I started making a set of dice that randomly generates NPCs… although for these I cut them blank, then painted them with brush on paint, and then just wiped them while they were wet to remove the high spots. This… mostly… worked, but acrylic paint on acrylic dice meant there’s a slightly cloudy color to the dice where the wipe-off paint still marks it.
(Black letters are basic traits, blue is attitude, red is motivation)
Then I wanted to make some custom dice for hit damage (Tiny Dungeon RPG system) and realized how much easier it would be if I masked them and spray painted them. Here’s the relatively straightforward process for that. (Make note of the custom spray booth cardboard thing to mask off the other sides, made this all SO much easier)
The 2nd batch of dice were cut with better settings. The original NPC dice settings weren’t good. Yeah, the dice were slightly higher than .5 inches, but not so much that it affected anything… acrylic is slightly gooey when melting anyway… didn’t feel like removing the tray and junk.
I love these. I am a teacher and I use story dice with my students for generating ideas when they are writing short stories. This year I’ll get the students to come up with a list of what should go on the story dice.
Sweet custom dice. I love the masking and spray painting trick.
I have an idea for some custom dice, but I can’t find blank black dice in 10.0 mm size. I might have to settle for one of the nearest common 12mm sizes and just… roll with it.
My initial thought was to paint the whole dice first, so it would be a fully red spray painted dice, then mask it, then cut it, then spray the revealed area (like the above examples) with white spray paint for clean white lines.
BUT… after trying it on a test dice, I really started to have doubts that the painted dice “bodies” would hold up well over time. I use leather dice trays (Glowforge!) but still, even in storage I didn’t want to pull them out for a game and the edges and corners be all chipped and nasty. So, went with white blank dice and painted the interiors instead.
Maybe if I coated the colored ones with sealant afterwards it would extend the life, but, not work messing with if the white bodied dice work well.
NEXT I ordered wooden dice. Was thinking that wood discolors well when it’s engraved, so, was thinking I’d lightly whitewash the wood dice first, then do engraving and the contrast would be dark by default.
Since wood engraves in 3D so much easier, I think I could design some very cool intricate dice for that technique.
You mentioned the settings being better for your later dice- did you just use the PG acrylic settings and alter the height?
I’d like to make some dice too, and I might buy the same blanks you did too (link for those? I can probably find them with a search though if not) so having tried-and-true settings right off the bat would be awesome.
I’m sure those settings would be fine. Honestly it’s hard to mess up just recessing areas of a solid acrylic dice face. I think the second ones turned out better simply because they were masked with tape.
I bought the blank dice quite a long time ago, off amazon, pretty sure any of them would do.
