Faberge Dice
Description: thirteen dice: one 4-sided, six 6-sided, one eight-sided, two 10-sided, two 12-sided, and one 20-sided. Each die is made out of ruby and sheathed in platinum; the numbers are etched in, and filled with diamond chips. There is nothing supernatural about any of the dice.
Value: considerable — and staggeringly so, for the complete set. Which will never, ever happen.
The record shows that these dice were made for an eccentric (and filthy rich) British neo-Platonist scholar in 1895, who paid extra to have Carl Faberge personally craft the dice for unknown, and probably dull, reasons. The Faberge Dice remained in various private collections until 2013, when the complete set was stolen as part of a daring auction house heist. The set was swiftly broken up and individually sold, with the individual dies being scattered across the world, usually ending up in the hands of people who would willingly trade in openly stolen merchandise.
In fact, Faberge Dice are notorious for being owned by blackguards, thugs, mugs, villains, mobsters, criminals, mashers, bashers, bounders, scoundrels, hoodwinkers, smugglers, and the occasional warlord. Possession of one is worth bragging rights among the criminal set, and ambitious bad guys are always either sending off mooks to take somebody else’s Faberge Dice, or deploying mooks to keep somebody else from taking theirs. It’s quite a dance, really. It’s not so much the fact that these are expensive artifacts (although they are); it’s about the having of them, and the thrill of taking them away from somebody else. Something about all of this just appeals to a lawbreaker’s mind.
The good news about this situation is: if a party acquires one of the Faberge Dice somehow, they’ll be able to sell it pretty quickly. The bad news? Well, whoever owned it last is gonna be extra upset about that. Unless they’re dead! — in which case, other people are going to upset about the sale, only they won’t take it so personally. Of course, a group that can steal one of the Faberge Dice and get away with it might be too useful to just casually waste…
I take it then that a superhero trying to return one of these things to the rightful owner would have an interesting challenge in determining who the rightful owner actually is. >_>
At this point? Yeah. Plus, there’s nothing magical or other-supernatural about the Dice at all. In a superheroic world, that makes them low-priority issues by default.
Could be done, though .. if, say, (one of) the heir(s) of the original scholar fancies themselves a Charles Xavier archetype .. or if the party are students in a “Kingsman” archetype outfit ..
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“Please recover my grandfather’s 2d10 for me” as a graduation exercise?
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Mew
Let me be self-serving here and mention a dice game I invented a few years ago, which I humbly call Finrod’s Dice Game. It’s played with one of each: d4, d6. d8. d10, d12, d20.
You roll three times (like yahtzee) and can reroll as many or as few dice as you wish on the second and third rolls.
You win if: d4 < d6 < d8 < d10 < d12 < d20.
You tie if: d4 <= d6 <= d8 <= d10 <= d12 <= d20.
Otherwise you lose.
It's a 1-player game by definition, but I have an idea on how to make a 2-player match version.