention.

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        The Venn diagram of people who play D&D and people who get excited about fancy D20s is practically a circle

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Yeah that immediately set off the bullshit detectors. Everything else in this post looks stupid but that sounded like utter crap

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    … “is a tool for something much more serious… Divination.”

    The Divination Wizzard:

  • 4PHEUS@beehaw.org
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    17 hours ago

    This was essentially an ancient Magic 8-Ball

    Wait until you find out what’s inside a Magic 8-Ball!

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      I am sort of amazed that between Charles Dickins and other serialized writers’ zeal for selling stuff and the Goths’ tendency to love superstitious parlor games somehow nobody in 1800s era ever managed to come up with a tabletop storytelling dice game (at least that I’ve ever heard of)

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      I dunno. But i find it funny that even back then the divination wizards needed their special hard-to-read dice.

      Like, bro. I have a chart with all your symbols on it.

            • BeeegScaaawyCripple@lemmy.world
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              52 minutes ago

              well i posit the ones that actually got used wore down to filings and these were overstock because it was a fad anyways. like pet rocks i should go feed mine.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          the hollow bronze things with the studs?

          probably not some for of die- divination or otherwise. They just wouldn’t roll well. There’s a few uses for those things that seem likely. Rangefinding (mount it on a staff and peep through the holes, , some sort of symbolic use, or simply just being some sort of decorative weirdness.

          (I mean, really. Think about all the jangly things people have on, like backpacks or purses or keychains. People have always been people.)

    • SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      18 hours ago

      Honestly probably not that serious. Even in their myths/stories, the oracle would tell great doom and then no one would listen. I expect they got inspiration for that from somewhere.