RPGaDay2024 Day 25 - Desireable Dice

Numerous innovations have been made in dice over the last few years. In fact, my biggest takeaway from last year's GenCon was the number of unique dice vendors and the variety of dice. Previous innovations included metal dice, gem dice, and interesting fonts and etchings. Now, acrylic dice methods have been perfected. They allow liquid cores, objects inside the dice, and incredible color and material palettes. They've also made acrylic dice feel good so you aren't sacrificing with the new designs. In fact, the new designs inspired me to buy my first new set of dice in years; I purchased the Stained Glass design by Gatekeeper Gaming. 

However, my "Desirable Dice" are the glowing, Bluetooth-connected Pixel dice by Systemic Games.

Being LED dice where LED behaviors can be controlled by code and/or an app is almost enough to want to buy them. At their most basic, you can have them glow green for skill checks, yellow for saving throws, and red for combat. But you can also define behaviors like "Roll a 20? Have the die flash green." Or on a natural 1 the whole die can turn red and mock you by flashing until your next roll.

Going a bit deeper, you could program the d20 to have a "Cypher System combat" mode and glow green for 17-20 (which indicates bonus damage). Similarly, you could program a die to have an "exploding" mode and literally explode with colors if you meet the criteria for the die to explode. (usually max value.)

What really convinced me to back them was their out-of-the-box integration with Roll20. I've been using Roll20 for about 10 years, supporting members of my game group who don't live locally. While it gets the job done, having the site roll quantum virtual dice for you is not the same as having weighted luck in your hand, and using that to determine your fate.

They also have an open API so you can create your own applications and integrations. As a simple example, imagine a "Choose your own adventure" book that relies on more than just your decisions. Imagine that it's also influenced by your die rolls.

As a simple example: you have a troll who won't let you cross the bridge without paying a fee. You can choose to pay, fight, negotiate, sneak, or leave. Instead of "sneaking" having a single deterministic outcome, you roll to see if it worked, or not, and to what degree. If you roll a 16 or higher, you are successful. On a 1-15, it fails. Alternately, your story could say that an 18+ is successful and you find an item. On a 16 or 17, you are successful. You are rebuffed on a 5-15, and the troll attacks on a 1-4.

Two additional items in these dice's favor: They come in a lot of very attractive designs, and the website shows you each with and without LEDs turned on, so you have a good idea of what you're getting.

The other is that the team has been very good at sharing their status, successes, failures, and issues. For example, in one of the most recent updates, they explained that they were having "light leak" issues on certain die designs--and what they were doing to fix them. 

Each update makes me want to get them in my hands and try them out in their most basic roll-and-glow modes, and the more geeky "programmed" modes. And so they are definitely my desirable dice.