Speaking of Dice

[luke]

What do you think of this design for BWG dice? (files.me.com/bwhq/v4itmg)

I know Q-Workshop dice are all fancy, but I'm shooting for iconic and readable. I want dice you could read across the table.

These would be 16 mm, gold plastic and black ink.

Have at it!
-Luke

[AnyaTheBlue]

Personally, I'd flip the color scheme -- black dice with gold inlaying.

Either way, very snazzy!

[rafial]

Count me as favoring the reversed color scheme as well. But I can see how black on colored plastic might be easier to produce.

And yeah, fancy Q Workshop style dice are neat to look at as artifacts, but useless at the table.

Hopefully these would be of the quality level of the BE dice you have, or at least the MG dice.

[chuckles73]

I agree with the gold inlaid in black suggestion.

So this is 1 on the Die of Fate, White success, Grey success, two black successes and exploding success?

I don't know how easily you'd be able to read success vs exploding success from across the table.

[luke]

I'll see if we can do gold ink!

[stormsweeper]

My concern with gold ink is that it's usually not very long-lasting.

The "3" side doesn't quite sit with me, but otherwise I like it.

[Totally Guy]

To be honest I think that the dice should just represent black shade (like a cipher of the MG dice) as that represents the bulk of the game.

This would tie in well with the dice physically being black.

If you wanted to produce dice that work for grey and white have them physically be grey and white.

I imagine this may not be feasible as I expect you need to get value for money from having a run of bulk dice that are all the same. Plus producing more kinds leaves more opportunities for mistakes to creep in.

The existing design has 5 faces that are distinct from each other. A regular die had 6 distinct faces. I don't see the existing design having greater utility over regular dice. The added "alienness" does not make up for the slight advantage of one face being identical to one other face.

Sorry to be such a killjoy. :(

[luke]

With gold on black and the traditional BWHQ symbol for 3/gray (files.me.com/bwhq/2w5z38)

[luke]

Gold on black with 3/2/1 dots (files.me.com/bwhq/9tzt7h)

[rafial]

I like the revision. I was going to whine about the 3 side myself, the new symbol is much more obvious to me.

Thought: scale the Grey and White symbols down slightly so they are same size as the outer circle on the wheel side. Right now the 3 side reads as slightly "heavier" than the wheel, because it's larger.

As cool as the different color dice would be, the universal die for all shades is groovy too.

[doctor_madu]

I think I like the first one -- r6_gold -- the most. The halftone for grey, open circle for white was pretty intuitive. Agreed that they'd look good scaled to the outside diameter of the Wheel.

That being said, hells yes to any of the designs.

~Gary

Edit: Huh, Photoshop says it is scaled to that. Guess if it's a little smaller it'll keep the same visual weight.

[Steerpike]

The Gold on Black looks really great, the design seems to pop a little more.

And I think I dig the last set with the pips for 1-3 the most, they don't look as awesome as the icons but they seem more functional and easier to read.

- Colin

[stormsweeper]

With gold on black and the traditional BWHQ symbol for 3/gray (files.me.com/bwhq/2w5z38)

I like. Although, as Guy points out, bow guys will still need to keep a regular d6 around.

[zabieru]

I dig the gold-on-black with half-circle 3 design as well.


I like. Although, as Guy points out, bow guys will still need to keep a regular d6 around.

Well, it's not like any of us owns one of those...

[EarthenForge]

Very nice. My favorite design is the one with the 1-3 pips. Like Colin suggested, the pips aren't as cool, but if I want to use my dice with newbs, I'd prefer to explain as little as possible, so instant success/fail judgement is key for me.

[savagehominid]

With gold on black and the traditional BWHQ symbol for 3/gray (files.me.com/bwhq/2w5z38)

+1

I like!

[johnstone]

Needs a four-spoked wheel instead one of those five-spoked. Then it's a real d6 and I can use two of them to roll on the mutation table. Otherwise I still need normal dice, as well as BW dice.

[johnstone]

Oh, and it looks nice. I like the first design better than the pips. Very stylish (possibly too stylish? It looks more sci-fi than fantasy, but BE doesn't have grey/white. Brand them as Burning Sands dice, maybe?).

[Michael S. Miller]

These are pretty darn awesome. I might just have to print them on sticker paper and slap them on blank dice for my upcoming BW game. A few thoughts:

1) I, too, think the traditional BWHQ half-circle is the way to go for gray. But scale it down to the inside of the regular wheel to decrease its visual weight.

2) You're talking about ink on solid cubes, like the Mouse Guard dice, right? The sides will be perfectly smooth without indentation, right? If so, I suggest that black ink on gold plastic is a better choice. I suspect that the gold ink on black plastic will allow much of the black underneath to "shine through" and make the gold dingy looking and decreasing contrast. Particularly after hundreds of rolls. I could be wrong, but if it were me, I'd want to see a well-used example of light colored ink on dark colored plastic before I committed to it.

Plus, you wouldn't make your web page black with gold lettering, would you? Dark inks on light backgrounds make for easier, clearer reading. Particularly at a distance.

[Rafe]

This might put me in the time-out room, but. . . .

I'm afraid I'm not a fan of any of those designs. Ideally, black, grey and white dice sets would be awesome, and all the markings could be simplified for traitors, successes and exploding: Blank sides for traitors, normal five-spoked BW-style wheels for success sides, and the burning wheel for the exploding side. Those dice designs just strike me as overly complicated.

All that said, I totally understand the practical need of the above designs so as to cover all possibilities with a single set/style of dice (B, G, W as one set) but I find those dice really busy and most of the sides aren't all that Burning Wheels'y.

If I had to choose, though, I'd pick:


With gold on black and the traditional BWHQ symbol for 3/gray (files.me.com/bwhq/2w5z38)

with one exception: don't have a pip for 1. Just leave the traitor blank. That makes it very easy on a cursory glance to discard those from thought (and simplifies the set).

Anyhoo. . . just my thoughts. :)

[chuckles73]

Plus, you wouldn't make your web page black with gold lettering, would you? Dark inks on light backgrounds make for easier, clearer reading. Particularly at a distance.

To be more specific, my problem with the black on gold is that, at least in the image files, the gold isn't really all that light. Thus, it became black-splotches-on-dark-background vs lighter-splotches-on-black-background.

If the gold die plastic was lighter, I'd probably have liked either.

[luke]

No blank sides. The guys who made the BE dice used blank sides and I find them to be jarring and oddly counterintuitive.

[Ben]

I like the 4-6 sides, the wheel tells success and exploding wheel tells me 6 (roll again).

But the 2&3 sides I am not really a fan of. Sure I know that they are two and three but not which is two or three, if the pdfs where not in order I would be hard pressed to tell you which is which.

Personally I would like a slowly building wheel:

1: Dot and outer circle
2: Dot + Outer Circle + one Spoke
3: etc
4: etc
5: etc
6: Classic Burning Wheel symbol (inner dot + outer circle + five spokes)

Or maybe start with one spoke and end with the explosive/ Burning Wheel for six.

Also I am a fan of the Gold on Black, looks better in my eyes.

[stormsweeper]

I like the 4-6 sides, the wheel tells success and exploding wheel tells me 6 (roll again).

But the 2&3 sides I am not really a fan of. Sure I know that they are two and three but not which is two or three, if the pdfs where not in order I would be hard pressed to tell you which is which.

Personally I would like a slowly building wheel:

1: Dot and outer circle
2: Dot + Outer Circle + one Spoke
3: etc
4: etc
5: etc
6: Classic Burning Wheel symbol (inner dot + outer circle + five spokes)

Or maybe start with one spoke and end with the explosive/ Burning Wheel for six.

Also I am a fan of the Gold on Black, looks better in my eyes.

There were some old BW dice like that and they are unusable.

[luke]

Yeah, counting spokes is the worst. It renders the dice unreadable.

[Evil Peter]

The designs are cool and I support gold symbols on black dice. I do have trouble deciding which designs I like best but I think it's the one with the traditional BWHQ '3'.


Plus, you wouldn't make your web page black with gold lettering, would you? Dark inks on light backgrounds make for easier, clearer reading. Particularly at a distance.
I don't mind dark web pages with light letters because a computer screen differs from paper in that white is actually a pretty bright light shining right into your eyes. In a darker room a white background will not be that easy on the eyes, while white paper almost always works. You also have more leeway when you're just showing one symbol compared to a whole text.

[Aramis]

I had an idea for a pure-wheel design
1: hub only
2: hub and 2 opposed spokes
3: hub and 4 opposed spokes
4: hub, 4 spokes, and rim
5: hub, 5 spokes and rim = full wheel
6: radiant ring around the full wheel

By dropping the rim for the 1-3, black shade is easy - look for the rim.
Grey is looking for a cross.
White is anything but the hub alone.
4 vs 5 is subtle, but present for those missile weapon guys...

[Ben]

Well you could always do

1: T (traitor)
2: W (White)
3: G (Gray)
4: B (Black)
5: B (Black) or maybe a full Wheel
6: Burning Wheel

admittedly its kinda simplistic, but if the letters were done in the right font it could look rather nice. Plus if one went with the full wheel instead of the second B it could still function as a normal d6 (sorta).

[Etsu Riot]

I prefer one, two and tree serpents for the failures (or maybe just one serpent for the "1" and two serpents for the "2" and "3"), a shield and two crossed swords for the successes and the wheel to represent the six.

Those in the page 278 of the Adventure Burner are awesome.

Yes, I know. I'm not much help. ;D

[luke]

No tree serpents for the dice!

[Etsu Riot]

What about this:

Maybe just one serpent for failures (two sides), and a very litlle black wheel for the "1".

And a shield and two crossed swors for success (or maybe a sword in one side and a sword and shield in the the other side) and a big fire wheel for the six.

[slashdevnull]

My preference is the r8 one. Not digging the pip-based design. It seems like the idea should be to represent successes and failures, not the digits 1 through 6. I'd probably buy black-on-gold and gold-on-black if they were available.

[buzz]

With gold on black and the traditional BWHQ symbol for 3/gray (files.me.com/bwhq/2w5z38)
Glad to see you took my advice. ;)

[Justin in Oz]

Whatever design you choose, I urge you not to try to be all things to all people. Focus the design just as you have chosen to focus the game itself. As people have said, we do own normal d6s. We can pick them up and use them when the occasion demands.

Most of the time, the vast majority infact, we do not need to distinguish between the 2,3,4 and 5. 2 and 3 are failures, 4 and 5 are success. Adding additional symbols to distinguish between the 2 and the 3 clutters up an otherwise beautiful design. Resist the urge to alloy a pure metal!

All in my opinion of course. I understand what people are doing when they are asking for marks to distinguish between the other results. I just don't agree with them. When someone thinks that they can pursue a strategy without having to make trade offs, they do not understand strategy.

Personally If you produce a set of "Black" dice and another set of "Grey" dice, I would buy both. However, I do not complain when I spend money on my roleplaying hobby. Nor do I complain when I spend money on buying double espressos. Somepeople complain about the first but think nothing of the second.

[Jais]

I really like the one with the pips for 1, 2 and 3 (in the light that Black shade will be by far the most used). It's simple, clean and if you see any pips it usually means it's a traitor. I'm definately a customer!

However, I have my doubts about how nice the gold will look. It's probably not a big deal, but I think if I were to do it I would make the dice plain black with white ink (reflecting the black shade). That way, you leave it open for producing grey dice with black ink and white dice with black ink.

[Dean]

I'm in the black symbols on gold dice camp. The ink fades over time, and on dark dice it becomes unreadable. I have an old set of Chessex polyhedrals, dark green with gold numbers, and the gold has faded so much that I actually have to recolor them regularly with wax crayons, just like we used to have to do with the un-inked dice in the old-school D&D red boxed set. Anyone remember that?

I also prefer the regular pips for 1, 2, and 3. And I like the idea for a 4-spoked wheel for the 4 side, so the die can be used as an archer's DoF. Screw keeping a regular d6 for the DoF. I'd expect official BW dice to be usable for all aspects of the game.

Actually, if you want to make real Burning Wheel dice, they should have a big, hollowed out divot for the 1's side. That way, the number one traitor will be lighter than the rest of the die, and roll failures more often. After all, isn't failure a big driving force of this game? ^^

[buzz]

The color scheme used for the Mouse Guard dice (black on "aged" white) would honestly be the most readable. Any combo of black and metallic gold would probably be problematic.

[Dean]

The color scheme used for the Mouse Guard dice (black on "aged" white) would honestly be the most readable. Any combo of black and metallic gold would probably be problematic.

Actually, black on white would be my first vote too. But I assume that gold is preferred in celebration of the new edition.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I also prefer the regular pips for 1, 2, and 3. And I like the idea for a 4-spoked wheel for the 4 side, so the die can be used as an archer's DoF. Screw keeping a regular d6 for the DoF. I'd expect official BW dice to be usable for all aspects of the game.

+1 to this. A 4-spoked wheel is pretty easy to pick out, and the only reason you specifically need it is when you're using the archery DoF, right? Then it's just "Wheel = success", " 'splodey wheel = 6", "Pips = traitors", and the rarer "If Grey, the three pips are successes too" and "If White, so are the two pips".

[Fuseboy]

http://rubiconblog.com.nyud.net/2011/12/02/the-big-dig-at-caherduggan-castle-find-of-the-week-4/