I've recently taken my woodworking and design skills into the 21st century and started creating designs for 3d printing. Being a longtime Shadowrun fan, I was thinking about making myself some custom d6 that are easy to read and specifically geared toward Shadowrun.

I'm leaning toward a modern design with lightly beveled edges, special faces for 5 and 6 to indicate hits, and a facing for a one to indicate a possible glitch.

I was leaning for the 5th edition logo on the 5/6 facing, but I didn't want to trounce on any copyrights. Since I will be publishing on the internet for printing, I figured I'd ask the community what they would like to see on a die for their game.

There've been deals with dice and merchandise from 3rd party providers in earlier times. It wouldn't hurt to ask, if you want to use corporate or the SR logos, but you'd likely be looking at an interest payment.

Good question. I got the official SR-dice where 5 and 6 are replaced by the old "symbol", but i wasn´t really satisfied with the grade of difference these symbols showed compared to the numbers. This was

a) because the dice were transparent and the colour into the carving was quite dark
b) they added too much symbol on the sides. (stupid way to explain, sorry, no native speaker).

I would try to give the 5 and 6 a specific colour, so that you can see on the first look, that they are different. If you put symbols on them, make em bigger than the numbers. And try to get a good contrast between material/color of the die itself and the printing/carving.

I hope this helps.

Horrido from germany.

How about labeling the "interesting" sides numerically and the rest with pips? That way you would have a clear highlighting without making parts of the die harder to read.

You'd sell them if you don't want copyrights problems, no?

I'd be interested btw.

Chessex would be happy to make a bunch of dice with two success sides, one failure side, and three blank sides. They might charge a bit unless you buy bulk, but they'll do it.

I worked up a few rough designs, I am open to constructive criticism.

Image 1

Image 2

Wouldn't you want to differentiate the 6, though? There's a way to use Edge where the 6s get rerolled.

You, sir, are correct. Working on a solution.

Maybe some 6's right in the middle of the goat head for a 6?
Three would probably be the right number

Numbers included on the "hit" faces. How about this and this?

I like it.

These ones?

I love my "Japanese" dice. Kind of old school Shadowrun style. Maybe an inspiration?

If I might suggest, instead of logos... Here's how I would do it:

Use high-gloss black for your base dice material.

Use bright, stand-out digits on all six facets.
The 1 should be bright red, because 1s rolled can have negative effect depending on version and optional rules.
2 and 3 should be a light, legible gray.
4 should be a bright white, because depending on the version/optional rules, 4s can be successes as well.
5 should be green.
6 should be green with a gold border, or just solid gold if the border is too much trouble, or just green if the gold is too fancy-pants.

Each numeral should be absolutely unmistakable, so as to know which side is down. This means using a "1" with the foot and header.

Each numeral should have a circle inscribed around it, with an arrow pointing off from the circle, to indicate scatter. That is: 6 would have the circle above and to the left, 1 would be directly above, 2 would be above and to the right, 3 would be below and to the right, 4 would be below, and 5 would be below and to the left.

If these dice are for sr4/5 then the numbers are superfluous... have one hit be black the other red.. and one face say glitch. The other 3 faces blank...
btw, i like the goat head better than the SR

Numbers are not superflous, for the simple reason that the dice may well wind up pressed into service for other uses.

Really like this...particularly the "goat head" versions.

I'll be working on alternate versions of the dice based on many of the suggestions. Right now I'm in concept phase, but if I build my 3d model wisely, I'll be able to create most of these concepts. The only one I worry about is the suggested die with the color-coded faces; that one might rank in as a bit costly considering that I would have to have it printed on artificial sandstone. Aside from being impractical as far as durability is concerned, it would be about 11 dollars a die. I was hoping to keep the cost on these down by having them printable in hard or polished plastics and, if there is someone with a real dice fetish, steel or bronze.

SR4 has a few cases where twos also count towards glitches (rushing Extended Tests, for example), in 5th your have the new-old initiative, and of course there is the question of general utility. At lest speaking for myself, Shadowrun needs too many dice to make dice which only work for that one game a good investment

Chiming in to agree on the goat heads.

Well, you could just ditch the color-coding entirely. The only things I'm really keen on are that all faces of the die are readable, and the scatter rings.

Thought I'd drop a status update.

The original die has been aggressively redesigned for aesthetics, readability, and compatibility with a 3d printer. I should have the actual model ready and uploaded by the end of the week.

I'm going to start plunking away at a die with pips and scatter arrows instead of the graphic faces, as per input.

That looks real nice.

If you can get the pips different colors (the glitch face red, the 6 in green?, the rest white) that would be even more awesomes.

Eh... I think numbers would be better than pips, personally, but it's your dice.

Nah, I can do numbers quite easily. Besides, you're the one who wanted the scatter die, so I am happy to oblige.

Jup. PITA.

Whew,
After some hardcore geometry revision, I present you the first run of my custom SR-Themed dice in plastics and also cost-optimized for metals.

If you decide to have some printed, throw me a bone and send me some pics of the product once it arrives.

Starting the scatter/number dice design process now.

Really nice! Mind if I cross post over on the SR forums as well?

Feel free, sir.

I started mocking up designs for the hyrbrid numerical/scatter and I, maybe I am just being stupid, began to wonder: how can I make an accurate scatter die with only 6 faces. You know, with their being 8 standard directions, and 12 suggested directions for SR scatter rules.

Will do, thanks!

Shadowrun 4 uses six-sided scatter. It doesn't scatter perfectly perpendicular.
In the direction of the throw, 1 scatters directly ahead (overthrow), 2 scatters ahead and to the right, 3 scatters behind (the intended target) and to the right, 4 scatters directly behind (underthrow,) 5 scatters behind and to the left, and 6 scatters ahead and to the left.


By the way, would you be interested/willing in designing some d10s for something else? Someone on an Exalted IRC I lurk on was bemoaning the lack of purpose-made Exalted dice, so I suggested you might be able and willing to do a little commission work.

i am deepy dissappointed by you lot. . .
there is one answer that must be given to the question how one would have shadowrun dice:
"by the bucket!"

Really nice. I still think they'd be better off without the 2, 3 and 4. If you really need a 6 sided dice for something else you usually have no shortage of them.

Is that $5 each?