If you happen to be in the market for some designer dice or need a set of custom dice for a game you have created, you could pay a ton of money to have them made, or you can do it yourself.
[Dicecreator] runs a blog dedicated to the ins and outs of creating DIY game and collector’s dice. This subject is not something that we would normally be interested in, but one particular item caught our interest – DIY toner transfer dice. Very similar to the process of creating a toner transfer PCB, he walks through the steps required for making your own dice with very little overhead.
The steps are likely quite familiar to those who have fabricated your own PCBs at home. He starts out with blank dice, sanding the sides down with increasingly fine sandpaper until they are ready for the transfer process. An image is printed on glossy inkjet photo paper, which is then applied to each die with a standard clothes iron. After a bit of soaking in water to remove the excess paper, the die is ready to go.
Sure it’s not exactly rocket science, but it is a cool little trick that would work quite well if you are trying to replace a lost die or if you simply want to make a fun gift for a friend.
Why not leave this kind of stuff to Make blog?
@ svofski
This is Hack a Day, remember?
just wish HaD, adafruit, and others like them (Make included) would stop posting the same things everyone else posts every day, its like they copy each others posts (most anyway, the only reason
I watch all their feeds is because they each have a few original posts that are interesting).
because someone might get the bright idea to have a computer read the dice, role it on a multi-touch gaming table, or something like that. the point is, you never know.
love the dice, keep it up.
Q codes on each side! BRILLIANT!
@ fartface
No!!! Glyphs for an augmented reality game!!!
I demand a free game if someone makes it ;)
@The Ideanator: you’re right. BRB, learning chinese…
Dicecreator also does QR coded dice (laser engraved) but there is some legal crap going on about it…
I think his Nano Laser Engraver is far cooler:
http://www.dicecreator.com/2010/07/31/laser-stories-13/
Leaving the dice aside, don’t forget toner transfer works on other things, such as project boxes: http://www.electrobob.com/toner-transfer-to-abs/
Oh yeah, I’d trust home made dice.
When you have a hack about making loaded dice then I’ll be interested. :)
@Rex
If you’re worried about cheaters, you’re playing with the wrong people. Unless you’re playing Illuminati, in which case make sure you catch them before the end of their turn. ;p
OMG…a digital gaming table, something along the lines of Fantasy Grounds, with computer vision so it can detect what you rolled. For example, an attack roll of 8d6+5 or something, you could roll your 8d6 and the interface would calculate the total +5. Hmm…interesting. That wasn’t the part that bogged us down though, we always forgot what rules applied to cover and grenade-like scatter and stuff like that. We had digital versions of our game books (in addition to the hard copies) but none of them were properly searchable. -.-