Special GURPS dice?

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

OK, if I get another response asking for them, I'll post them next week, when I'm home from the convention I'm currently at.

Here is another response asking for them.

[AOTA]

Those ring dice are cool. Here is the 3d6 that was mentioned.

http://www.critsuccess.com/index.php.../result/?q=3d6

[RyanW]

Somebody should just design a d216, numbered appropriated.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Somebody should just design a d216, numbered appropriated.

Or a d16 with not all faces the same size.

[mook]

Originally Posted by AOTA

Those ring dice are cool. Here is the 3d6 that was mentioned.

http://www.critsuccess.com/index.php.../result/?q=3d6

It's a fun toy. I got one a few months back (video link at bottom of page-- it spins really well!) and wore it to the last convention. Always had something for my hands to play with, and if I ever got stuck in an elevator I could run a game to pass the time.

I have also mused on using counter rings to track NPC HP, but I'd probably want two or three at that point, and I've only got so many digits.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

OK, if I get another response asking for them, I'll post them next week, when I'm home from the convention I'm currently at.

Download and install Inkscape for Windows, Mac or Linux. I've only used it on Windows, but I have the impression it's pretty much identical on all its platforms. Work through the first few tutorials. You don't need to know all of it, but you do need to get a firm grasp of document sizes, grids, grouping and the Object => Transform dialog.

Skim the Wikipedia page on SVG files to get the idea of the difference between them and ordinary raster graphics files. The two types of file you will deal with are Inkscape SVG, which can contain grids, guide lines, and other supporting material, and plain SVG files, which Chessex were able to use as graphics for faces.

Dice for customisation come as blank cubes, in several sizes, opaque/transparent, and so on. Custom dice have all six faces' patterns engraved, and all the engraving is then filled with paint. You have two colours to work with, the dice colour and the fill colour. You may be able to get different fill colours on different faces, but it will cost more if it's possible.

Western-layout D6 faces can all be constructed by making a 3x3 grid of pips and then selectively removing pips to make each face's pattern. I do this by deleting pips, saving a plain SVG file with a name that indicates how many pips are on the face, undoing the deletions - you have to undo twice in Inkscape to get that to happen - and then deleting a different set of pips to make the next face.

All my custom dice so far have been 16mm, because Chesex have a much larger range of colours in that size. I use a 1mm square grid on a 16mm square document for this. I leave a 1mm border outside the pips, and a 1mm gap between them, which leaves a 4mm square for each pip.

I draw a single pip at whatever size is convenient, import that document into a copy of the face document, use Object => Transform to scale it to 4mm in its largest dimension, and to move it to the right place on the grid. I then duplicate it and use Object => Transform to move it exactly 5mm, horizontally or vertically, which puts it on the grid at the right place. Once you have a complete row or column, select all three pips, group them, duplicate the group and move that 5mm into place. Ungroup the pips so that you can delete them conveniently. Now you can start selecting and saving as plain SVG, as mentioned above.

I've sent the plain SVG files to Chessex in ZIP files holding six SVG files for six faces. The names of the ZIP files include my name and the dice and fill colour, just so that information stays with the SVG files as long as possible.

My Flickr has an album with Chessex's pictures of the prototype dice they made for me. Neither Flickr nor Deviant Art will let me share SVG files, but when I find somewhere that will, I'll put some on-line.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Somebody should just design a d216, numbered appropriated.

Unfortunately that would suffer from the same rolling-forever problem as the d100. (To be a strictly fair die it would have to be a double-cone, though a golfball would more or less work.)

Originally Posted by johndallman

I draw a single pip at whatever size is convenient

Are you given any constraints on the minimum width of a line?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Are you given any constraints on the minimum width of a line?

Chessex don't get very technical about this stuff. Think in terms of it being symbolic, rather than representational.

I'll know more when I can see and measure physical dice. Inkscape lets you control how line widths scale with drawings.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I've sent the plain SVG files to Chessex in ZIP files holding six SVG files for six faces. The names of the ZIP files include my name and the dice and fill colour, just so that information stays with the SVG files as long as possible.

Lessons from experience:

1. Rather than getting clever with long filenames, it works much better to mock up the colours you want in Inkscape and export a PNG file as a colour sample.
2. Chessex don't really like SVG files, but are too polite to say so until they get stuck, or get something wrong. PDF is much more to their taste, and is easy to export from Inkscape.
3. It's a good idea to draw a border on the Inkscape document that shows where the edges of the die are supposed to be, and make sure that comes out in the PDF files. Without this, the scaling of your artwork is unpredictable.
4. You have just two colours for any given die, the die colour and the fill colour. There's no way round that.
5. Obey the heraldic "law of tinctures": don't put "metals" (yellow and white) on metals or "colours" (any other colour) on colours.
6. Mid-grey isn't a colour or a metal, AFAICS, and they have grey dice.
7. Nobody makes sky-blue dice as blanks.
8. Don't try to get too representational. This is heraldry, not picture-making.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Are you given any constraints on the minimum width of a line?

Sadly, this depends on the colour of the dice, as different colours react differently to the laser. The cutting is a raster process, not vector.