“… a tool for something much more serious”
“an ancient Magic 8-Ball”
So, not too serious then.
weird enough i’m more interested in the faience that’s gorgeous
Fuck yeah, natural A
Only Nat Z for me, fml 😭
[says that out loud in American English]
Yeah this all checks out
I rolled a v. should i roll anew?
My roll:
Damn, rolled π again
mmmm die pie
Third time
So close to landing on 𒀗
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.
Except for the post title I didn’t see any implication that zeta would be the highest value in the text.
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.
Thanks for doing the work! I appreciate you
The Greek alphabet, which is the earliest known script to systematically include both consonants and vowels, is generally believed to have added vowels when it was adapted from the Phoenician script during the late 9th or early 8th century BCE.
Sorry, that paragraph is AI written but I was asking about something I know and too lazy to rewrite it myself.
The Phoenician alphabet which influenced the greek script had 22 letters afaik. Still doesn’t match the sides but it’s closer
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.
If I saw this in The Met, which I’ve visited but this wasn’t on display at the time, it would have stopped me in my tracks even as a TTRPG player. It would feel very anachronistic amongst most of the displays.
The Venn diagram of people who play D&D and people who get excited about fancy D20s is practically a circle
Yeah that immediately set off the bullshit detectors. Everything else in this post looks stupid but that sounded like utter crap
It’s likely all fake. Olympos is in Greece, not Turkey.
Akshually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peaks_named_Olympus several are in turkey as well.
Another comment in this thread has a link to a source confirming the die is real, doesn’t mention the pillar tho
Nah uhh i watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Olympos is in America.
Seriously though I keep getting pulled out of the show because it’s so American when it’s Greek mythology.
… “is a tool for something much more serious… Divination.”
The Divination Wizzard:
Wouldn’t divination be more accurate if it is a Loremaster Cleric?
Don’t tell the our divination wizard that… they already broke out their “special” d20.
I just suggested it, as I played in a campaign as a Dweomersmith/Wizard with a Loremaster/Cleric, and a Psionic Monk. We were pretty much unstoppable, even without our followers.
That sounds like a fun team.
The div in our party plays like an idiot-savant. Total himbo, except occasionally useful. (It is fun, don’t get me wrong.)
Ok Ok Cool Cool Cool
Where’s the kickstarter for one ?
This was essentially an ancient Magic 8-Ball
Wait until you find out what’s inside a Magic 8-Ball!
I just love the word “faience”. Not sure why, it’s just so nicely balanced.
i’m pronouncing it like science with a lisp i don’t care if that USED TO BE wrong ITS RIGHT NOW.
Needs more jpeg
I wonder if tabletop was popular before d&d brought it to the mainstream.
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)
So Romans actually rolled for initiative?
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.
I’m wondering if these have anything to do with the dodecahedron that they find in Roman areas in northern europe
IIRC weren’t those knitting implements/frames? idk the only thing i know to do with yarn is play with it :3
They can be used for that, but there’s no evidence of wear on them from that usage and there’s simpler tools for that job
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.
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.)
Sounds like a paper fortune teller, I wonder how serious they’d be taken
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.
