RPG a Day 2019 Post-Mortem

To quote Bill Murray from the movie Stripes, "Well, that was interesting."

I'd never done something like this before. And I didn't know what to expect, but I was surprised by a few things. The entry that generated the most conversation was Evolution (y'all have thoughts about other editions of D&D. I see that now.) The least amount of participation was, of course, Suspense. Again, I'd like to apologize to any Texas Aggies who may have read the entry and thought I was stealing their joke. I meant no offense.

Everything else in between was about the same, but I did see an uptick in the days where I gave out some delicious home brew for my game. Those posts were quietly and fervently consumed with very little drag.

My biggest regrets were the 11's, the ones where I dipped back into RPGaDay's Past to build a blog entry because I didn't have anything for the prompt. Now, having said that, I told you that to tell you this: I'm a pretty clever guy, and I dug deep for some of these entries, which is why the blog jumped around like it did. If I couldn't come up with something based on your prompt, it was probably a little too broad. No disrespect to David Chapman, who has been spearheading this for six years. Lots of questions, lots of prompts (186, to be exact). I get it. I am just saying I would not mind more specific cues going forward.

I'll most likely do this again next year. But having now read a month of my meanderings, I have a few questions for the handful of you who made it through the month unscathed. What would you like to see, going forward, on this blog? More posts about me blathering about the good old days? More war stories? (I have a number of entries I could write about my time at Chessex). More campaign notes and homebrew stuff? I got a lot of that, too. Is there something else I could be talking about that I am not?

Any comments or direction would be great. I've got some of you, and I'd like to keep you around, so here's your chance. Tell me what you want, please.

Here's the full list of topics on each day, all in one place for your clickity-click-convenience.

First
Unique
Engage
Share 
Space
Ancient
Familiar
Obscure
Critical
Focus
Examine
Friendship
Mystery
Guide
Door
Dream
One
Plenty
Scary
Noble
Vast
Lost
Surprise
Triumph
Calamity
Idea
Suspense
Love 
Evolve
Connection
Last

Dice Delve: Chessex Marbelized Ivory Polyhedral Set

I used to work for Chessex, and I am an unapologetic fan of their EuroDice, both the opaque and the Speckled varieties. I think that they are among the best dice available for RPG and tabletop gaming--maximum quality with minimum cash outlay. Even when I don't like something about a color combination, it's a tough love kind of thing, since I used to work for the company and presumably am in some kind of position to know better.

Chessex, like other dice sellers, also buys dice to resale from other dice makers--presumably not the same people who make their Speckled dice for them, but you never know, because it's kind of a trade secret. Speaking only for myself, as soon as you move away from Urea as a manufacturing component, it becomes a lot easier to see the flaws in a dice color or a plastic combination. This is not always a good thing, especially if you're the kind of person who has opinions about stuff. What am I talking about? Read on and see for yourself.

Dice Delve: Chessex Pound-O-Dice

I am going to break the format slightly for the purposes of this bulk dice review. A lot of people are buying mass quantities of dice, either for new players or to bolster existing collections. As a game master, I like to have a lot of options available for me to match my admittedly capricious moods, and I also like to hand out new dice to beginning players, since it's easier to simply give them what they need than expect them to know what they need. 

These days, thanks to lax international shipping and a variety of online shopping sites, starter dice sets are very cheap. Cool dice that you really want to play with cost a little more and are a really personal choice for each person, but for new players, all you really need are the correct sizes and shapes and you're good to go.

Still, these bulk buys are not without their charm, especially when you have a company like Chessex, who are known for their awesome speckled dice, offering a big-ass bag of them for a relatively low price. Sounds great, right? 

Artisanal Craft Dice 6: A Baseline Review

I’ve dropped a lot of dice talk these last few weeks, so today I’m going to do a little show and tell. Here are some dice that live in my ridiculous and chaotic collection. I’ll show them to you, give you as much detail as I can about them, and then grade them using the criteria I’ve outlined here (link to part 5). That way, you can see what I’m on about, and also get a sense of what I value and what I hate. It’s important to understand where a reviewer is coming from, so you can get the most out of said reviews. I’ll talk about what I like, what I don’t like, and what doesn’t work below. You’ll get the hang of it.

Remember: if you want me to review your dice, drop me a line at Finns Wake at Gee Mail Dot Com. I won't promise that I'll love them, but I will promise to give them a fair shake. And a fair roll. Hah! Dice humor! See what I did there? Okay, let's get on with it.

Artisanal Craft Dice Part 3: Dealing With Danish Dice Gnomes

Not only did I get to sell dice to retailers, I ended up helping to make them when I was transferred to Chessex Manufacturing in 1995.  I have told this story elsewhere  but I wanted to add as well as clarify a few things from my "in the trenches" side of things. You find out how cheap (or expensive) things are; you have to think about stuff that you never considered as a consumer, such as packaging—those AMAC cubes, for example, and those tiny slips of paper that served as the label all cost money, as well. There were frustrations, like dealing with upper management who had one idea—and maybe not a very good one—and trying to navigate a way to say that without getting fired. I drank a lot in Berkeley, California. For medical reasons.

Artisanal Craft Dice Part 2: "You Can Never Have Enough Dice!"

Dice Porn!

I was twenty four when I found myself working at Chessex Southwest, at the time when the company was growing like Audrey 2 in Little Shop of Horrors and scaring the hell out of The Armory, Wargames West, and anyone who was distributing games and game supplies. Chessex had parlayed its success as a minor game accessories provider to actually selling games themselves. It started small, with Don Reents selling stuff out of the back of his van in the Bay Area, and became a major thing, nationwide, seemingly unstoppable thing. If you ever played on a vinyl Battlemat, or used Dragonskins on your hardcover books, or owned a set or two of Speckled dice, that’s all thanks to Chessex.

Artisanal Craft Dice Part 1: My Torrid and Complicated Relationship With Dice

In 2018, there is no more accessory to table top gaming that is more fetishized and objectified than dice. Not books, not miniatures, not pens and pencils and paper. Dice. Platonic solids. And not just any dice, oh, no, no. What used to be a necessary, somewhat utilitarian contrivance has officially become an obsession for many people. What used to be something we had maybe twelve to fifteen of has mushroomed into a very expensive collecting endeavor that costs upwards of hundreds of dollars. We’ve gone round the bend, us gamers. We don’t just have dice, anymore.

Now we’ve got artisanal craft dice.