For the larger boxes I can have multiple dice sets, but in the smaller boxes only one. I laid the outline of each of the blocks out in Illustrator, and started playing around with patterns of 1" circles, until I found orientations that looked useful or cool. I made paper patterns to help locate the wells. Because the boxes are two matched pieces (top and bottom), I had to make sure the wells on one side match the wells on the other side. (1) Each of the pieces has a set of individual wells that the dice sit in. I wanted the boxes to not have sharp corners on the top and bottom, so I used a 1/4" rounding bit on my router to take the top edges off each piece. There are some saw burns on the ends of some of the pieces of the maple stock, but I decided it didn't bother me so I didn't spend any time trying to get rid of them - they would be "rustic." Also, some of the pieces have divots from mounting screws that had been used to hold the piece in place when I built the telescope. If there were a substantial difference, I would have had to use a more robust cutting bit.īecause this is wood from my scrap bin, it is less than perfect in some regards. For the minor differences, I evened out the pieces by clamping the blocks together and running my router down the mismatched side using a laminate trimming bit. Because they were all the result of building matched pieces for my telescope, they were pretty closely matched in size. I matched the individual pieces of stock together for size.
A little work with two pairs of pliers yielded a nice supply of little magnets! You could probably find them in nametag sets at an office supply store.
I always keep these and throw them in my materials box. Very often I lose my nametag (it usually hooks on something and gets knocked off without me noticing - the life of an astronomer is rugged), but the magnetic back falls in my pocket. However, my nametag at work has a magnetic back on it. Neodymium magnets seem to be the thing (they are strong), but finding small ones proved difficult. (2) Magnets - I wanted the boxes to be securely shut without external mechanisms that protrude and catch on things. I found enough scrap pieces to make the 4 boxes shown here - a good spectrum of sizes and shapes to play around with. The boxes are two pieces that form each side of the dice box, so I was looking for pieces that were at least 3/4" thick. I first found pieces of wood suitable for the project, then designed around them. (1) Wood - I didn't start with a particular box design in mind.
Various games will require more or less of different types of these basic shapes, but a "standard" set in my world is 7 dice. Added to the mix is also a 10-sided die ("d10"), which together with another d10 can roll percentages ("d%"). Polyhedral dice take the form of the classic Platonic solids - a tetrahedron ("d4"), a cube ("d6"), an octahedron ("d8), a dodecahedron ("d12"), and an icosahedron ("d20"). I've always been enthralled by the cerebral challenge of solving mysteries and completing epic quests, but all the while playing the risks through the intricate rolling of dice. At the center of many games, role-playing games in particular, are dice. Since my youth I have been a tabletop gamer, but have always loved role-playing games the most.
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