Apparently this (link to site)is a thing. 20 sided dice with braille on them. They are quite a bit larger than normal dice.

Image of the 20 sider with the braille.

I was gonna post this for her as well... Now just need big braille star wars dice...

I was gonna post this for her as well... Now just need big braille star wars dice...

HA! I just read this and was going to post it here, as well.

I was gonna post this for her as well... Now just need big braille star wars dice...

We can design those for her, and then put them up for purchase at Shapeways.

Surely there’s one or two guys among us who can do 3-D modeling and has the right software?

We can design those for her, and then put them up for purchase at Shapeways.

Surely there’s one or two guys among us who can do 3-D modeling and has the right software?

Man, I smell a kickstarter!

Who needs Kickstarter?

Shapeways and Thingiverse are already well-established, and all it takes is uploading the 3D model.

I'm just a primitive caveman. Your strange, modern concepts like "shapeways" frightens and confuses me!

from what I can tell likely all we would need to do is supersize the current dice...which i think would need FFG approval...Which I don't see as hard to get since it is being done to make the game more accessible to blind people....And who wants to be the guy saying no to blind people. I imagine if we did the work and testing via Pretty Haley then sent it to FFG saying Hey we did this to help blind people play your game can you sell these....Oh and of course include lightside darkside tokens that are textured in such a way as to help with knowing the current destiny pool.

Even though it's for a good cause I can see FFG saying no. Not because they are bad people or anything but most likely due to all the legal paperwork involved. Such a thing may need approval from Disney or may violate terms of their current contract.

I would check with them first before engaging in such a project. Lest you run a foul the Mouse's legion of lawyers.

If it’s done as a fan project and the files are uploaded to Thingiverse with a CC-NC-BY-SA license, then people can download them and print them locally at their own cost, and I don’t think anyone would have major problems with that. IMO, so long as no one is making a profit from them, the lawyers are unlikely to get major heartburn.

If we made it clear that the designs could also be made available to FFG for commercial use under a different license, but we started with CC-NC-BY-SA, I think that would make the lawyers sufficiently happy.

If you decide to wait on doing anything by asking first, at best you’re likely to simply never get an answer. At worst, they’ll tell you “No”, but wait five to seven years to do it. Either way, the result is that it never happens.

If you go ahead and just do it and make sure that everything is licensed only for non-commercial purposes, it’s easier to demonstrate how much of a market there is for them, as well as to get forgiveness if the lawyers ever do have to get involved.

On the other hand, Shapeways already has a whole boatload of stuff uploaded that should cause major copyright and trademark heartburn for a whole bunch of lawyers, especially including Disney.

You could continue to ride those coat tails and see where that gets you.

I honestly doubt it would take FFG long to give a response. Also asking forgiveness from Disney could be costly.

My point though was to inform people that there could be legal issues involved that aren't present with the other dice for this project. Do as you wish, just do so knowing that there may be legal ramifications.

Well if you approach the right people you could likely get an answer. For example Sam Stewart...All it would take is doing a work up of them. Then send them to someone like GM Chris or something With that license. Saying something along the lines of we don't want to step on any toes but we know blind people that this product would really help. If you want to take it over that is fine. Or we just provide the files for people to print them

I don't understand why it has to be so large... surely you can read braille that's smaller than that?

I don't understand why it has to be so large... surely you can read braille that's smaller than that?

When I have asked Haley about it they need things bigger to easily read them. Also you would want bigger so that when the blind person is trying to read the die it will be easy to make it hold still. too small and the act of tying to read it would knock it over ruining the result.

Even though it's for a good cause I can see FFG saying no. Not because they are bad people or anything but most likely due to all the legal paperwork involved. Such a thing may need approval from Disney or may violate terms of their current contract.

If we were using the actual FFG symbols, then yes - Disney/FFG/Lucasfilm/whatever would have a leg to stand on. However, if we just used the 8, 10 and 20 sided die - an industry standard shape - and wrote "Despair" or "Triumph" or "Advantage" in braille, in the correct positions as the FFG dice, then we should be fine.

It's a bit like the Urban Legend how TSR tried to copyright the word Nazi for the Indy game they did back in 84. No, they copyrighted the artwork on the cardboard stand-up for the game. If you did your own artwork and called it Nazi, the lawyers couldn't move against you.

If we were using the actual FFG symbols, then yes - Disney/FFG/Lucasfilm/whatever would have a leg to stand on. However, if we just used the 8, 10 and 20 sided die - an industry standard shape - and wrote "Despair" or "Triumph" or "Advantage" in braille, in the correct positions as the FFG dice, then we should be fine.

You could probably just get away with S (success), A (advantage), F (failure), D (despair), B (Blank). Multiple symbols would have a dash in-between, like S-A, S-S, and so on. Only issue is Threat and Triumph, probably have to be TH (Threat), TR (Triumph). And then if the dice were big enough and the braille doesn't need too much space, it could be like the picture in the first post where instead of numbers, it's got just the abbreviated letters, and if somebody wanted, they could just slap on the stickers from the EotE Beta (or make copies onto sticker sheets) to make it easier for the players who don't know braille to interpret the results as well.

Part of why the dice would potentially have to be larger is a 3D printer has a minimum detail size it can output. I think when I looked at Shapeways most of their materials had a minimum detail of .7mm but I am working from memory, don't hold me to that. The other issue is the dice would have to be built with holes in them to keep the cost down, as solid stuff can get expensive very quickly.

A second concern (though pretty easy to handle) would be a way to differentiate the "good" dice from the "bad" dice, i.e. Yellow/red, green/purple, etc. The first thing that comes to my mind would be to model the good dice with kinda rounded corners, and the bad ones with more of a point?

Also, as no one has stepped up and said, "hey, I can do 3d models like this," I'd probably need to do some research into what braille letters look like and any standards for size of the bumps, but if someone wanted braille dice, I would be happy to whip up a .blend or a .obj file and make it at least privately available to someone who needed braille dice.

Fundamentally the only two other concerns I'd have with the design would be "Do you want normal embossed letters on it, too like that d20 does?" and making sure the mass of the individual faces were within arms reach. I'd hate to accidentally make loaded dice.

I don't understand why it has to be so large... surely you can read braille that's smaller than that?

Apparently, it is the size that counts.

I don't understand why it has to be so large... surely you can read braille that's smaller than that?

When I have asked Haley about it they need things bigger to easily read them. Also you would want bigger so that when the blind person is trying to read the die it will be easy to make it hold still. too small and the act of tying to read it would knock it over ruining the result.

Sure, but if they remove the non-braille numbers and instead just paint those on, they could make it alot smaller.

I absolutely love this community. You guys are top-notch.

I don't understand why it has to be so large... surely you can read braille that's smaller than that?

When I have asked Haley about it they need things bigger to easily read them. Also you would want bigger so that when the blind person is trying to read the die it will be easy to make it hold still. too small and the act of tying to read it would knock it over ruining the result.

Sure, but if they remove the non-braille numbers and instead just paint those on, they could make it alot smaller.

They could make it even smaller if they just paint on the braille numbers, too.

Mouthy, you are just awesome mate.

Thanks

Lorne,you can't paint braille, the points need to be tridimensional so they can be touched and felt by the fingers. Braile exploits touch to instead of sight to be read.

That's also why, i think, it needs the dice to be bigger, so they can be read easily.

Oh and yes, Mouthymerc you're awesome, this is a great idea

Lorne,you can't paint braille, the points need to be tridimensional so they can be touched and felt by the fingers. Braile exploits touch to instead of sight to be read.

That's also why, i think, it needs the dice to be bigger, so they can be read easily.