TardisCaptain's Blog of Holding

So 99% of the time, the online ads shown to me are worthless. I’ve grown accustom to placing them on a mental auto-ignore. But every once in a blue moon, an advertisement actually shows something that might interest me. One advertisement popped up for North to South Gaming, a family run business out of Texas, that was advertising free dice. Well, free for the product. They asked for help covering the cost of shipping which was reasonable. In return, they would be sending a random sample of two dice sets. A regular size and a mini-sized set both made with acrylic. They arrived in a package that looked like this.

This is the logo of North to South Gaming. The box itself was very well packed. The interior contents were protected and did not arrive with any damage. The glass tube the that the mini-dice came in had some bubble wrap around it as well. It also didn’t take very long to arrive. However with the holiday season quickly approaching, If you are thinking of ordering any, I’d recommend doing it sooner rather than later to avoid any delays.

This is a close up of the very nice glass tube with the North to South Designs logo. There is a cork that is used to keep the dice inside. The photo may not due the color justice to how the mini-dice look. The color of this set was an off-pink. Some of the numbers didn’t really stand out very well against the dull background. It may have been the light in my office, causing the numbers to blend in with the die. I don’t see myself using this set very often. However, in all fairness, I’m not a big fan of mini-dice. The last set of mini-dice that I picked up, I ended up losing a die or two fairly quickly. As I was handling this set, I was worried that I’d accidentally drop one and never find it again. Especially since I have two cats that like to knock the shinny clicky-clack sounding things around to the dark corners where they hide all of their “toys”.

The mystery dice arrived in a wrapped package covered with gaming sayings. My daughter liked reading the different phrases. She believes that they may have come from one of the online RPG group videos.

Inside was a plastic box (again with the logo) with a very nice set of blue-green sparkly gaming dice. I did not see any defects on this set. On the photo above, it looks like there is something just below the “18”, however that may have been from the plastic box. On the D20 itself, there is no mark. I was really impressed with this mystery set. I could see myself using this at an upcoming gaming convention that I plan to attend in early 2023. I am a little worried that the box itself may get crushed in my massive dice bag, so I may keep this set separate until the con.

Here are the two sets in a side-by-side comparison. This photo was taken in a different room than my office and without a flash. The photos that I had taken with the flash seemed to blur out the numbers on the smaller set. So again it might be a lighting issue there. When I compared the mini-dice with my surviving members of the last set, the older set had no problems with the numbers being read. I also compared the larger set with my Chessex set and my Dollar Tree set. The NTSD set was the same size and weight as my previously purchased sets. When I did my few test rolls, the randomness was present.

If you are looking to support a small business, I could highly recommend the mystery set. If you are good with mini-dice, you probably won’t go wrong with this company as well. There are several other sets of dice available from different materials and colors that looked interesting as well. Let me know if you picked up a set and what you thought.

I had mentioned in my FanX 2022 after-action report that I had picked up a few role-playing items. One of the items that I didn’t get a chance to pick up was any geeky magnets for my home and work office. I had found a few samples, but none of them spoke to me. After my attempt at the con, I elected to check online to see if I could find something that would meet my needs. I searched on Amazon with various names for dice magnets with no success. But in the search, something else popped up that caught my attention.

This is the container that arrived in the mail with the Lynx RPG Dice Dunce Chair. A stylized “dice jail” that players could use to “shame” their dice when they rolled badly. I broke the seal and opened up the package to discover the following.

You could barely see the top of the dunce chair and a large amount of foam padding. I pulled the padding out and inside I found this item inside.

This was the dunce cap that you could place on top of the die in the chair. It has the traditional red color with “dunce” written in white. With it wrapped inside the padding it was very well protected. The next item I pulled out of the container was…

The actual chair itself. The words “Time Out” were scratched into the back of the chair. It was very well detailed looking like it was made out of wood with a brown finish. In reality both the hat and the chair were made of a hard clay that was still light. The hat had a little bit of weight to it. The detail was also continued on the back of the chair with the following carvings.

A couple of carvings were found on the back. A cartoonish looking goblin and a heart with “B&S” contained inside. I was impressed with the back detail. Originally I was thinking that this wouldn’t contain anything. However thinking about it, you wouldn’t know what angle someone could see it at when it was placed on the gaming table.

Now the point of the Lynx RPG Dice Dunce Chair is to place a die that has performed badly during a gaming session. So I first tested it with the Jason Fox Lucky D20 (not that it would end up in a dice jail like this) and this is how it looked.

Next I found a D10 from the set of dice that I had picked up from the Dollar Tree. While the hat sat a little lower, it still covered the die in the chair.

While I was gaming in the 1990’s, I had picked up a 30 sided die not knowing if I would ever use it on a regular basis. Since I still had it and since it was the largest usable die I had, I placed it in the chair to see how it looked. It still fit both the chair and the dunce cap.

The last die I tested was one of the original D4’s that I owned from my gaming time in the 80’s. I believe this came with one of the Dungeons and Dragons boxed sets. The dunce cap sat a little lower, but still covered the die in it’s shame function.

The only concern I had while using this die jail was the dunce cap would not sit on top of the die without needing to rest on the back of the chair. But once it was in place, it didn’t teeter or try to fall off. So this may have been by design. Which would make sense because you didn’t know what type of die would be placed in the Lynx RPG Dunce Chair. I can see this prop gaining a few laughs when I pull it out after a frustrating result. It would certainly keep me from wanting to smash the die with a hammer, so that would save me a few bucks in trying to replace my dice.

I’d still like to find some geeky RPG magnets for my offices. The search continues.