Dice Stories Contest

Yeah, we’re running two contests at once? Big deal! Want to fight about it?

In addition to our July-long “Follow Our Blog & Win” contest where we are giving away a great Sovereign Stone set, we’re also running this “Dice Stories” contest until the end of next week (Firday, July 17, 2009) where you can win a complete matching 10-piece set of gaming dice and a dice pouch.

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“How do I do that?” you might be asking yourself. Well, we all likely have at least one crazy story about how we lost one or more of our dice. For instance, I once swallowed a d20 while chugging down a 20-ounce coke (don’t ask how - but I did learn that dice don’t float).

We want to hear the crazy stories of how you managed to loose your favorite dice, or break up your favorite dice set. At the end of the contest we’ll pick out the most interesting of the stories and that person will win a free set of dice.

Pretty easy, huh? So what are you waiting for? Post a comment with your story to this blog entry to be entered. Contest open to anyone anywhere as long as we can find a way to ship dice to you through the mail.

Talk about a Critical Hit!

Written by Justin Mason

Over the years I’ve seen some pretty unusual game dice, made from almost anything you can imagine from bone to stone, from tin to precious gem, but today I’ve seen a d20 that I have to get my hands on.

Ever since I was a little kid in my elementary science class were I was first introduced to the vastness of our solar system, galaxy and universe, I’ve been somewhat enthralled with things “from the heavens above.” In fact, I’ve always secretly longed to get my hands on a meteorite to have forged into a dagger or sword -- just because.

Many of my role-playing game characters over the past two decades have had meteoric iron armor, weapons and gear. Some of those character's were completely obsessed with the rare material.

I had always assumed that was likely to be as close as I would get to owning any myself. However, now I (and anyone else who’s interested) can get their own tiny piece of extra-terrestrial real-estate in the form of a 16mm Meteorite d20 from Crystal Castle.

“Floating around for perhaps billions of years, meteorites are some to the rarest objects on Earth. There is far less total known meteorite material on Earth, counting all known varieties, than there is gold, platinum, emeralds, rubies, or sapphires. The artisans of Crystal Caste turned some of this wondrous material into Dwarven Stones.” -- Crystal Castle Website

At $300, it’s anything but cheap, but come on!?

We’re talking about rolling with a d20 that was once a flaming ball of superheated rock that plummeted to our atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour from the depths of the solar system and crashed into the earth. Talk about a critical hit!

Crystal Castle also offers Meteorite dice in d6, 12mm d20 and 14mm d20 styles; ranging in price from $100 to $200.

Specific details about the meteorite used to make these dice are --

Name: Ghubara
Location: Oman, 19°13'40"N; 56°08'34" E
Found: 1954
Classification: Chondrite, Ordinary (L5), black, xenolithic Approx. Recovered Weight: 4kg Found on the surface of the desert, the stones are fresh internally, and the crust only slightly weathered. Total Known Weight (TKW): 9+ stones @ 100+Kg
Sources: Meteorites from A to Z, 2nd ed. Jensen, Jensen & Black; Catalogue of Meteorites, 5th ed.,Cambridge University Press

Worth mentioning is that Crystal Castle also offers extraordinary dice made from Camarasaurus (the largest Dinosaur to roam the Earth) fossil, mammoth ivory, and prehistoric Megalodon teeth.

Dice that Blow the Mind

Written by Justin Mason

Last month we started this blog off with explaining how you can get your very own, professional quality, custom character portrait for your character or npc. Well, we thought we would continue with the theme of custom accessories and supplements and point out Q-workshop.

Q-workshop is a Poland-based dice company. They have virtually hundreds of unique sets of dice from a dozen or more main categories ranging from fantasy, to post-apocalyptic to science-fiction. They even have neon, glow-in-the-dark dice -- come on: how cool is that!?

All of their dice are very affordable, and consist of a quality and intricacy we’ve not seem matched in the industry.

However, why stop there? Q-workshop not only makes some of the coolest most unusual dice in the industry… They also make your dice. That’s right, you can design your own custom set of dice, submit it to them, and they will turn your imagination into a tangible, roll-able, set of dice!

We’ve never seen another service quite like the custom dice service offered by Q-workshop, and all other alternatives come up short, and lacking in comparison (there just really isn’t a comparison). It’s not the cheapest option, but it is affordable enough for just about any game group to design a unique set and have enough made for all the players.

We highly recommend you check out Q-workshop, their plethora of unusual dice sets, and if you’re looking for another way to add your signature to your role-playing campaign, be sure to check out the custom dice creation service.