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Mystery of ancient Roman dodecahedron baffling experts as it goes on display in UK
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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Seems pretty simple to me. Everybody loved to gamble, so they needed to be sturdy, and also big shiny metal trinkets are cool. They have different sized holes to denote the different values of the sides, and the knobbies make them bounce and roll in unexpected ways and keep them from rolling once they come to a rest.
We do have companies like Chessex that make blingy dice for the D&D and tabletop gaming crowd today, I suppose.
I've wondered before whether a similar, but more-rollable looking strange set of artifacts that were also found in Britain might be dice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls
Those are far more ancient than Roman artifacts, though.
Actually, on second glance, they do appear to have "numeric" engravings at all the places that might settle facing up or toward you. Very interesting.
Those are actually for butt stuff.
No, but seriously I could see them being used in some sort of "marbles" -type game. Or, like, maybe some kinda twisted mini-croquet.
Dude, I got it! These were the original "tricky" golf balls. Golf probably started as rolling a rock into a hole, but when that got too easy, they started going "bet you can't get that weird shaped one in there," and then that got popular enough that people started making their own.
Of course, there were always the purists that believed the rocks should remain round and the hole should be the thing that moves.
That's why we have golf and mini golf.