11mm Brass Dice

I got these 11mm tiny brass dice off Amazon, and I am very impressed with them. They are a touch smaller than a standard plastic 12mm die, but are far heavier, though not as heavy as a full 16mm metal die. They still have a good weight, and I would recommend a dice tower or large neoprene pad for rolling them on, but they are great little dice.

The only difference is that they are an oriental layout instead of an occidental layout. With the oriental layout, the two faces are over-under instead of corner-to-corner. The pips are slightly different from the picture, too, slightly larger but uniform in size on all sides. It took me a little while to get used to counting the 2 sides, but once I did, it was a faster read of the dice since the 2 is a very unique face. Studies have shown that they are easier to read quickly since the 2 and 3 sides are very different. In a traditional die, the difference between the three and the two is the placement of a single dot, whereas in oriental dice the pattern is entirely different.

If you think of it as "half of a 4," split right down the middle, it makes more sense.

I use them with one of these mini-dice towers, and they make a satisfying sound and roll very well through them. The one shown is a touch too deep to reach into, and that annoys me with larger hands, but I just use the tower part and the bottom as a backstop about 8 inches away. I have one of those large gaming mousepads on my table surface, so my play area is metal-die safe.

This smaller tower is small enough to travel with, so that is a plus.

Also, using a dice tower is another solo-play tool since it is harder to cheat rolls, tell myself that was a terrible shake of the dice and it wasn't really a roll, and want to reroll the dice. A dice tower roll is fair and final, means a lot more, and makes you put in slightly more effort in rolling, making trying to take back a terrible roll so much more difficult. Yes, I am probably putting micro dings into the wood of the tower, enough to give it character, but not damage it unless I put a hundred million rolls through the thing.

The sound of the roll in the wood is super satisfying, and that aural feedback makes solo play incredibly fun. This is positive feedback, and rolling dice with a tower seems like it is a slight waste of time, but trust me, it is much more fun to roll dice this way and get that ear-pleasing ka-chunk-ka-chunk sound with every roll that is like comfort food for my ears.

I like metal dice since they also have a finality to them. I am far less likely to reroll metal dice than I am plastic ones; I don't know what it is, perhaps the weight and impact of the roll feels greater, and I take it more seriously than a plastic die. If I am rolling a critical miss on 3d6, that feels like a final judgment with metal dice, and I am obliged to not cheat that roll and apply it as it lies. The fact that metal dice also damage surfaces makes me also not want to reroll them, and that special care in rolling them makes me more often play the dice as they lie.

To me, metal dice are the best solo play tools. I will not change a roll when no one else is looking. The roll is final.

So, size, metal, and dice tower aside, what is so cool about these dice? With a small dice tower, these feel like the most random dice I have ever used. I am getting a wide variety of rolls, whereas with some plastic dice I feel are really concentrated around the middle results, the distribution curve feels closer to reality. I am getting a good number of low and high rolls, whereas with some plastic dice I feel they tend to only roll high. I am rolling 17s, 4s, 6s, and 15s regularly, and the distribution of results feels very spread out.

I know most of my rolls are in that middle range due to the bell curve, but with some sets of dice I rarely roll the ending numbers on either side, whereas with these dice I see those results just enough to feel the dice are fair and all numbers are showing up. With some sets of plastic dice, I very rarely see low rolls like 4, 5, or 6. Some plastic dice feel "D&D weighted" for ability score generation, where I am constantly rolling high and wondering why these dice never work well for GURPS, where roll-low is the way we play.

But these dice will regularly roll low or high in equal amounts, and still stick mostly down the middle for the majority of dice rolls. They feel very fair, and with the tower, the rolls feel incredibly fair and random. Larger metal dice are harder to roll since they are inherently more dangerous and weighty, whereas the smaller metal dice feel just right to me. A 16mm solid metal die can ding a book, whereas these feel like they won't do too much damage if they bump into something.

These have larger pips (than what is shown), and they're painted in, too, so they are very readable.

These are my favorite GURPS dice for my Old West campaign. They feel authentic, and while not the classic "cowboy layout" of the occidental dice, the oriental style feels more Hong Kong cinema and action-authentic to me. They look like little side-by-side double-barrel shotgun choke holes, so they have a fun aesthetic to them for this style of cowboy games.

Highly recommended, not too expensive, very satisfying, not too heavy, and the feel of these is very nice. The side-by-side 2 faces are an interesting quirk, but not too hard to get used to. Also, the antique look of brass dice is very authentic for my Wild West game.