I am really intrigued by the dice with customizable faces that is used in Rattle bones (similar to Lego Dice). Does anyone know if this is a patented idea, or would it be something that could be incorporated into a game design?
Dice with Removable Faces
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 00:17
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 01:05
#1
Wow. Rattlebones has a really
Wow. Rattlebones has a really nice implementation of the idea. Those dice look nice. LEGO certainly did patent their dice (US 20110042891 A1), so I would just write to Rio Grande Games or Stephen Glenn and ask them if they licensed the idea and the patent status. Please post here if you do, as I'm curious to know.
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 09:47
#3
http://www.zapdice.com/
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 11:47
#4
OMG - that's AWESOME
Really like those Zap Dice. It's cool if you have like bonus abilities that get applied to a dice, like +1 for a face, etc... Just switch out the values. Really like this!
I may incorporate this into one of my designs!
Update: Unfortunately they are NOT made to order! :( I thought that he might be able to produce any CUSTOM dice and face connectors... But I don't believe that is the case. Too bad!
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 11:03
#5
Wow!
Wow! I had a game idea with a bunch of customized dice, with variety to be a weak simulation of that sort of thing. I imagined it could be cool to change out their sides instead of swapping out entire dice, maybe in a computer game version of it, because that sort of thing could never happen in real life. But those dice actually do it! My game idea suddenly feels so old fashioned. haha.
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 11:48
#7
dios_et_dios wrote:I saw
I saw these, but it doesn't really help with knowing if they are patented or not. I also have no idea who would manufacture these sorts of dice, or if it would be possible to modify them.
Yeah he has patents - if you read more about the Designer. And there is an e-mail - just e-mail the Designer and ask questions???
If he could do custom dice - that would really be cool (but probably pricey)!
Tue, 01/13/2015 - 02:27
#8
The custom dice seems
The custom dice seems interesting, but appears way too gimmicky to be a viable game mechanic. It would be a lot easier to have a mat with dice pips and underneath them a space to place a custom tile to represent that number.
It's like the 90's when comic books went all gimmicky. It was cool to have something like a hologram cover, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't add anything to the story. Plus it added to the total cost and there were like 232423 iterations of it, so it became expensive.
It seems to work for Rattlebones, but I can see all kinds of, "Oops, the dice face flew off somewhere...crud, gotta look for it now" and "Where the hell is that plastic crowbar...I'll just use a knife".
For the Rattlebones dice, you have to use a tool to remove the face. I like that with the Lego style the faces come off easier. I can't imagine that Lego didn't patent everything about the dice though.