Ye Olde Inn

Ok, so maybe kinda weird question...

The old D&D (red and blue) boxes came with the by now traditional set of dice.
But how was each die colored in each box?

I have simply not been able to find the answer for this anywhere.
Apparently no pictures exist to confirm the colors of the dice neither.

I have this old box set:



If this is one you're referring to, I can snap a pic of the dice that came with when I get back home. (You can even see a peek at some of them in the box in this pic, but mine are slightly different)

Are the dice uncolored?!? They look really weird :S

So yeah, back "In the day" it was not uncommon for TSR (and probably other companies) to include dice that had no colored digits. We would use crayons to color in the numbers ourselves.

As no main games producer in the day produced the polyhedral dice they needed, TSR ordered the dice from a company that was specialized in school equipment. These dice were designed for mathematics education. They were uncolored, so TSR included the cranions for diy-coloring. It was not a common prcatise among other games companies. The guy who packed the dice was so unimpressed that he founded Game Science to produce his own high quality dice. He also invented the "die 100".

Here you go!



They are lighter in weight than modern polyhedral dice. These also have a slight marbleized pattern in the plastic that gives them a faux-stone appearance.

I had a red set, but it was a later version since my dice were all different colours, from a green D4 up to an orange D20. Had two D10s in white and black.

Didn't the original set not have any D10, instead you were meant to ignore the first digit on the d20?

Thanks Goldie! This is incredibly interesting!

What was the first box that had dice of different colored plastic? And which colors did they have?

Well, I understand this was your original question. Seems remarkably difficult to find, expecially considering how many of these were sold and how (in)famous the diy-coloring dice set was...

My first dice set from that box was a set of blue dice with a red crayon to fill in the numbers. I still have the D20 but the rest of them have gone to the winds it seems. But that set was bought in 1981 or 82 I think, so it is a wonder the D20 is still with me.