Hi all,

I've been thinking that it might be useful to have some dice made (Q workshop does this commercially) to keep track of the various NPCs we have on the board, as well as doubling as monster combat dice. I've been drawing some designs for the 6 sides, as follows:

1- Death. Move Death (I like Elliot's suggestion about moving the Reaper every time a 1 is rolled - I think I might expand that to ALL the NPCs, as they don't get much play otherwise....that is, each time you roll for movement, you roll the NPC die too, and move the required figure). Then, like the Toad King, if they are also activated by another mechanic, they can move then as well. More fun for everyone!

2- Toad. Move the Toad King, or (if you're rolling on the Enchantress, etc.) become toadified.

3-4 : Dragon Scales. We found with the Dragon expansion that drawing a scale every time you moved made the board too crowded too fast, and the number of scales a character could rack up was silly. So we've been playing that on a 1 or 6, you draw a scale. If you're not playing with the Dragon, obviously, these wouldn't be used.

5- Werewolf. Move the werewolf, if you're using that expansion.

6- Ice Queen. Move her if you use her. If not, you've got some nice graphics on the dice for combat.

The problem is that I'd only need 5 or 6 dice, and the cost to produce them on that scale is high. They have to make prototypes by hand, apparently, and that would cost around 32 bucks a die. However, once it's made, they can pump them out more cheaply. For 100 dice, you can get them at under $3 a die. Obviously I don't need 100 dice, and don't want to pay $300 for that many. I remember that when L.Brogger produced minis for the Toad King, people had a way of ordering them through him, so I wanted to put out a tentative feeler email to see if anyone is interested in such dice. If I can get enough interest, I'll place an order and we can all get them fairly cheaply.

I don't know yet how that will work logistically - maybe Q Workshop can take payment from multiple people or something, or in a pinch, I could try to manage the finances if anyone has any ideas on how that would work without me having to take on financial risk, or others ending up having to send me money personally. There must be a way, if people are interested in this at all.

If you think you might like some NPC dice, let me know, and I'll try to get a sense of the level of interest. I'm working on the graphic aspect as we speak, and if people want to see my ideas for designs, I'll try to finish them and post them here.

Cheers!

Josh

I think you've become too obsessed with commercializing your components. All you need do is create the graphics and print them on an adhesive sheet with crop marks to cut out and apply to a standard 5/8" die. I even know of people who print them on photo paper or stock, apply them with glue, and then recoat the die with shellack or clear nailpolish.

This is something we do in our group for many games, such as exp. boosts to attributes in Runebound or wounds taken by a character or enemy in any game. With the proper graphics, anyone can create the needed dice at home with a standard printer and some cheap dice. D6s can be bought almost anywhere within 5 miles of ones home in suburban to urban areas. I pick mine up at local drugstores or a Walmart.

If you did it this way, it would cost nothing, and in the future, if more NPCs were added, you could modifiy the dice to a new "version." It would also allow customization by the individual group for the particular NPCs they use or ignore. Don't assume every group is going to use every NPC that comes out.

To make things nice and easy with moving NPC's, try one of the following:

1) If a player rolls a '1', he may choose to move any one NPC or even choose to move all NPC's.

2) Every time a player draws one of the following cards, he moves the relevant NPC at the end of his turn:

Core = Black Knight, Reaper = Grim Reaper, Frostmarch = Ice Queen, Sacred Pool = Toad King, or Blood Moon = Werewolf. I will be releasing the Black Knight shortly!

Regards,

Ell.

A lot of nice ideas of dices and how to move the "special characters".
We will try a new black dice, not much unlike some ideas here, next game.

Pictures and info in my talisman thread. (Reply #15)
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=130&efcid=1&efidt=633005

Huh. I didn't think about stickers - but that's a good idea. Certainly cheaper. Draii, I love your black die - can you tell me how you made it?

The black dice is just a ordinary "blank" dice, painted black and with white symbols painted on the black.
I will use varnish on it when I'm happy with the result, so the color will stay.

I too, like the stickers idea. Might use that for better symbols on my dices. Thanks =)

In one of my pictures above you will see a black die. The stickers were made with black background and applied to a white die with non-indented black pips (the most common). If the D6 you buy at a drug store have indented pipe, just find some play-doe or something to fill them in and let it dry. A black permanent market (sharpie) was used to color in the die's edges and the white edges of the stickers. All total, about 5 minutes tops (not counting printing and cropping) and the die was read for play.

One additional note is to go get the graphic printed at a copy shop. Most don't mind if you bring your adhesive sheet for them to print on. Laser printed color is better than inkjet if you're going to coat your dice... Trust me, I made a real mess of some nicely done dice to learn that (duh!)

@JCHendee:

Thanks for your advice, JC. I've now created 6 images for the faces of the dice (I bumbled about using Photoshop, which I don't really know how to use, and I'm reasonably happy with the results). I scaled them down to 0,625 of an inch, but I don't know how to put them on one sheet with crop markings like you have done. Can you tell me how you did that, please? I'm flummoxed.

BTW, the Staples near me won't let me use my own sticky labels. Something about liability. They will, however, let you print on their own sticky sheets. Fine by me so long as the quality is good.

Cheers! And thanks again.

For crop marks, start a new layout and use the vector "Line Tool"… but first.

Once you have your dice faces laid out in a column in the original or a new layout file, use the default "Move Tool" to put guides around the entire layout and between all dice faces. If you look at my layouts and draw a line in your mind between crop marks on opposing sides, you will see where those guides need to go in your own layout.

Now for the "outer" guides. This time it depends on whether you designed in a "bleed zone" in your die faces. Right-Click and Save or View one of my graphics you will see I put a tiny bleed zone in mine. The position of the crops show this.

In your own master file with the die faces arranged, drag into place some "guide" lines around the whole layout and between the six faces. The guides should be spaced at the size you want the stickers to be, created a column or row of squares, each being 5/8" square. Again, see one of my images above, saved or viewed to see at full resolution. Those files internally at web 72dpi, but they were created for 300ppi output.

See you HELP menu in PS if you don't know how to drag and position guides.

Create a new layer on top of all the others and make sure you have set your drawing (top) color to Black or White, whatever is the best contrast for you background color. Use the vector tool set to "Line Tool." Once selected, you will see the tools settings panel appear at the top of the PS work area. You can set the width of the line. The best width of line is 1% of the ppi resolution of you graphics. I typically work in 300ppi minimum for printable graphics, so I set my line tool of a minimum of 3 pixels.

Now zoom in on one intersection of your guides and draw short line from the intersection outward about 1/8 to 1/1 inch. Start your corp lines at those outer guide lines so there is a gap between lines end and the actual graphic that will be cut out for a sticker. You don't want the end of a crop line to stay on the sticked if a cut wanders a bit of the mark in creating the final sticker.

Repeat as needed for all crop marks. For six die faces, there will be 7 crops on the long side of your layout and 2 on the ends.

Save your master file.

Now, the next step depends on how many dice you will want. If one, then simple "Save As" to PDF format and you are ready to take the file to the print shop. Likely you will want more than one die. You will need to export this layout to a JPG file, start a new PS file (call it "Print Layout" if you like), and when open that exported JPG in PS as well. Copy the JPG and paste it multiple times into the new PS print layout file you started. Arrange as many copies of the JPG in the new PS file as needed. Then save that to PDF and it's off to the printer!

I hope this helps a litle as I'm writing on fly in a busy morning.

ADDENDUM: If all of this is too confusing, I may be able to carve out some time to help you setup a print layout file arranged appropriately. You will then be able to open it and see what I did. If that's a better solution, contact me via the link in my sig… not the private messaging system on the forum. You should also let me know what version of PS your are using, though I don't remember all versions down through the decades. I'm currently using PS CS5.1 and soon will be switching to PS CS6; I can still open and save a file for almost any edition of PS or PS Elements.

Wow! Thanks for the very detailed advice! I will definitely try to resize and cropmark the images I made. I am so far from being Photoshop literate that it took me forever just to figure out simple things like how to change colours, and how to make an image the right size on the page. Seriously, I am completely out to lunch here. That said, I got Staples to print out a page of stickers that I think looks OK, though once I follow your advice and get the size just right, it'll be even better. Here's a picture of the WIP, next to some blank dice I bought.

Thanks again for everything!

…..sorry, scale is off. Save it to see the whole picture. Ugh. What did I say about computer literacy?

Ah, don't worry about it. You're not fumbling any more than I did when I first started dropping by here a long time ago.

ADDENDUM: The pictures for the dice look awesome, but I'd worry about readability during play. Maybe it's just because my Barb has poor eyesight and strains even with reading glass looking at small stuff. Maybe it's not such a problem for other people.

Hey Z., do you have a shot of the finished dice yet?

I was also wondering, since this die is linked to just triggering an NPC, what about leaving off the numbers? I'm not sure they are really needed, and that way you could increase the size a little for the NPC portraits on the faces.

Just got back from a conference….the dice are done and they look pretty good….I left the numbers on the dice so they could be all-purpose dice used for NPC movement, as well as monster combat dice. I took your advice and used clear nail polish to varnish them. I'm happy with the results. I wondered if the images might be a bit small, but after asking my better half, my fears were laid to rest. Here's a quick pic: focus isn't perfect. That's my thumb for scale. They're normal 5/8" dice.

whoops…here's the pic

Very nice! So do you think it is time to send you NPC dice graphics into the wild? Perhaps for download at TI.com and BGG.com. It's well setup, and even for those who don't have all the NPCs, if one absent is rolled, then nothing gets moved. It should work pretty good no matter the count of NPCs in any one game.

Yeah, that's my theory too: even if we end up not playing with all NPCs every game, no problem…just ignore the graphic and carry on. I'll gladly put them out there, if people think they might be useful to them….bgg I'm familiar with, but what is ti.com? Google just gives me a semiconductor maker.

www.talismanisland.com

Ell.

Oh, of course. Duh.

Sorry, Z. I shouldn't be throwing in abbreviations for URLs.

No worries. FYI, the graphics for the dice are up on Talismanisland, under 'expansions'. Feel free to modify, tweak, or otherwise fiddle with them to suit your tastes.

We played a game, using my custom black dice tonight. It brough very good balance to the game.

6 sides (Reaper, Ice Queen, Toad King, Dragon scale, Events, Werewolf)

The dice was rolled at the end of each players turn (who wasn't in the inner region, or had to skip the turn)

The reaper, ice queen and toad king saw a lot of action (no need to keep track of "1" snowflakes or spells).
The dragon scales where not very common in the first half of the game, and more adventure cards where played, and we had a lot of events happening.
In all I'm very happy about it. I really like to use all expansions at the same time, but the dragon scales made it a bit to messy, but when randomly getting new scales and dragon kings with the black dice, it works very good.

Draii said:

Hey Draii,

It's not a bad idea that you use a die roll to decide which NPC character will move on the board.

When i saw that you also use the Ice Queen, i feel that i was really missing that NPC character in my games.

So i have decide to buy a cool painted Ice queen today:)

I was also thinking to change the rules a bit, so she will encounter characters at the end of their turn if they roll a 6 for their movement.

Then we don't have to look at those snow flakes haha:)

I am also thinking to change the winter gift a bit:)

Greetings,

Velhart.

@ Draii,

I was just wondering, but can your ice queen encounter a character immediately when you roll the Ice queen mark on the die.

So she can also encounter characters in the Highlands or dungeon?

Greetings,

Velhart

Hey Z, have you posted a topic for the dice over at BGG? Have you uploaded the dice graphics there? The main Talisman page has been long closed to file uploads, courtesy of Games Workshop, but some of the expansion pages are still open to such. Not sure which one would be most appropriate, but I think you've got something here for those who really like the NPCs. The dice might appeal to some groups / individuals who don't hang out here or maybe haven't found Talisman Island.

ADDENDUM: A little notion concerning the numbers on your die came to mind as an additional "option" for play in increasing NPC movement. Might be useful to some when playing with fewer than all six indicated NPCs / Events. What if when the movement die matches the number rolled on the NPC die, the current player has to roll the NPC die a second time?

If the result is the same as the previously activated NPC (if any) then noting happens; no double moves for the same NPC and no double Events.

If a different result is rolled the second time, then that result is interpreted for a possible second NPC activation. Probably not something to be done when ALL of the NPCs are in play… (or maybe yes)… but might be a helpful optional rule for when playing with only a couple of NPCs or one. The subrule for duplicate roll the second time keeps that same NPC / Event from activating twice, but now there's an average 16.7% chance that a second NPC "might" activate as well.

The only complication would be for those few characters that get to roll two dice and use both. But then maybe the chance of a second activation is applied if either movement die matches the NPC die. In the case of a roll two / choose one scenario, the movement die used would be the one for any match check.

Just a thought.