Games - The Dice Tower

Trigger Warning - This isn't really much about the dice tower.

For years, I've wanted to get back into gaming. Before the pandemic that started, slowly, to be realized. I even seriously considered finding a group online or local.

But, we've been home, my family that is, for more than a year-and-a-half.

In 2003, my wife and I escaped SARS by the skin of our teeth. Landing in Canada, we were exhausted.  And typically when I'm exhausted, I get a cold.  I missed a day or two of work, and my colleagues asked upon my return to the office if I'd caught SARS.  It was the first we had heard of it. Then we discovered how incredibly lucky we'd been, travelling straight through the heart of ground zero.

We weren't about to rely on luck this time. But, to a degree, we're lucky.  No doubt, by any definition, we're privileged. 

A lot of what I do I can do from home. Some opportunities we had to sacrifice.  That we could afford to sacrifice those opportunities and still strive ahead undaunted is also a privilege, but not one that was ever just handed to us. 

We worked hard for the positioning we've acquired, but most of the time we had the right to do so. No one should be denied that right. Other times, however, we had to fight for that right. Sometimes seize it and then be prepared to gainsay anyone who challenged us. Some things we were outright denied for no apparent reason other than someone with power decided we weren't who they wanted to have that opportunity.  We've absolutely seen others waltz into the vacant opportunity after us, the doors held open, and make themselves rich.  That's the way it goes.

We still get out of the house, although I'm pretty sick of seeing the same streets and paved-path parks. And being in a city of millions, even the outskirts, sometimes the sidewalks and park paths seem like ant hills.

Sure, we could do what plenty of others are doing. Going to malls, parties, restaurants, concerts, crowded beaches. The sports fields here about have absolutely been constantly filled with contact team sports, no masks, no distancing. But we're not wired like that. 

Instead, we pursued study, reading, business, and hobbies. Privilege. Positioning. Persistence. 

After watching several dice tower builds, I threw together this basic contraption using one of the dozens of shipping boxes piling up in the garage and basement. 

I'm not at liberty to discuss why the boxes were here. They were, it was legal, and it was not a year-and-a-half of unrelenting materialist acquisition. Knowing that the economics of our existence could change without either warning or mercy, we curtailed our already modest consumption. 

The tower is rough but solid. 6"x8"x15" with lots of room for handfuls of dice to cascade through its interior. Four internal ramps provide lots of tumbling for polyhedral random number generators. 

The top of the tower has a parapet to keep the dice from scattering off the edge before tumbling through the trap door. 

It's also quite loud. In another iteration, I'd put some felt on the ramps and probably foam insulating the walls. 

On the other hand, I'm reticent to cast this one away. It's a lot of material in terms of the box chopped up and the amount of hot glue used. So much hot glue. Probably should have used carpenter's glue but it was too dried out.

Instead of trashing it, I'd prefer to add a stone texture to the exterior, although that represents a new skill to obtain. Gesso and texture paste at the crafty level. Or maybe just a big tub of crack filler compound.

The last few years have been full of acquiring new skills. 

In university, I briefly thought I would add miniatures to my gaming table. I found a few bargains and sales but was never able to acquire more than a handful of fantasy minis, several Mekton mecha, and some Rifts minis before graduating and my IRL social/gaming/BBS/SF&F network disintegrated.

Even prior to this past year, I was regaining an interest in pursuing my one time main hobby. I've never stopped acquiring game books. In the early 2000s I picked up the three base D&D 3e rule books and didn't miss a month of the print runs of Dragon or Dungeon magazine before they expired.

Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding have regularly taken my money. Fat Dragon Games and Elven Papercraft produce PDFs containing structures, structural pieces, and props for creating dungeons, towns, caves, castles, and so many more game set pieces than I can name. 

Until this nearly unprecedented interruption in what was generally considered normalcy, I didn't have the time to pursue hobbies. Or at least I didn't think I did. Even now, I easily slip into the same pattern. Work. Study. Sleep. 

I was taken by surprise when I started building these kits. The cottages and basic dungeon walls don't take much effort, but the Winterhawk Tower and the zigzag cave walls were time-consuming. 

I've set some miniatures in my collection against the backdrop of a few of the pieces I've printed and glued together.

What I didn't expect from this was how much time paper craft props sometimes require. Especially when considering the construction of a whole dungeon or castle. 

Working with clay to do the bases actually seems a lot faster than any of the paper craft. 

It's worrisome that so much packing material is being used. On the other hand, I may have filled the minivan's gas tank six times during the first six months of the pandemic, versus not less than once a week when commuting.

I won't bother attempting to explain the construction of the dice tower. There are far better demonstrations on YouTube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion.

The success with the dice tower though, and a number of terrain builders videos, does somewhat inspire me to build more and larger. These four bugbears and their ogre are displayed on my first test of XPS foam for dungeon building.  That too is turning out to be incredibly time-consuming.

Not sure where this will go.  Probably the hardware store for more paint.