Back after another month, a bit late again, so my apologies. Here’s all the dice releated news from February that have caught my eye.
Disclaimer:
This newsletter is impartial, editorial content and is not aimed at commercially advertising products. I don’t receive any payment or free products for any content in this newsletter. Products mentioned here are things I personally find interesting and would like to keep the dice community informed about.
New from Chessex
I mentioned in the last Dice Digest that Chessex announced the full release of some of the 2019 Lab Dice, namely Nebula Nocturnal, Nebula Oceanic, Nebula Wisteria, Nebula Red, Nebula Spring and the new design Nebula Primary. Initially planned street date was supposed to be February 25, 2021.
Due to unexpected delays with the production of some of the larger pipped dice, the street date had to be moved out. New street date is now March 11, 2021.
New from Die Hard Dice
New from Die Hard Dice this time around are a red coloured set in their Avalore mould, called Jasper’s Game-Day, and a new metal d20 in collaboration with the DOTS RPG Project where the 20 face has the 20 in Braille.
The Jasper’s Game Day set is a reprise of an exclusive set they produced for a charity last year that contributors could get as a donation reward. The new version of the set comes either uninked or with gold ink, while the original charity set had bronze ink.
New from CozyGamer
In time for Valentine’s Day back in February, CozyGamer went all pastel and released three new layered designs with custom font (without logo). These have a total rainbow unicorn vibe, and I can’t wait for my sets to arrive in Germany!
New from Lindorm
Lindorm is back with two new designs, called Dawn Child and Ink Bound. These were released in the Lindorm store today, on March 2, 2021.
As per Lindorm’s own workds, the Dawn Child set “centers around wellbeing, luck and living life as the devoted self see fit”. Ink Bound has ties to storytelling, “a strong bond with writing, telling and interpreting the world around them”.
New from YuSun
YuSun has more colours of their metal stripe sets in production, plus a new metal design they call Cracked Dice. Also new are gemstone sets with sans-serif font in their line-up, a few of which they have featured on their Facebook page.
New from URWizards
I’m not exactly sure if this is something new, but URWizards is offering engraved pipped gemstone d6s — showcased here is their labradorite set.
New from Q-Workshop
Good news for those who missed the Kickstarter, Dice Macabre are now available for regular purchase from Q-Workshop! They are only offering the regular sized sets, the oversized version is Kickstarter exclusive only.
Also newly released are two Call of Cthulhu sets, one blue glitter with white ink, and one a more sinister opaque black with pinkish purple ink.
For information about the new Q-Workshop subscription box, please check the News section.
New from Bescon
Bescon has new designs in their custom font mould, called Dense-Core Dice. These are said to have holo glitter in them.
Also new are chonky 50mm metal d100s. You know, those golf ball style ones. Careful not to drop them on your foot, they weigh over 400g each!
New from Haxtec
Independence Day in February? 🙂 New American flag dice from Haxtec. Now available from their webstore and on amazon.com.
New from Hymgho
These might not be new, but handmade sharp-edged inclusion dice are all the rage now, and admittedly they look pretty nice, particularly the clear with holo glitter and copper foil ones. I don’t recall seeing these particular designs before, but it might also be that not many retailers carry them. Apparently they’re available on amazon.com.
New from Udixi
Udixi’s recent focus has been all things object suspension. They’ve released a whole slew of new object inclusion dice, among them more animals, such as frogs and whales, as well as flowers and mushrooms.
Also new are fantasy RPG class dice with objects representing the class, like ranger dice with arrow heads included, wizard dice with wands, ranger dice with wolf heads, monk dice with fists, sorcerer dice with fire, fighters with shields, rogues with daggers, and so on.
New from HD Dice
There isn’t much to report from HD this month as they took a well deserved break for Chinese New Year celebrations. The only news they have shared recently is that they now offer rectangular plastic dice boxes (like the Chessex ones) and production of custom coins.
Kickstarters
Scroll down for this month’s compilation of currently active dice Kickstarters.
The fact that I’m listing Kickstarters here doesn’t automatically mean I highly recommend them, or that they are trustworthy and legit. I try my best not to list anything that looks dodgy or that I couldn’t in good conscience recommend, but it’s always possible that a project looks great on paper but ends up not delivering what it promises. I may add my own commentary to the text if I’m not convinced about certain projects, but ultimately it’s at everyone’s own discretion whether they want to back any of these Kickstarters or not.
Arcanist’s Armory Fireball Dice
There’s a rather sad story behind this Kickstarter, as the founder of Arcanist’s Armory unexpectedly passed away in 2020. He created the Fireball Dice before his passing, and his business partner has now taken the baton to let these dice see the light of day.
The Kickstarter is funded, and there’s only a few hours left to enter at the time I’m posting this Dice Digest. At $10, you can get two cylindrical d6 Fireball Dice, available in a golden pearl material with white ink. A full set of eight dice for all your fireball spell damage will run you $20. The leather scroll stretch goal has also been unlocked.
Element Dice 3.0
Modern Awesome Dice are back with their third version of Element Dice — 6-sided dice made out of different metals with the respective periodic table information engraved on one side. This time, you can back for Nickel, Magnesium, Titanium or Bismuth versions, with a Tungsten die as optional add-on.
For $54 you can get a set of 4 dice (excluding Tungsten) as the Early Bird pricing option. The optional Tungsten d6 will run you an additional $49-59 per die. The Kickstarter campaign only has placeholder information for the stretch goals, but at over $ 141k funded of the initial $ 1k goal, let’s assume several, if not all stretch goals have been met. The Kickstarter will run for another 8 days.
Choose your Class Dice
Not exactly a new concept, as possibly evidenced by the low funding status, but here’s a new Kickstarter from Christina Moseley Pinckard. She’s offering factory-made polymer sets in different colours and designs that are customized for different fantasy RPG classes, with a class logo on the d20.
The full range of the Kickstarter spans Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard and Warlock dice, but availability is tiered by funding level. Barbarian, Bard and Cleric will get made if the $5,300 goal is met, and the other sets will be ascending stretch goals.
The big perk of this Kickstarter is that the dice are very affordable — at $6 per set. The campaign has 28 days to go.
Demi-Lich Dice
Perhaps inspired by Q-Workshop’s Dice Macabre, Modern Artifice is bringing you hollow metal dice with skulls for your best creepy, morbid or necromantic roleplaying adventures. The dice are available in different colourways, including uni-coloured silver, copper, brass and gold, and different multi-colour combinations.
Several of the stretch goals have already been unlocked, and you have 15 more days to contribute to this Kickstarter. You can get a single d20 plus a bunch of roleplaying accessories for $15, a full set will cost you $50.
Dice For All 2: Pride Dice and Enamel Pins
Also not a new concept to offer dice with pride flags, but these are a bit different to the usual layered styles you find (of which there is actually another one currently live that I’ll feature below). These are clear resin dice with small clay pride flag inclusions.
Featured pride flag designs are rainbow, asexual, bisexual, genderfluid, community lesbian, non-binary, pansexual, polyamory and transgender, with unlocked stretch goals demisexual and intersex also available, as well as several pride themed gaming accessories. The dice come with matching enamel pins, and you can back for either just the pins, or just the dice, or both.
One enamel pin is $10, one dice set is $15, and a combo of both $25. The Kickstarter will run for another 17 days.
Roll4ItDice Pride Dice
As mentioned above, we have one more Kickstarter for pride dice, this time in the more classic layer design, of which similar versions are already available from, for instance, Heartbeat Dice or Ice Cream Dice. What makes these a bit different is that they’re not using simple opaque or translucent material, but include glitter and frosted designs as well.
The Kickstarter is currently just over the initial funding goal. Available for the moment is only the gay price rainbow set, additional designs will be unlocked if further stretch goals are met (one new goal every $2,000). Planned stretch goal designs are asexual, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, non-binary, transgender, genderfluid, aromantic, multisexual, polysexual, genderqueer, intersex and akiosexual.
All sets use translucent material with the colours of their appropriate flag, either as high glitter content glossy style or fine glitter frosted style, with ink choice of either gold or silver. You can get one set if you back for the $10 tier, with pricing becoming cheaper per set, the more sets you back for. The Kickstarter has 14 days to go.
Legendary Creature Zircon Glass Dice
Diving Hippo Studio brings us another Kickstarter (their latest food lover one had funding cancelled prior to project close), this time handcrafted Zircon dice with logos of legendary creatures as the higest number on the d6, d12 and d20.
Colour and logo combinations offered are green/dragon, red/phoenix, teal/pegasus and purple/unicorn. The material is polished zircon glass, with the numbers (custom font) and logos engraved and inked in gold.
A single d20 will run you $24, a full polyhedral set $79. The Kickstarter has 12 days to go and it is fully funded, there are no stretch goals that I can see.
Xinobi Dice – Ninja Throwing Stars Metal Dice
Perhaps somewhat unusually, this is a Kickstarter out of Japan, with dice that are inspired by Shurikens (ninja throwing stars). Xinobi Dice are hollow metal dice that incorporate various Japanese aesthetics on the different die faces. They are also said to incorporate the openwork technique, which was used for samurai and ninja swords. (They say that xinobi means ninja, though the internet tells me that the spelling should be shinobi…?)
The dice are available in five different colours — kind of a dirty brass, a dark grey, gold, blue copper and rusty red. There’s also ninja accessories, like an actual shuriken, coin tokens and something called netsuke (a d6 with a woven string attached).
The dice aren’t exactly the affordable variety. You can get one die of your choice for $47 (any one die out of a polyset), three dice for $127, or a full polyset for $263. They explain the crafting process in the Kickstarter text, each die is handmade using certain traditional Japanese crafting techniques. The Kickstarter is still below 50% funded and has 22 days to go.
Goblin Forged – Custom Metal Dice
If you’ve always wanted very individual metal dice, then this may be the chance for you. This Kickstarter offers individually crafted metal dice, where you can pick the available die colour you want and combine it with a font and logo of your choice from the available font and logo library. One of the stretch goals is actually to offer uploading your own custom logo to be put on your dice.
While the concept sounds pretty cool, it doesn’t really look like this one will get funded. They’re only at 6% of their funding goal with 9 days to go, perhaps in part due to the fact that the Kickstarter doesn’t give any information about what colours, fonts and logos are available. A full set of customized dice would cost $20, with other options for expanded sets, and a Kickstarter-Only Goblin d20 you can have for $10.
Raven & Riddle’s Fairytale Collection
Raven & Riddle, an Irish shop, is offering their handmade dice in a newly rebranded Kickstarter. From what I can gather, these were previously offered as Critical Role Mighty Nein Collection, and the project was posted and canceled on Kickstarter twice before, most likely due to copyright infringement claims by Critical Role.
Now back under the name Fairytale Collection without any Critical Role association, these are sharp-edged handmade dice in eight different designs, each with a raven logo on the d20. There are 21 more unlockable designs, with a hefty expectation that they’d get to over 1 million Euros funding somehow (starting from an initial $6,000-ish starting goal). The designs are different combinations of resin with glitter or metal foil or other inclusions in differet colour combinations.
The dice are handmade by the creator in her living room, so certain flaws should be expected, and it explains the March 2022 delivery time. They plan to expand their dice making business if a certain funding level is reached.
All sets are 8-piece polysets that include a d2 resin coin with a raven on one side and celtic pattern on the other. A single d20 will cost $13 and an 8-piece polyset $63. There are also options for stickers. The Kickstarter is currently roughly 1/3 funded and has 29 days to go.
While I wish these folks the best of luck with their dice making endeavours, I can’t help but think backers should exercise caution with this one. This exact project was cancelled twice on Kickstarter (more likely naming copyright issues rather than those of a logistic nature), has now been rebranded, and they seem to expect they might reach a 1 million Euros in funding for run-of-the-mill handmade dice that are being produced by hand by one person in their living room.
It sounds very much like the Lucky Hand Dice business model (“we’ll expand and hire people if we make enough money from this”), which we’ve seen backfire. The two-fold cancellation and copyright issues speak of a certain naiveté and lack of research and preparation. While I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt, my personal feeling is that the better business model would be to offer these in an Etsy or web store and advertise them in the right places, rather than a Kickstarter, but that’s just my personal opinion.
News
What else is new in the dice world? Take a look!
Q-Workshop Subscription Box
As of March 2021, Q-Workshop will start offering an subscription box at a rather steep price point of $100 a month, aimed at collectors who enjoy adding items to their collection that are exclusive and not available elsewhere outside the subscription service.
Details were revealed in mid-Februar in a video live stream where they talked about the contents of the $100 box. They said the content will be from three sources:
- Test Runs and Prototypes (can be anything – different material, different colours, different ink, different engravings, none of these will be available for regular purchase)
- Misprints (i.e. dice deemed erroneous, but nothing majorly flawed or unusable — rather things they classify as “interesting mistakes”)
- Custom dice/individual orders (leftover dice or reference samples from custom orders, e.g. if someone had custom dice made for a Kickstarter board game, or dice for weddings were mentioned as an example – but only with approval from the clients – this can include dice you might be able to get outside of the subscription box, e.g. through a board game Kickstarter)
Each box will contain between 10 and 20 dice (can be single dice and/or whole sets), the content won’t be revealed before the boxes are shipped, but there will not be any dice specifically made for the subscription box.
Availability is limited to 50 boxes per month, as that is the maximum amount they can currently fulfill. The content will be the same for all 50 boxes for each month. Payment will be collected monthly via PayPal, you can cancel at any time and also start the subscription at any time.
Shipping by courier is free worldwide, ensuring fast delivery, and shipment always happens on the first business day of the month.
More information, including an FAQ, is available on their website.
Chessex Borealis Magenta 16mm Bricks
Since I’ve seen many people selling Borealis Magenta 16mm (OG) bricks for prices of $30+ in the dice groups lately, here’s a friendly reminder that they are still available from Chessex direct at retail price, so there’s really no need to pay more than $10 for a brick unless you want to support a fellow collector.
Go to chessex.com, check out their consumer store, and then look through the Discontinued Dice section. For some reason they don’t come up if you search for ‘Borealis Magenta’.
Gate Keeper Games Controversy
This Dice Digest doesn’t have any intention to fuel drama fires, but I believe in aiding people to make informed decisions, thus I would like to mention something that was recently outlined in Dice Maniacs’ Club. The owner of Gate Keeper Games (probably best known for their Halfsies Dice) was called out for posts on his private Facebook that indicated extremely conservative and right-wing ideology views, with several people contributing accounts of misogyny and other questionable behaviours in the comments.
It’s not the first time GKG has butted heads with the dice community, some people might recall the Baby Shower Dice discussion and behaviour that indicated trans- and homophobic views, as well as a fairly recent incident around naming newly released GKG dice after existing dice businesses and trademarked terms that sparked rather heated discussion.
If you’re a member of DMC and would like to form your own opinion, the discussion thread can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DiceManiacsClub/permalink/5281587681882039
