Casting Shadows

The Kickstarter project by Impact! Miniatures went smoothly from the backers’ perspective, and was characterized by clear and frequent communication about each stage of the development process from the beginning. Yesterday, my backer rewards arrived a little earlier than I expected. It wasn’t an easy road for the developers to travel, but they have persevered and produced a very satisfying product.

Black Dice Set D3-D30

The project initially started out to fill in the gaps in the even dice between D4 and D20. Prototype dice were shown for a D14 and D18 in a spherical shape. Plans were mentioned for tackling the D16 in a later Kickstarter, but as the pledges came in, the direction of the project changed, as they are wont to do, in the with the addition of stretch goals. In this case the project added getting a run of dice from D3 to D24 + D30 and went on to develop and now produce a D22, a more appealing D7, in addition to a cool D5. The vision of filling in the whole run of even dice in spherical shapes was hi-jacked at the end by odd-numbered dice in peculiar shapes, transforming the project into one producing a more immediately useful sets of dice… DCC players at any rate.

Do you want to see these dice in action?  Visit Casting Shadows on YouTube: Dice & Dicely Things

Future plans include Impact! making a full run of its own dice like this, but for now they are obtaining the traditional dice from manufacturers we know and love.  Obviously, the success of Dungeon Crawl Classics and the difficulty in getting a decent set of even remotely matched dice for playing with the dice chain had a strong influence on the stretch goals in this case. The D7 was hotly sought, and I know that I am not the only one to have picked up extra just to battle the horrible effect of the original monstrosity foisted on the gaming community by person or persons herein unnamed. The D5 is also very cool and I wish I had thought to pick up extras of that type. Color matching between the dice cast for the project and those purchased by Impact to complete sets was excellent. I received two full sets, black and white and have no complaints. Size matching is a different story, but the only die that really stands out was the D30 and we were warned of its gargantuan proportions from the beginning.

I am hoping that Impact! does take on another Kickstarter to produce a full line of odd and even-numbered dice. I have a sudden yen for a D9. More than that, I think that having the dice available in appealing rather than purely expedient shapes, with the intention of producing sets matched for color and size would lead to their inclusion in the games yet to be made. I am not sure what can be done about the giant girth of the D30, but the ingenuity shown in generating the D5 and D7 gives me faith in this design team.

Let’s Roll…