Dice dominate at Gen Con 2022, including actually dispel dices for sale

One moment I was at Gen Con, chasing down the aisles of the vendor floor for the next big board game. The very next moment I was engagement ring shopping—or at least that’s what it felt like. A woman with beautiful hands was picking up precious stones from a brightly lit glass case, laying these beautiful objects on a velvet cloth and encouraging me… to roll them.

Luxury has arrived in tabletop gaming. Previously it was fancy-ass tables, and this year it was all about the dice. At least two vendors — Dispel Dice and Level Up Dice — had hawking sets of polyhedrals that were almost as expensive as the entire game, and people lined up for the opportunity to buy them. The biggest name on the floor was Karen Wang, whose $2.3 million crowdfunding campaign packed with creative inclusion became a staple in 2020. Level up dice were also present, a wide selection of semi-precious dice unlike anything else in the hall. Each vendor was at the top of their game, buoyed by the interest and speed of the crowd in tabletop gaming’s Super Bowl.

But it took a lot of effort to reach there. Wang, for her part, battled the pandemic with issues with manufacturing, workflow and imports. Level Up CEO Alex Abrett said that many dice makers have gone out of business during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“The problem is it’s a niche market,” he said, his voice suppressed by the mandatory face masks that guests were asked to wear this year. “The problem is it’s a niche market with a lot of fever […] Customer. So all of a sudden, we had all this new generation coming in, looking for a monopoly [and] Capitalizing on the dice industry. And then COVID hit, which meant there was no way out. So there are places where [literally] Too many dice on which they have been sitting for two years. […] They are dropping their prices everywhere. ,

Both Abrett and Wang stand out from the crowd because of how and what they make their dice with. Wang relies on liquid resin—the kind of two-part glue you can buy at hardware stores—and novel inclusions to give depth and shine to his creations. With their names comes branding: Crimson Nebula, Eldritch Fire, Magenta Inferno, Favwater – each with the opportunity to connect with a fan of a certain type of role-playing game or campaign.

The niche of Abret is semi-precious stone and incredibly rare material. “What you see here is not the only kind of things we work on,” Abrett said. “We work on things in four digits, five digits. We just finished a set of dice from Tiger I of World War II.”

Indrani Ganguly was a representative of another group of diemakers at this year’s Gen Con – independent craftspeople who sell their wares online. The first modern dyemaker in India, her troubles during the pandemic ranged from finding equipment and materials to getting started. The biggest challenge for him was the air bubbles that were ruining his set.

Ganguly explained, “A pressure pot is basically an air compressor tank that compresses any air bubbles in the resin once it is inserted.” “So it goes fine when it’s inside the pressure pot, which means there’s no bubbles or any little noise in the dice. And that kind of stuff just back at Lowe’s or Harbor Freight or stuff like that not available at home [in Mumbai], I have to go looking for these industrial-class people and be like, ‘Listen, I don’t want 20 of them. I just want one Can we find out please?’ And that was a lot for me. ,

Now Ganguly, who was set to accept the Diana Jones Award on behalf of sports designer Ajit George (Journey through the Bright Citadel), is using the sale of her dice for her trip to Gen Con.

She says she loves the job – even when it can take hours to get a set of dice right.

“It takes a lot of work and effort to be able to get it to the point where people see it online,” Ganguly said, “where it’s super shiny and beautiful without any scratches or marks.” And that’s work hours—typically five to six hours of work per step in my seven-step polishing process alone.”

Ganguly says that she also bets on commission. A customer asked to include her dehydrated breastmilk in her dices. Another raven wanted wings – a nod to Critical Role’s wax’ilden.

But what about the dice with Mountain Dew inside?

“My goal is to make dice that are aesthetically pleasing,” Ganguly said. “I don’t necessarily want to make the most damned dice imaginable.”