Re: [DL] Whaddabout Dice? (was: The decks that your huckster use

[toadpooka@juno.com]

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 10:58:29 -0700 "Matthew Hanson"
<deviantsevant@msn.com> writes:
> Blue dice suck, anyone who uses them is a big loser.  All dice used 
> in my game must be at least yellow or beyond on the visible 
> spectrum.

I can't believe that I actually defended Deadlands fans on the boards at
RPGnet when everyone was claiming that this game is rife with anti-bluish
sentiment.  Now I see everyone's true colors...I just wish I'd seen it
earlier.  And it's not just the fans, either; the whole game encourages
such attitudes; why do you think the covers are ORANGE?!  In this modern
day and age, people should be free to choose the colors of their dice
without facing ridicule from others; it's not my fault, I was BORN with a
preference for blue dice, even when I was five years old, I wouldn't play
the Happy Days board game until my parents went out and got a pair of
blue d6s for it.  They tried everything, psychologists, priests,
electro-shock treatments; all it did was confirm to me that people who
don't use blue dice were out to get me.
You can imagine my joy when I went to my first game store; there, they
had dice of every color and shape.  Finally, I thought I'd found a
community that would support my free choice of dice.  I was even finally
accepted into the Shadowrun campaigns that all the cool kids were running
in Junior High.  But when I pulled out my dice bag, they just laughed me
out of the room, but not before beating me senseless with hard-bound
rulebooks and Crown Royal bags with bars of soap in them.  Hardly a day
went by in my school career that no one called me "Blue Boy," "Lil' Blue
Peep," or even "That weird kid who prefers cerulean polyhedrons."  It was
terrible.
Anyway, I could go on forever about the discrimintation that people like
me face every day, even though the Constitution guarantees us the right
to life, liberty, and the right to choose our dice. But I can't handle it
any longer; I have to unsubscribe due to the actions of certain
belligerent, hateful members of this community.  I know there are some
decent people on this list; maybe some of you even use blue dice, but
don't feel able to admit it for fear of just this kind of discrimination.
 To you, I say, "All that is necessary for Evil to triumph is for Good
people to do nothing."  That adage is as true today as it was when Snoopy
said it in 1939.  Someday, the blue-dice community will be able to feel
pride in who they are; we will be able to freely admit our dice
preferences outside of the walls of shady blue-dice game stores and
Internet chat rooms.  We'll roll blue dice on the streets, we'll roll
them in corporate boardrooms, we might even be rolling blue dice in the
Oval Office someday, but not unless we band together.  I encourage all
interested parties to write your Congressmen, visit
www.BlueDiceAdvocacy.org, and subscribe to the mailing list;
blue_dice_pride@yahoogroups.com.

From Whom It May Concern,
Rich Ranallo

In Milwaukee, they first came for the LARPers, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a LARPer. Then they came for the wargamers, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a wargamer. Then they came for the Gamma World
players, and I didn't speak up because I had never played Gamma World.
Then they came for the blue-dice users and I didn't speak up because I
used Koplow glow-in-the-dark green Nice DiceŽ. Then they came for me --
and by that time there was nobody left to speak up.
-Lester Smith