The Physical Thing

The Ubiquity Dice container provides nine d8 dice. Three are solid white, three are solid red, and three are solid blue. The white dice are numbered with four 1s and four zeros. The red dice are numbered with two 0s, four 1s, and two 2s. The blue dice are numbered with one 0, three 1s, three 2s, and a 3. Otherwise these are completely average d8s. At $5.99 for 9 dice they offer an average value.

The Ideas

These dice have been advertised in some places as d1s, d2s, and d3s. Leaving aside the hilarity of a d1, this just isn’t the case. The white dice (0s and 1s) can serve just fine as a d2 – in fact that’s the whole idea. The red and blue dice are not d1, d2, d3, or anything else. The red dice are meant to represent rolling 2d2 – thus the spread of numbers. The blue dice, similarly, are meant to represent rolling 3d2 – and they do exactly that.

You may be wondering what use you would have for these dice. The answer is absolutely none unless you’re playing Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) - the game they were made for. In HEX players regularly roll large handfuls of dice – treated as d2s (evens counts as successes) – which can reach the level of mid teens and higher. In order to avoid having to roll so many dice, the Ubiquity Dice were created. These nine dice can be rolled in various combinations to total up to 18d2, and they tell the player immediately how many successes were made on a given roll.

My Take

I love dice, but I do have a few concerns with the Ubiquity Dice. First, HEX already provides a way to deal with large dice pools. Players are encouraged to take the average of the first 10 dice (5 automatic successes) and then roll the rest. Some players might not like this, they may prefer the randomness of rolling all the dice, so for those folk these dice are an excellent choice.

The other problem is just how plain these d8s are. You wont want to mix them in with any other dice as they may be difficult to differentiate and wont serve you well in other games (“Why does my warhammer keep doing 1 damage?!”). This is a minor nitpick, however.

If you’re playing Hollow Earth Expedition, or otherwise need to roll a lot of d2s, then this is a fine choice to avoid having to roll a handful of dice.