It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Black Oak Workshop‘s dice designs. Their Diminishing Knight Kickstarter from 2017 was the first to catch my eye, and I fell in love with their Six Shooters and Asteroid dice. And that Gelatinous Cube is a brilliant idea!
But what I find particularly genius is their recent d4 concept of treating the die as a figure that can sit on your table. This Campfire die, for instance.
When I first saw it at their booth in a convention dealer’s room, I thought, “How the heck are you supposed to know what number you’ve rolled?” After all, when it’s sitting as shown in the photo on its Web page, all three visible sides are the identical: a campfire pointing upward. Then I saw the fourth side, with the 1, 2, and 3 in the corners, and muttered, “Oh, you clever SOBs, I wish I’d have thought of that for the Dragon Dice game!”
The trouble is, of course, that d4s are treated as the redheaded stepchildren of role-playing games. Gamers joke about them being caltrops, worse to step on barefoot than a Lego brick. Terrible to roll. The lowest number results of all polyhedrals.
But what if there were a role-playing game that featured d4s as the best dice, and d20s as the worst? Unsurprisingly, my “Challenge Accepted!” gene leapt forth.
The result is a set of rules in progress that I’m calling the d4ce™ rpg. Draft rules here. I like the pun, though it took me forever to come up with a reasonable meaning for that “ce.”
It’s not like I need another set of RPG rules to publish now in my retirement, what with the D13, D6xD6, and Bookmark HP RPGs. (Links in the sidebar.) But dang do I like rolling a handful of d4s, and so do my play-testers thus far. Give those draft rules a read and a try, and let me know what you think!