Dice Delve: The Power of Theme

I'm starting my dice reviews, and I'm sure I will do game reviews soon, as well.  I'm going to post them on Saturdays, which means this little blog is getting updated three times a week. It may not seem like much, but for me, it's huge.

Here are two sets of recent dice from wildly successful Kickstarter campaigns. Both of them lean heavily on their theme to be successful. And both of these companies made bank, with follow-up Kickstarters planned and executed. And while they both nailed the theme, how well did they make the dice?

Elder Dice by Infinite Black 

SCORE: 4/5

Infinite Black's initial offering of three distinct sets.

A new company, these guys kickstarted their line and then did a follow up. The premise was simple: Lovecraftian symbols on the dice. How did they do? Pretty damn swell.

Clarity   Yes
Heft       Yes

Color     Sort of

Theme   Yes

Value     No

They're books! Get it?

The Good: They used pearlescent plastic for their three colors, which gives their dice a uniformly shimmery (or oozy) appearance. Also, they used the same color gold ink on all three sets. This worked beautifully, as the colors they chose were nice and dark.

The symbols on the dice are readable and easy to see. They didn’t try to get cutesy with the numbers. Instead, they put all the swell graphics on the packaging, to great effect. That your dice come in a box that looks like an old book is spot-on for what they are doing.

A Lovecraftian
dream, they are.

The Bad: the dice are only available in three colors. That is to say, you can’t get the Elder Sign on black pearlescent dice, because there aren’t any black pearlescent dice being offered. However, they appear to have solved that with their second kickstarter, featuring new symbols and new colors. And this pearlescent plastic is nice, but nothing new. There have been these swirly-sheeny dice offered many times in the past. Now you’re getting a nifty symbol in place of the highest number on each die. That’s it.

From a start-up company, this makes perfect sense not to over-extend oneself, and the second Kickstarter was even more successful, with three new symbols and three new colors. Not a bad way to build a line of dice, but if your favorite color is purple, or you just gotta have black dice, you may be sitting on your hands for a bit whilst they produce things in waves.

Also—and it’s perhaps my quibble and my quibble alone, but—why isn’t the Cthulhu head on the green dice? I’d even consider that the blue die would be okay (since Cthulhu lived underwater), but the red dice? No one asked me, but I would have put the Cthulhu on the green dice, the classic Elder Sign on the blue dice, and the literary Elder Sign on the red dice. It’s really not a deal-breaker for me, but I wanted to mention it because someone else might care.

Inside every book: 9 dice!

The Ugly: These dice aren’t cheap. You’re paying a lot to keep the Eldritch theme alive and pulsing on your table. There are a lot of polyhedral options, so if you just need a bunch of d6’s for something like Arkham Horror, you can do that. But a single set of nine polyhedral dice costs $25. You do get 3d6, which is nice, but you don’t get everything you need if you’re doing anything 5e-related. Let’s face it; you’re really just buying the concept, packaging and all. And most Cthulhu-crazy people and Lovecraft geeks will have no problem with that. I sure didn't, as you can see by these pictures.

Recommendation: Go sign up for updates from this company and wait for their next Kickstarter.  It looks like they are also accepting late pledges for the KS that just closed. That’s the best way to get these dice cheaper than the arm-and-a-leg price tag. Also, you get more dice for the money and if the next Kickstarter blows up like the last one did, lots of other cool freebies and bonus loot to purchase. If you’re late to the party, start saving your ducats now, because you may need to take out a small loan to get all the sets.

The d6 dice are perfect for your Arkham Horror boardgames and the like.

Infinite Black did a great job of doing one thing well; they put a cool and perennially popular symbol on the die and packaged the hell out of it. A perfect example of a well-executed theme. 

Now let's look at another company who did not stick the dismount...

Okay, the package is lacking.

All of the work went into the dice.

Wizard Dice by PolyHero

SCORE: 2/5

This company has successfully kickstarted two sets and is bringing a third KS to market. Wizard Dice were the second set funded with all of the usual bells and whistles included.

Clarity   No
Heft       No

Color     Yes

Theme   Yes

Value     No

The Good: Well, they certainly look like what they profess to be: wizardly accouterments designed to aid with immersion at the table. Sculpting and design are spot-on. There are fireballs and potion bottles and a pointy-Gandalfian wizard hat (the Kickstarter exclusive die), and even magic missiles and scrolls. And despite my boring color choice of Parchment, the other colors were vivid and evocative. Cool, right?

That's a lot of work to decipher.

The Bad: Not cool. Not really. You see, these complicated geometric designs don’t cooperate when you roll them. These interesting objects may end up facing away from you, or upside down, and then you’re responsible for adjusting the rolled dice to see what you got. This works okay for the four-sided objects and lousy for the twenty-sided Wizard’s hat, which works more or less like a roulette wheel. If the hat stops spinning while facing away from you, and you aren’t careful to hold the di—er, the hat, firmly in place, you will screw up what you rolled.  And this thing can spin, folks. If your sorcerer needs a clutch roll to land that crucial spell and you spun this thing on the table and held your group up for a full minute waiting for it to come to a stop, well, you deserve the pelting with Cheetos you will inevitably get. It’s just too gimmicky to be really practical. I'm serious; the last time I saw a top spin that long without stopping, I was rooting for Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception.

This feels like
throwing bones.

58? Sure, why not?

Also: the material used to make these dice is very strong, and very light. There’s no real weight to any of the dice, except the hat, which is the most useless object. Finally, the numbers used on these interesting objects is elongated to fit on the tiny faces of the dice, and they are close together, and thus a real pain in the ass to decipher. The best die in the bunch, and the only one I’d consider using at all, is the Orb (the standard d20), as it’s large enough to be almost hefty (but it's not), and the numbers are the most readable; again, because of the size of the object and nothing else.

The Ugly: Did I mention that these boogers cost $30 a whack? Yeah. Now, if you were lucky enough to Kickstart this set, it only cost you half that. But even at $15 dollars, you’ve bought an interesting d20 and six desk toys to fart around with until your DM makes you roll initiative.

Recommendation: By all means, sign up for the next Kickstarter, when they get around to launching it—the cleric dice. That’s the only way to come in under budget with these things. There are better dice, in better colors, with better visibility and heft, that cost one fifth of what you would be paying.

The d20 "orb" compared to a 16mm d20. Humongous.

 

I have backed PolyHero's next release, the Rogue Dice. I do not think they will be able to fix their issues, but we will see.


(edit: Added Late Pledge KS info for Elder Dice)