A deep dive in a shallow pond, thoughts on a Dwarven Dice game

[Vestri Vaalison]

As I continue to work on my Dwarven Hill Warden's Belt it occurred to me a dwarven dice game to pass the time would be very interesting. Given the Dwarves have a private language, private names, private sign language I feel it isn't outside the realm of reason to figure they would have their own method of counting as well but being as Tolkien was a linguist and not a mathematician it didn't really come up. As you can tell from that last sentence this is going to be a lot of conjecture based on what we do. My first thought was, would Dwarves use a base ten number system. For the sake of wanting to set their math differently as well I'm going to figure that they use base 8 so their count is 0-7, 7 being so commonly occurring in the Dwarven lore of Tolkien. This also means a set of "Dwarven Dice" within this context are going to be D8. I like the idea of this as its a shape I can easily make but is distinct from a D6.

So this then raises the question of ideas for rules?

Matching or building sets similar to Farkle seems to hit the right balance of being light and easy to play but having deeper strategy for when that's desirable.

A put and take die makes for very simple gambling but no real deeper thought, seems a bit too simple for Dwarves

Anyone else have any ideas?

If this belongs in a different thread I'm happy to move it, but being Dwarf focused and Tolkien inspired it seems a good a place as any.

[ForgeCorvus]

Here is a link to the 'Numbers' document on Darrow Scholar..... While he admits its not canon it is consistent with what little background we have.
Note the Cirth numbers (which are mostly recycled Cirth letters with a dot underneath), these could add a Khazad flavour to any die and dice game.

Thats not to say that Dwarves don't gamble using Base 8, after all Craps (and so many human dice games) are Base 6.
And then there are historical 'dice' games that use things that aren't cubes, such as Knucklebones. Here is a quick introduction to Astragals and other items....... And now I'm going to stop looking before I fall down the rabbithole and get nothing else done today.

I'm interested where you go with this, and wouldn't mind playtesting when you've got a basic ruleset.

[Meganbeyer]

I normally carry dice or plain cards for simple trail games. With the dice we normally play something like yatzee type thing. Kinda like a cross between rummy and yatzee maybe more accurate.

I want to make a set of Norse viking era games to put in my pack as I felt they would have been dwarven accurate.

I do like the idea of changing from standard dice, I think this would make it more middle earthen.

[Iodo]

As I continue to work on my Dwarven Hill Warden's Belt it occurred to me a dwarven dice game to pass the time would be very interesting. Given the Dwarves have a private language, private names, private sign language I feel it isn't outside the realm of reason to figure they would have their own method of counting as well but being as Tolkien was a linguist and not a mathematician it didn't really come up. As you can tell from that last sentence this is going to be a lot of conjecture based on what we do. My first thought was, would Dwarves use a base ten number system. For the sake of wanting to set their math differently as well I'm going to figure that they use base 8 so their count is 0-7, 7 being so commonly occurring in the Dwarven lore of Tolkien. This also means a set of "Dwarven Dice" within this context are going to be D8. I like the idea of this as its a shape I can easily make but is distinct from a D6.

Great concept, given the sheer number of table top games that appear through our history, ranging in complexity all the way from betting on the flipping of a coin to complex games like chess and bridge, I would expect to see a great range of games within dwarven culture so it is entirely plausible for any game involving dice or some kind of cards to exist. And I agree, the shape of a D8 seems more dwarven (finely crafted etc...) than a simple cube dice. So while I am less keen on deciding that all dwarven dice are D8's because I think that as culture changes from place to place and new games are invented as and when, that dwarves being the creative makers that they are, different kinds of dice would almost certainly be made in different places for different games. Any D8 based simple game to pass time would probably feel dwarven enough for me.

Given that Tolkien didn't go into this in any detail I guess the creating is left to our imagination