[From the Mailbag] Dice

After my day yesterday coming to grips with my blogpression, and after a lot of encouragement and support from many of you, the entire day was eventually saved with a visit from the postman late yesterday afternoon.

After a long wait, my Dungeonmorph Dice finally arrived! And apparently I'm not the only one excited by these, as I've seen them all over the blogosphere this morning. Upon first inspection, the excitement is warranted and the wait was definitely worth it!

These dice were the project that introduced me to Kickstarter, an introduction that I am grateful for. (My wife and wallet? Not so much grateful, I'm afraid.) While they were originally conceived as OSR white-on-blue maps--a design later found to be too prohibitive for mass-production--the final black on white design looks terrific.

As you can see from the picture, I took the plunge and bought one of each set: The Explorer, The Adventurer, and The Spelunker. Of course, I now wish I'd purchased two of each set, but am grateful I at least have one of each. The range of random dungeon rooms that these dice make available is great: whether I use them to create a dungeon from scratch or just to add a bit of random personalization to an already-published dungeon, they're going to see a lot of use.

Joe has also produced a font based on these dungeonmorph designs as well as some cards; both tools are intended (and prove likely) to help use the dice to their fullest extent. He has also planned .pdf versions--battlemats--for use with miniatures and computer-aided games.

All it takes is a simple roll of the dice. They're oversized--I've been told that they are similar to casino dice, but having never been to a casino, I can't vouch for that. Rolling more than a couple at a time gets to be a handful, but that ain't much of a complaint; the size makes them more legible after all. One quick roll, though, and you have a dungeon area all ready to be stocked, beginning in the small temple complex, ranging through some meandering hallways and finally winding up in the caverns beneath the temple. All those delicious areas just waiting for terrifying creatures and diabolical traps. (My apologies for the quality of this picture; all I had was my cell phone and it decided to be a bit temperamental; this was the best of three attempts. My photograpic skills should not reflect on the actual quality of the project.)

Joe's to be commended. I look forward to his next Kickstarter project: Plastic 2D miniature card stand-ups. Visit him over at his website, Inkwell Ideas, for more information. He's also got some leftover Dungeonmorph Dice available for purchase, but my guess is: move fast on these dice or lose out. They're sure to go fast.

As an attorney, I feel obliged to add this legal stuff--the fine print, as it were: "The DungeonMorph designs may be republished by anyone (free of charge, even commercially) if 5 or fewer designs are republished in a given item or if the designs are less than 20% of the overall item containing the designs. In either case, you must also note 'DungeonMorph Design from http://www.dungeonmorphs.com' next to each map and copy this entire message somewhere in the item. An item refers to a website, magazine, book, etc."