Dice Delve: Kung Who? Kung FU!

You don't notice lettering in comic books until its done badly. Same thing with editing in movies. Those things are invisible to the untrained eye when working as intended, and raised to an artform for the initiated. It's the same with graphic design; you don't "see" what a good job someone did until you see what a bad job another person did. 

In this vein, there are a lot of people out there in the Artisanal Craft Dice arena who have a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator, enough money to order a bunch of raw materials, and they are off to the races. I see a lot of mediocre to bad dice being sold on Etsy and other online sites. To quote Tyler Durden, stuffing feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken. But there are some people out there who are doing it right. 

Double Dragon RPG dice by Black Oak Workshop

SCORE: 5/5

This small, plucky Artisanal Dice manufacturer is located in the South, where they have nothing better to do than dream up these really cool dice and dice bag designs and sell them online.

Clarity   Yes
Heft       Yes

Color     Yes

Theme   Yes

Value     Yes

Wind! Fire! All that kind of thing!

The Good: Holy shit, these dice are cool! Do you like Big Trouble in Little China? How about Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies? Bruce Lee? Yeah, well, who doesn’t? These things are perfect, from top to bottom. They are big (19 mm), and the design of the numbers and the symbols are deep and clear and easy to read. You get two d6 dice with different symbols, on the 1 and the 6, respectively. It also comes with a matching dice bag in red and yellow.

Opaque 16mm dice for comparison.

The Bad: I’m struggling to come up with something, here. The money you spend is all in the dice. They are a little bigger than normal, and this may be a problem if you are not used to larger dice or have small hands or prefer petite polyhedrals. I don’t know. And while the plastic seems lighter than normal, it doesn’t take away from the heft factor, mostly due to the size.

The Ugly: Okay, maybe these dice cost a little much; Sixteen bucks for 8 dice is high, especially when that doesn’t include the matching "Gotta Have It" dice bag. However, when you look at these dice, you’re either going to be the person who says, “Oh my Freaking Gord, I need those right now!” or you’re going to not be that person. These are ultra-specific, designed to meet very specific needs for a certain kind of gamer and/or game. As such, I would be willing to pay more to get something this spot-on.

Readable symbols! So great! Note that the cock is on the d12.
If you don't know why that's funny, go ask any Middle
School kid to explain it. 

Recommendation: If you’re doing anything involving martial arts in an RPG, then you need these dice. Mystic China? Any pulp-themed game? Feng Shui? OSR-based Kara-Tur campaign? You must throw these on your gaming table. They are a skosh pricey, but all of the great design features make them worth every penny. 

Black Oak Workshop has a lot of other artisanal craft dice on their website and Etsy page (highly recommended) that are more general in theme and broad in topic. These are dice and dice bags by and for The Geek Nation. Seek them out.

Shut up, Mister Burton, you were not

brought upon this world to "get it."

 Black Oak Workshop just closed another successful Kickstarter for a cool new custom die. Check it out here: Oblit-O-Tron d6!