I play in a bi-weekly Burning Wheel game with a pair of friends. One of them has a set of dice he's cobbled together with little glued-on pieces of paper. Having played over fifty sessions in this ongoing campaign, they were starting to show some wear. Though he could've repaired them easily enough, I thought it'd be more interesting to get a proper set of custom dice made up instead. It'd be a unique momento for us and our long-running roleplaying adventures!

I won't go over the details on how rolling dice works in Burning Wheel other than to say it uses a success-based pool of six-sided dice. I did some investigating and, based on some much appreciated advice, I got in contact with Chessex. They sell all manner of dice, and in particular, they also take orders for custom creations. I reached out to my role-playing friends and a small group of us agreed to split the cost.

Though we experimented with a couple alternate designs, we settled one that I adapted from Alex Schröder's idea; it incorporates the game's logo, which we very much liked, but I simplified it to make it easier to scan over a set.

The people at Chessex were polite and accommodating throughout the process. They were extremely flexible with the provided design format, giving me feedback on file types and dimensions if needed. They gave me wiggle room to negotiate price based on the amount being ordered and the fact one side was blank. There was two dozen different colours to choose from. They even created a sample die and emailed me photos from multiple angles to review and approve. Only when my friends and I were completely satisfied with the sample did I have to provide payment.

The whole process, from me reaching out to Chessex to the package of dice arriving in my mailbox was approximately a month. I think that's an excellent turn-around when you include the back-and-forth messages between myself, my friends, and Chessex (the debates as to which colours we want took a week alone :P).

Here, at last, are the final results…

They are all fantastic, but the best of the bunch have to be the ivory white dice. The designs look slightly sharper in black than they do in gold, making it easier to tell the difference between the filled-in-wheel icon and the outlined-wheel icon. Were we to do another run, I'd adjust the outlined-wheel icon to compensate, to make it stand out more.

Overall, I am ecstatic about the new dice, and I'm looking forward trying them out at this weekend's Burning Wheel game! :D