From cowrie shells to painted bamboo halves, to animal knuckles, and finally precision-crafted polyhedrons, dice take many forms. The earliest random-number generators were almost certainly binary in nature, representing either one or nothing.
Eventually, we’d see something we’d recognize today as a cubic die. The earliest example of such was found in Syria, dating to the 5th millennium BCE. Interestingly, this die was configured the same as modern dice, with the opposite faces adding up to seven. As they evolved, some cultures used different number configurations.
In gamer parlance, a die is usually referred to as “D#,” where # is how many faces the die has. So a common cubic die would be a D6, while a four-sided die (whether a pyramid or long rectangular shape with only four sides that count) would be a D4. The spots on a die are called “pips.”
Bầu cua cá cop is a popular Vietnamese dice game played mostly during Tết – their Lunar New Year.
The Libro de los Juegos, completed in 1283 for Alfonso X, included several dice games, despite their illegal status. Let’s learn a few!