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The Romans Played D&D?

  • Jun. 17th, 2008 at 10:28 AM
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Proof that time travel eventually becomes a reality and a roleplayer gets in on the act?

Proof that Mr Gygax wasn't the first person to invent RPGs?

Proof that Dungeons & Dragons and the d20 System is a truly timeless rules set?

Who knows?

But this 2nd Century AD Roman d20 was discovered in an Egyptian dig back in the 1920's and someone paid $17,925 for it in an auction a few years ago...



A Roman Gaming Die (Christies.com)

Comments

( 9 comments — Leave a comment )
[info]ffutures wrote:
Jun. 17th, 2008 11:02 am (UTC)
Didn't someone say that was actually a D14? Or am I thinking of something else?
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[info]botrytis wrote:
Jun. 17th, 2008 09:27 pm (UTC)
I think I've seen 14 sided polyhedra - but that looks like an icosahedron (d20) given all the sides are triangular.

The 14 sided polyhedra has both square and triangle sides IIRC.
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[info]dredd_bob wrote:
Jun. 17th, 2008 11:03 am (UTC)
awesome!
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[info]kostika wrote:
Jun. 17th, 2008 11:32 am (UTC)
I'd be willing to bet it's more for fortune telling than a game. Since there were several of them and those aren't roman numbers.
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[info]dantesvendetta wrote:
Jun. 17th, 2008 11:48 am (UTC)
IIRC (archaeology hat time), there been several of these found. They are all the same type of die, but no one's worked out what game they were for yet.

If they did have D&D it would have been a futuristic game ;o)
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[info]cutter_goode wrote:
Jun. 18th, 2008 07:25 am (UTC)
A physical representation of the fifth Platonic Solid, nice.
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[info]hybridartifacts wrote:
Jun. 18th, 2008 08:07 am (UTC)
Evidence of time travel perhaps?
That certainly is a fascinating find-maybe they were playing something like dnd back then, but AFTER it was invented by Gygax and Arneson.
I have another bit of time travel evidence - a self portrait of an artist from 1793 striking that cringe-making 'buddy Christ pose' where you kinda point knowingly at someone and wink...at least, its damn close. Though they call it 'guffawing' in the wiki entry I just have this gut feeling the artist was a time traveller using this self portrait to let those in on the joke know:
buddy-pose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ducreux
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[info]ms_jinxme wrote:
Jun. 18th, 2008 04:43 pm (UTC)
O, fascinating! - but I think (like someone previously commented) this is for fortune telling rather than gaming.

*some of the marks are very reminiscent of runes in fact - although this would hardly have been used in rome/egypt!
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[info]n3dst4 wrote:
Jun. 18th, 2008 08:25 pm (UTC)
There's an ancient Greek d20 in the British Museum, too. I was there with another gamer friend and we both did the biggest double take when we saw it.
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( 9 comments — Leave a comment )