How dice can make you go mad.

  The new game from Comfy Chair Games “Dominion of the gods” uses three specially made dice for the main mechanic of the game. These are the attacked dice, the defense dice, and the power dice. It's a nice easy concept that allows people to understand the mechanics of the game within minutes. Math is kept to a minimum which allows the game to be faster and more streamlined. So how can these dice be driving me mad?

 There's really only one place in the world we you can get bulk dice made, and that is China. I've spoken to many American companies and for my needs each dice would cost around $1 to $1.50. The other problem with this is the only American company I found that would do them in any kind of bulk would be 300 pieces at a time. If you want to mass-produce a game, this is not a smart way to do it. With a game like Dominion of the gods, people want to fill their hands with dice and throw them around the board. Sending three dice in a box set and telling people they need to roll one of the dice eight separate times will very quickly earn you a lot of negativity on Internet forums. If you try to package these dice and sell them, a pack of 10 dice would be $10, at maybe $.50 for your packaging and then keeping in mind that distributors and stores don't want to pay the manufacturer more than 40% MSRP. This means to break even, these American-made dice would need to sell 10 for $21-$23.

Who the hell is going by that?

 That brings me to China. Today I've been spending most my day trying to contact and more accurately trying to get a response from some Chinese factories. The Chinese factories are able to produce thousands of dice a day for a price that is 8 to 10 times cheaper than the American dice. The problem is, there is a language barrier, and the lead time to getting anything made can be weeks before production on anything starts. This doesn't sound like much I know, but when you pile it on top of running a one-man company, wrangling the sculptors, balancing the money, try and remember who you're advertising within who you're not, and all the other little things you deal with, it kind of makes you wish this dice process was a little easier. Then again, if it was easy everybody would be doing it.

So anyway, I sent out a bunch of requests for quotes and now I need to sit and wait to see who gets back to me with what.

One thing that keeps going through my mind because of the ease of the dice system in dominion of the gods. I often wonder if I shouldn't do a retooling of Spinespur to work with the same dice system. The one complaint I've heard about Spinespur is the exact same thing I get praise on from the other side, and that's the complexity of some of the gameplay. Now if I did retool Spinespur for the dice system I used in dominion of the gods, I would most certainly keep the original gameplay version of Spinespur alive and keep producing new models with rules for both versions. I think it's only smart business wise, and it would keep everybody happy which is the bottom line. I wonder how people would react?