Superstitions: Dice

Game night. You stopped by the local smash-N-grab corner store, picked up your bottle of carbonated high-fructose corn syrup with taurine and a bag of Funions, and finally you're planting your ass in the game chair. You drag out your character sheet, your Players Handbook, your Unearthed Arcana, The Complete Whatever, and you dump your dice bag on the table in front of you in an epic display of your chance-cube horde.

Your dice are like the neck tie on a business man. Everything is fairly standard, shirt, slacks, shiny belt and shoes, clean shave, sports jacket... boring. But the neck tie is that droll fellows chance to insert a little self expression. Tie-die, Dilbert, Mickey Mouse... You can likely get away with just about anything for color, as long as it's on a neck tie. Perhaps you'll draw a few inquisitive looks, but a simple "My kid gave it to me for father's day" will dispel any questions that might arise. And hell, if you can actually get your kid to buy it for you, you're not even lying!

The dice on your edge of the table are your chance for self-expression, and it's a very personal thing! I like to get each character (assuming said character is going to be a staple for me and not some throw away almost-npc). Some people like just one set of dice, others aren't that picky. Perhaps you have favorite individual dice? A deep blue 20-sider that represents the cool-headedness with which you swing your axe. A red D8 for damage; red symbolizes the blood of your foes spilling on the ground! Golden D10 for your percentiles! ...ok, you caught me, no one rolls percentiles anymore. I was just checking to make sure you were paying attention... well done... 

Anyway, point is, it's not uncommon for there to be a reason that a certain die is rolled at a given time, and chances are that reason will make no real sense to your or anyone else who is not the owner. The reason you use the dice you use can defy logic, and become a down right superstition.  But that's okay! It doesn't need to make sense to you. Get your own weird behaviors! I personally like to set all the dice on the table, (which will only be the set that was assigned to the character I'm playing,) on the number 1. My thinking is that if it's on the 1, chances that I roll a 1 are lower. Light lightning striking the same spot twice in the same round... (A theory that I completely dispelled at my last game night. My Dwarven Fighter is +13 to hit and I missed an AC-15 creature four freakin times in one melee!)

You wanna see a gaming session get mean, you tread on the wrong player's dice. Touch my dice, I dare you. Set it to anything but "1". You get your nasty non-me karma on my dice, and there'll be issues. Unless I had you a die because you can't locate the one you need right away, thou shalt not touch my polyhedrons.