medieval dice games and rigging them, c. 1377

[samgrass]

I'm writing a story that includes a particular historical incident taking place in England around December 1377/January 1378; it's not a super serious work but it's gotten out of hand a bit, so if anyone's got particular experience/knowledge here where I definitely don't I'd appreciate it

Comments

[wabbitseason]

I don't know if this will be too much for you, but Alfonso X wrote a Book of Games (Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas) in the 13th century Spain. He was primarily interested in chess, but he also included sections on dice and backgammon. He talked a lot about cheating in dice because it was so commonplace, so there may be descriptions on how it was done. From skimming online, it seems they did a lot of shaving the dice sides. I downloaded Sonja Musser's dissertation on his Book of Games, which includes a section on dice with some explanations on hazard in her footnotes. The section on dice starts on page 377 of the PDF.

Also Museum of London has a set of loaded dice as an example?

[samgrass]

Thank you! I'll definitely check out that dissertation; even if it's a little much to read for my purposes it sounds pretty interesting. (And thanks for the weighted-dice link also -- I wouldn't have expected the mercury!)

[wabbitseason]

I came across it while reading about medieval chess. Did you know they used to use dice with chess for instance? It's part of the reason why the Church disliked chess so much because they associated it with gambling.

[dagonell]

If these will help...
http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~salley/SCA/Games/hazard.html
http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~salley/SCA/Games/knucklebones.html

[samgrass]

Thank you! The hazard link definitely does -- I'm not extensively experienced in modern dice games (or card games for that matter) but understanding the relationship to a game like craps helps for writing actual gameplay. (I should have known SCA resources would have my back here. *g*)

[sollersuk]

Anglo-Saxon grave goods sometimes include dice. Some of these dice are loaded - a little bit of lead has been inserted, usually behind one of the spots so it wouldn't be noticeable. What I don't know is what spot they were hidden behind, and that would have given some indication of what game was being played, but in any case this is some 600-700 years before the date you're interested in.

[reynardo]

I knew this one as Devil's Table - according to the person who taught me, it was banned in the Crusades because people would lose too much money on it.