The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

Polyhedral dice

The set of four-, six-, eight-, ten-, twelve- and twenty-sided dice used by roleplaying games, written in shorthand such as 3d6 (three six-siders added together) or d20. The icosahedral d20 became the emblem of D&D and gave its name to the d20 System of 2000.

The set of four-, six-, eight-, ten-, twelve- and twenty-sided dice used by roleplaying games, written in shorthand such as 3d6 (three six-siders added together) or d20. The icosahedral d20 became the emblem of D&D and gave its name to the d20 System of 2000.

Origin

Wargamers began using non-cubical dice around the end of the 1960s; Dungeons & Dragons (1974) made them standard equipment.

Quick answers

What does "Polyhedral dice" mean?
The set of four-, six-, eight-, ten-, twelve- and twenty-sided dice used by roleplaying games, written in shorthand such as 3d6 (three six-siders added together) or d20. The icosahedral d20 became the emblem of D&D and gave its name to the d20 System of 2000.
Where does the term "Polyhedral dice" come from?
Wargamers began using non-cubical dice around the end of the 1960s; Dungeons & Dragons (1974) made them standard equipment.

Nearby in the archive

Critical hit

General term

An exceptional success, typically a natural 20 on the d20, that deals extra damage or produces a spectacular result; its opposite, the fumble or natural 1, is a comic disaster. Crits are among the most celebrated moments in Actual Play shows.

Saving throw

Tabletop term1962

A roll made to avoid or reduce a sudden danger such as poison, a dragon's breath, a trap or a spell. The save represents a character's luck, reflexes or willpower rather than an attack, and a success typically negates or halves the effect.

THAC0

Tabletop term

The number a character needed to roll on a d20 to hit a target of Armor Class 0; subtract the target's AC to find the roll needed against anything else. It compressed pages of attack tables into one value, but its double negatives became a byword for clunky rules. It was retired when third edition introduced ascending AC in 2000.

Painting: three small plain tan rulebooks in a wood-grain cardboard box beside strange new polyhedral dice, pencils and a graph-paper dungeon map.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tabletop RPG1974

Three little booklets in a woodgrain box, hand-assembled in Lake Geneva in January 1974: the first published roleplaying game, and the template for every tabletop and computer RPG since.

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

Tabletop RPG2000–2008

Wizards of the Coast's rebuild of D&D around one rule — roll a d20, add modifiers, beat a number — released alongside an open license that let anyone publish for it.

The Open Game License

Milestone2000

In 2000 Wizards of the Coast opened the rules of Dungeons & Dragons to rival publishers under a perpetual license; in January 2023 a leaked attempt to replace it provoked the largest fan revolt in the game's history.

Mentioned in 10 other exhibits