I would like to purchase some two sided dice, but not the cubic or any other modern style. I want the original senet/yut/tab style throwing sticks. Even more specifically, I want them in different colors (e.g. 5-6 colors 10 of each). All I can find are wood.
Does anyone know of better search terms? “Casting sticks” and “throwing sticks” don’t seem to get anything useful.
Or alternately, does anyone know of a place to buy such a thing, or someone who could make such a thing?
I’m fine with 4 or 6 sided rollers, so long as they are still explicitly giving boolean results and nothing more.
Can you clarify what you’re looking for? You say “all I can find are wood” which implies you’re looking for something other than wood. What material is acceptable?
Does “long dice” give you what you’re looking for?
Not the answer you’re looking for…but they really aren’t that hard to make! I made mine out of sculpey. A good hardware store will (maybe?) have square dowels (ok, that’s a contradiction in terms, but you know what I mean.) Scrounge around, and I’ll bet you find the perfect stock.
ETA: Or glue a whole bunch of dice in a line… Or some crafts shops have clear plastic cubes: glue 'em together… Being a “maker” is lots of fun!
It just doesn’t seem sufficiently evocative of something like divination for what I’m going for. Plus they don’t really roll well (or they roll too well), so unless you throw them up into the air, they’re not very good as a randomizer.
It looks like traditional people have used cowry shells and almond shells, but that these probably aren’t very close to 50/50 probability of results. Otherwise, I could possibly buy a few varieties of shells to make different sets.
I think that mahjong counter gets you the shape you are looking for. Also try divination or druid sticks. Unfortunately, I’m only finding the natural wood, which isn’t what you want.
[Quote=Wiki article about Tâb]
As in the Ancient Egyptian game senet and the Korean game Yut, four sticks of a roughly semi-circular cross-section are used as dice. The flat sides are (nominally) white, and the rounded sides are (nominally) black. The value of a throw depends on the number of black and white sides showing…
[/quote]
In other words, binary dice in the form of shaped and colored straight sticks.
Thanks for the offer. I was considering developing my own RPG system, partially using the 50/50 dice rolling system from Burning Wheel - but removing the variants where it stops being 50/50 and a whole bunch of other rules - and throwing in some other features from other games.
But now I’ve found a few games that seem more in the weight of what I was looking for, so I don’t need to invent something. And the 50/50 rolling system is gone with it.
Largely, I was just surprised that the original randomizer had gone away so fully that you can do better shopping for 1-sided ‘mobeus strip’ dice. Even if not super popular, you would think that there’d be something out there. I figured I must have been searching for the wrong term.
“senet/yut/tab style throwing sticks”?