Goodman Games

With DCC just around the corner, it seems like a good time to pick up any last minute Zocchi dice for those slacker's that haven't yet got around to it (i.e. me). So what are the best deals out there for these strangely shaped polyhedrals? And what is the best way to ink in precision dice?

I've only looked for precision dice so far, and here are the cheapest I've found:

CCG Armory - $3.00 d30's and a 12 set (everything but d7 and d30) for $20.25

Gamestation - $12.00 5 piece Zocchi sets (again missing d7 and d30, but good if you already have the classic polyhedrals). Awesome Dice also has these for $11.99 and you can find them on eBay for under $10.00.

RPG Shop - d7 for $4.05 (Gamestation also has these for $5.00)

Any other good finds?

One of the ways that I know of to ink dice is to use a crayon, a friend of mine bought some and said that he rubbing a crayon on the numbers over and over again and it fill them in. I would try it myself to see if it works, but I too am one of the slacker's who hasn't bought Zocchi dice yet.

My advice for what it is worth...

Get a Koplow d30 and d24 (the Gamescience d24 doesn't ink easily)

Gamescience d16 and d14 (you can buy inked but might need a fine paint pen to re-ink as sometimes the ink needs re-doing from time to time)...(or use crayon of course)

Either buy a Gamescience d7 or use the d14 to recreate those numbers.. 1-2=1, 3-4=2 etc
Same with the d5 (d10) and d3 (d6)

The Gamescience dice (with the d7 being the exception) are a bit hit and miss as to quality so I really wouldn't bother spending a great deal of money on 'em unless you have the cash and/or really like the quirkiness of them.

For the rest of the dice I would suggest using a standard poly set that you probably already own. I know some of us (myself included) like matching sets but at the moment this is not easily possible so my advice is just to get what I wrote above and get playing.

I personally recommend a single colour of poly set (black or white)..the Q Workshop Classic sets are nice for this...and then get different colours for all the Zocchi dice so that they are easily distinguished from the more commonly used varieties.

Just my tupence, take it or leave it

BoardGameGeek is down or I'd point you there for feedback on CCG Armory, but the short version is: Be very wary of ordering from them. Horror stories far outnumber good experiences and more than outweigh their generally good prices.

I inked my GameScience dice with a white crayon and wrote about the experience on Gnome Stew: Things I Learned while “Inking” 14 GameScience Dice with a Crayon. My set (full poly + full Zocchi + an extra 2d6) came from GameStation, but they don't actually stock the d30s anymore. I tracked one down on SciFiGenre (an excellent store). It, too, got inked with a crayon.

TL;DR: Buy from GameStation, get your d30 where you can find one, and ink with a crayon.

I ended up ordering what I wanted from Gamestation through Amazon.com. I don't know if this will happen for everybody, but when it came time to place the order, the shipping cost was automatically lowered after it combined all the items into one order, rather than charge the stated shipping cost for each die/dice set. The downside is that you will have to do a little site surfing.

That's how we did it back in the old days. GET OFF MY LAWN!

Actually, in the really old days of OD&D we did it with a black sharpie marker. I never even heard of the crayon technique until much later, although I guess folks who started off with B/X all knew about it.

Thanks haiiro for the links and the excellent blog post on the GameScience dice. I had already pretty much
decided to just go with a GameScience set of 12 but was planning to get pre-inked, now I think I'll save
about 15 bucks and have a wider selection of dice color options and crayon-ink them myself.

I'm skipping the d30 and d7. Might consider adding a 30 but that casino-look 7 just bugs me.

I'm thinking about the glow-in-the-dark GameScience/Zocchi set with maybe black crayon.

I haven't crayon-inked a die since the ones that came with my Holmes box set in 1978!

I bought two sets of those, since they were the only poly sets at the game store that had all of the unusual dice in them. The concept is cool, but overall the color is very uninspiring. (As noted above, I'm inking with black sharpie. Maybe the crayon would save me some grief. )

We always used crayons, that way the numbers can have the colour that shows up the best.

Does anyone know where to get smaller d30s? I have this metallic green one that is a lot smaller than the other ones I have seen, like just a tiny little bit bigger than most d20s. But I fished it out of a loose bin so have no idea where it came from.

I own a pile of tumbled Chessex d30s from past Bowl O' Dice grabs at GenCon, and they're all significantly larger than the Armory d30 I linked to above. The Armory one is a nice size.

Thanks Haiiro. I think the armory does have what I have, a small non-precision d30, only the one they have is called "blue gold shimmer." It doesn't say how big they are, my green one looks to be 25 or 26mm, the big ones I have seen have to be at least 30mm.

Another cool thing about the crayon method is you can have the 20 or 1 be a different colour, so you instantly know if you whiffed really bad or hit it out of the park.

Judges and DCC RPG hosts, I suggest you buy several d3's. The best ones are d6 numbered 1-3 twice, they're ugly, but they're easiest to read. There will be a lot of fighters at the early levels, and at 1st-level they'll be rolling them constantly.

For those that don't like the weirdo d5 and d7, find d10s that are numbered 1-5 twice and d14s numbered 1-7 twice, you can color the first half one color, and the other half another, and one is "high" and one is "low" so they can also work like d10 and d14s. Or it can work the other way around. A d14 and d10 can easily substitute for a d7 and d5.

Get at least 1 d30, they come into play rarely, but they are used. Plus they're cool: http://shirosrpg.blogspot.com/2008/11/order-of-d30.html

If you have Halflings, get extra d16s. If your halflings aren't always of two-weapon fighting, their players might want to take a class in probability.

A d24 can be shared until everyone gets to around 5th-level, then everyone might want their own.

What's so ugly about cubes?

Heh, just being facetious. I like my dice weird. My favorite d3 is a natural wood cube, numbered 1-3 twice, half red half green. I wish I knew what game it came from, but they're good as d2s too.

I am going to have to get some wooden dice.

I bought mine last summer straight from Game Science. (grabbed the glow in the dark set.) I did end up getting my d30 through Kaplow. They have all been resting in a special dice bag...waiting to be used specifically for this game. The PDF is nice, but they will bide their time until the actual book is my hands...then woe to my players.



I can't wait for this.

The crayon technique will not save anyone grief trying to color Zocchi dice. My wife and I bailed on the project halfway though. The d24 particularly has shallow numbers which do not hold crayon well, even with a little candle flame applied to make the wax run in the grooves. I'm going to buy a set of pre-inked dice and pawn the Zocchi dice off on one of my players in exchange for, say, going to the fridge to get me a beer.

I painted my Game Science dice with standard water based acrylic mini paint. You just blot on some paint and lightly wipe it off with your finger. Its kind of messy, but also strangely relaxing. Unfortunately, the paint needs frequent touching up. I highly recommend not putting your Games Science dice in a bag.

I see on the Chessex web site they make goofy dice, but they're under the section "blank". Does this mean they don't have numbers on them? What would be the point of that? Surely there are alternatives to Zocchi dice.

I always was a chessex fan, they probably can't legally manufacture zocchi sets.

About crayons: based on my experiences back in 1980 or so, get the cheapest, crappiest crayons you can. They're softer than Crayolas and work much better for this sort of thing. Chessex or someone used to make some big, fat, soft crayons that worked especially well, but that was a long, long time ago. Pick up some dollar store crayons and it should work out better than the really nice ones.

I've got an email out to them about their dice ...

Yeah, standard Crayolas didn't do a very good job. Good point about softer wax.

I still want a full set of matching dice. Not too much to ask?