Porcelain Dice Kickstarter

#1

I just discovered this:

I do most of my roleplaying F2F and I am a huge fan of having “themed” dice for my games (still love my Murder City shiny and “chrome” d6s for cyberpunk PbtA games). Those porcelain dice seem to be great for the upcoming Hearts of Wulin and other Wuxia theme games. I am really tempted to pick up two of them for the game!

What is also really cool about this is that it is a very durable porcelain that keeps its shape surprisingly well. As someone who dabbles in 3D printing, I am hoping that this technology will eventually find its way to 3d printers, but that’s past the scope of this community.

It is really great seeing some new technology being used for our hobby. I remember when Q-workshop started, they were using some modified brick cutting machine to make their dice. I am really looking forward to what other kinds of “artisinal” dice will show up in the future.

4 Likes
#2

Looks like they’ve solved the issues of dimensional stability and durability. I’d be slightly concerned about internal density variation resulting in an unbalanced die, which they don’t seem to mention. I’m slightly familiar with the industrial ceramic process due to past work with ceramic cutting tools and think it should be ok, or at least better than cheap plastic dice with lots of color variation and recycled plastic regrind, but I’d be interested in seeing some statistics on their dice rolls. Might pick them up just because they look awesome tbh.

2 Likes
#3

Does internal density vary that much in ceramics? I thought it would be pretty evenly distributed, definitely more than the standard issue plastic dice.

I think as long they are at least as random as my cheapo plastics, they are good enough for me.

2 Likes
#4

In standard hand made ceramics, yes, absolutely. In manufactured ceramics without industrial ceramic materials, yes to a lesser extent. The issue there is with air bubbles caught in the clay, variations in pressure when shaping them, combined with some variations in the heating, and then if it’s glazed the bottom will generally be heavier/have more glass because of gravity. Better potters and better material control and better kilns can mitigate all of that to an extent, but that’s all without assuming there’s any variation in the size of a theoretical hand made ceramic die due to skill. For most applications of ceramics, none of that matters.

When you switch to industrial ceramics, the material control is a lot better off the bat (they tend to use powdered ceramics over clay, which are much more uniform) the heating is much more controlled, and the high pressure should in theory deal with the gas pockets. It looks like they’re getting a glazed effect in a different way than actual glazing to avoid that particular issue.

Edit: Like I said, I don’t think it should be an issue at all with what I can guess about their process from what they’ve said. I’d just personally be curious to see it verified and how it stacks up against other dice.

4 Likes
#5

Those look beautiful, would really like to pick a set up just as a collectors piece. Justifying the price is going to be difficult though, $20 for a single die is a big ask for me.

3 Likes