Dice Delve: Tarot Dice As Big As the Ritz

One of my table top RPG peculiarities is my separation between creation and play. To wit, I have a very different set of dice at my desk for when I'm thinking up cool things to foist on my unsuspecting players. This differs sharply from the dice I use when I am running games at the table, which tend to be more thematic or associative.

When I create, I use various special dice as inspirational items/desk toys/impartial arbiters of chaos and doom. Dice like my various skull dice. My arrows of chaos dice. My favorite d20 dice in the whole world. Things like that. I even have some Rory's Story Cubes in case I want to just wing it, usually as a thought experiment.

This is from the picture on Amazon that shows off the dice.
Missing from the photo is a sense of scale.

Of course, that's not all in my Thinking Kit. I have coins, tokens, cards, and other objects to fiddle around with. It's not a set thing; I trade bits and bobs out often. But I almost always have a tarot deck in the box, if not nearby, because I love the symbolism that's front-loaded on the cards. I've even got a deck that is reminiscent of stylized fourteenth century pamphlet art, which is perfect for D&D.

I don't use the tarot in games; only when I'm creating something. Well, that's not quite true; I wrote a set of rules using the major arcana that I turned into a fortune-telling system (really, an adventure generator). It's very robust, but it's also very specific, as I have only used it in my Introductory Campaign. But I love me some tarot symbols.

So, when I stumbled, quite by accident, across Tarot Dice, from the now-defunct company, Tarotocy, Inc, I nearly broke my arm reaching for my wallet. And for only twelve bucks, too! Here are thirteen 13 d6 dice, each with symbols representing random major and minor arcana. You also get rules and a play mat for doing actual tarot readings, but let's be real, people: I'm just here for the dice. I had to have these.

So, what did I get?
When the 14-inch long tube showed up, I had a moment of confusion. Did I drunk-order a Pente set and not remember? Then I saw the airbrushed graphics, stuck to the inside of the tube, insuring I will never ever use it for anything else for as long as I live. Maybe it's all mat, I thought; but then why is the tube so heavy? I cracked it open and found out.

This is your tarot dice.

This is your tarot dice
with a normal d6.

In order to get an accurate and readable icon representing the various tarot cards on the face of the six-sided dice, they had to make a choice: simplify the imagery to an almost unrecognizable degree, or simply put their designs on bigger dice. Which is what they did.

Thirteen dice, times six faces, is 78, which is the exact number of cards in a tarot deck. Cool. No duplication. But these boogers are 1 inch square cubes, the likes of which I have not seen before. The shipping tube, according to the rules book, is for shaking the dice and then gently depositing them, one at a time, on the vinyl mat. Well, no shit, you need a big tube! Never mind how ridiculous, and also unmysterious and nutty that looks; rolling these dice in the tube is akin to watching a Tusken Raider shake his Gaffi Stick menacingly at Luke Skywalker before the kid passes out. Have I mentioned these dice are big yet? These things could murder a hobo. I mean, really!

Oh, but they are sexy. I am here to tell you; they feel and sound like urea, just heavy and nearly musical when you knock them together. Solid. High quality. The icons representing each card are gorgeous, deeply etched into each face, easy to see and bear only a passing resemblance to some of the art on Rory's Story Cubes.

The game mat is canvas, coated with a rubberized top coat, and  for what they are selling it as; i.e. a place to arrange the dice you're doing this "tarot" reading into some semblance of order, it's fine, I suppose. There's no padding, like with other playmats, so don't spread this across your glass coffee table and then drop these meteors onto them, because that's a great way to end up in IKEA on a Saturday, table shopping.

I only glanced at the book.  It's full of instructions on how to use these dice. Shake, roll, place, interpret. The rest of the book is familiar write-ups for the major and minor arcana. If you know anything about the tarot and the meanings of the cards, you know what everything represents, already.

Once more for emphasis. This is
a big-ass d6. I tried to roll it
and pulled a groin muscle. 

The only weird little thing that distracts me is this: the major arcana are not spread evenly across the dice. There's not even, it would seem, an attempt at balance, with some dice having 1, others having 3 and a couple having none. It would almost have been better for me if all of the major arcana were concentrated on four dice. Oh, well. It's certainly not a deal breaker, especially for the price. I only mention this for the tarot people who may be reading this, but this means some combinations of cards are flat-out not possible. If that's your thing.

Thankfully, it doesn't concern me. I want these dice for the cool abstractions on them. I just don't know what the hell to do with this giant kit. Right now, I've got the tarot dice in a large leather bag and they fit nicely. If you come up with something cool to use these for, or already have an idea, please share it in the comments.