Long dice

Long dice (sometimes oblong or stick dice) are dice, often roughly right prisms or (in the case of barrel dice) antiprisms, designed to land on any of several marked lateral faces, but neither end. Landing on end may be rendered very rare simply by their small size relative to the faces, by the instability implicit in the height of the dice, and by rolling the long dice along their axes rather than tossing. Many long dice provide further insurance against landing on end by giving the ends a rounded or peaked shape, rendering such an outcome physically impossible (at least on a flat solid surface).

Design advantages of long dice include being relatively easy to create fair dice with an odd number of faces, and (for four-faced dice) being easier to roll than tetrahedral d4 dice (as found in many role-playing games).

Four faces (square prisms)

Both cubic dice and four-faced long dice are found as early as the mid third millennium BCE at Indus Valley Civilisation sites; these are marked variously with dot-and-ring figures, linear devices, and Indus Valley signs. Dot-and-ring figures are used to this day on long dice in India, and predominate in the central European long dice shown above. In India, long dice (pasa) are used to play Chaupar (a relative of Pachisi); the faces may be marked with the values 1-3-4-6 or 1-2-5-6, though older Indian long dice were marked 1-2-3-4.

Similar dice were used by Germanic people before the Migration Period. These include distinctive roughly ovoid Westerwanna dice (named for the site of their initial discovery in Lower Saxony); these are typically about 2 cm in length and marked with dot-and-ring figures of values 2-3-4-5.

Long dice are used with the Scandinavian games Daldøs (typically marked A-II-III-IIII or X-II-III-IIII) and Sáhkku (with a variety of similar markings including X-II-III-[blank]); these dice may be so short as to exhibit nearly square faces, and therefore feature pyramidal ends.