I would have to say that the most that I ever used to think about dice and using or playing with them would have to be way back in my Elementary School and High School days and my time spent playing a wide number of role playing games, such as Dungeons and Dragons and its ilk. Many an afternoon was spent hanging out with friends playing these adventure games, recording our characters' statistics with pencil and paper, and the constant rolling of a varied assortment of dice. We did not just use the standard 6-sided die but also the 4, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided variety as well. I stopped playing such games years ago now and have not really had any reason to dwell on such things from the past-until now.

Recently, I found myself in a discussion with friends about the games that many of us used to play and at some point the discussion turned to role playing games and the funny dice that we used to play them with. From there the discussion turned to the subject of dice in general and the other sundry games that they have been used for, and this was without even considering how they have always been a staple of most board games. I guess I was not ever very aware of any of the other kinds of games out there other than board games, role-playing games or casino style games that used dice.to determin their outcome. Well obviously they exist and even today they are still played by many people.

This realization led me to look into the history of dice and dice games and I was surprised, to say the least, at just how far back in history their origins lay. From a tool of entertainment with its basis in Ancient History to something used in such modern past times as casino table games, numerous board games and other roll a dice games such as Yahtzee, Kismet and Bunco, the basic die has quite the storied history.

Many attribute the earliest conception of the use of dice, or dicing, for entertainment purposes to early Indian civilization; there is very early archeological evidence of gambling dice (oblong in nature) from sites such as Kalibangan, Lothal, Ropar and surrounding areas dating back to the third millennium BCE. There are various references to dicing in Indian epics spanning from between the 2nd and 1st Millennium BCE, such as the Rg Veda, Atharva Veda, and the Mahabharata. The use of dice for entretainment purposes is believed to later have spread into the empire of Persia from ancient India, becoming the influence for many subsequent Persian board games. Some excavations at the site of the Persian city Shahr-i Sokhta (in Persian it literally translates to "The Burnt City'") in south-eastern Iran yielded archeologists some of the oldest known dice, excavated as part of a 5000 year-old backgammon set, a set which was probably originally imported from India.

It is likely that the earliest dice were made out of the ankle bones from hoofed animals such as oxen. These later came to be known as "knucklebones". Such dice are still used in parts of Mongolia. Later, dice were made out of other materials, such as ivory, wood, metal, and stone. There is some confusion over how more modern dice originated from knucklebones since the two types have been confused by writers reffereing to them in ancient texts.

There are references to dice and dicing in the Bible, such as references to "casting lots", which place their use as being common by the time of King David. In ancient Greece, dice were believed to be used for gambling as a popular form of amusement for the upper classes. During the height of the Roman Empire dicing as a form of gambling was very popular, in fact it reached such levels that it fostered the growth of proffessional gamblers who often were caught using loded dice to skew the odds in their favour. Throughout the Middle Ages, dicing became a popular past time of knights and was even considered a practise worthy of instruction in various schools and guilds of the time. There is documentation of the prevailence of dicing in the cultures of both Medieval Germany and France.

My digging into the history of dice and dicing brought to my attention several terms relevant to dicing. The earlier names given to the different numerical values on the faces of the die, ace, deuce, trey, cater, cinque and sice, have their origins in Latin and old French but have long since been replaced by the common counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. One method of dice 'shorthand' that has developed is the use of the term'd' to specify what type of dice are to be used as well as how many of that type of dice are to be used; the term puts the number of dice before the d and the type of die after the d, for example '3d20' would mean that the player is required to roll three twenty-sided dice. The term 'crooked dice' is a reference to any die that has been altered in such a way as to change or alter the distribution of outcomes of any rolls. Loaded, cogged or gaffed dice are dice that have been tampered with to increase the odds of a certain side ending face-up. The methods of doing this include having some edges rounded on a die while leaving the others sharp, or in dice that are not transparent, inserting a weight into the center of the die in such a way as to influence which side lands down. Another method is to have mercury in a tiny set of chambers inside the die which can be shifted by tapping the die on a solid surface. This in part explains why many modern casinos have switched to transparent acetate dice that are harder to hide any evidence of tampering. Another term is 'shaved dice'. This refers to any dice that have been tampered with by shaving off a tiny bit of one face thereby making the die uneven and actually slightly rectangular. Casinos deal with this kind of tampering by using a micrometer to regulate their house dice. 'Iced dice', refers to dice that have been altered by having lead inserted into the middle of them in such a way as to cause one particular number, such as the number six, to land face up more often than the laws of chance would dictate that it should happen. The 'iced' in the term refers to the lead in the die.

Earlier I mentioned a few of the more well-known dicing games that are out there, such as Bunco and Yahtzee, well more recently there has been a number of games released onto the market that focus on the simple appeal of easy to play dicing games; games such as Liar's dice, Can't stop, To court the King, Pass the Pigs, Button Men and Pig have all taken advantage of the simplicity inherent in dicing games, and the odds are good that there will be many more to follow.