Here’s a tabletop RPG history question, and also an etymology question if your nerdery bends that way.
d66 tables – as in “roll a six-sided die twice, reading the first roll as the ‘tens’ place and the second roll as the 'ones’ place, yielding a number in the range from 11 to 66” – have been around at least as early as 1977, when the Starships book for classic Traveller used them to randomly generate trade goods for players to buy. However, the term “d66” wasn’t yet being used to describe them – the book’s text simply describes in detail how to roll on them each time such a table appears.
Conversely, we know the term “d66” was being used to describe this type of random lookup table no later than 2004, because several popular Japanese indie RPGs which came out in that year use it. However, none of these games seem to have originated it – the way they’re using it suggests they’re dropping a piece of jargon that was already well established at the time.
So the question is: what’s the earliest tabletop RPG that specifically uses the term “d66” or “d66 table” to describe this type of random lookup roll? i.e., not “d6/d6” or “d6,d6” or any alternative verbiage, but “d66” specifically? It has to have been published in or before 2004, and (probably) not earlier than 1977. No speculation about which games might have used it, please; if you’re going to suggest a candidate, be prepared to cite a specific title and page number.
Got one! Mordheim original rulebook, 1999. Page 119, “roll d66”.
edit: not sure this is “the original” but it provides an older date than 2004
Fantastic – that pushes it back five years. An unambiguously pre-1999 citation of an occurrence of the term “d66” to describe this type of table is our next target, then.
