Pixels Dice are Bluetooth-enabled dice that can be used with virtual tabletops and toolsets. They are rechargeable and can be customized to light up when and how you want.

The Unboxing

I got a little excited when I saw the shipment notice from Pixels. I appreciated the note and bonus stickers.

Taking a Closer Look at the Pixels D20

The Pixels D20 has a folded up circuit board inside a resin shell that has icosahedron featured in role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. There are LEDs for each side, a battery, a charging coil, and a Bluetooth radio all stuffed inside.

When you roll the Pixels D20 and it settles to one side faced up, the dice transmits a Bluetooth message. If you have something listening to that message, that something can react to the message. Fortunately, the team created a mobile app that can interact with the dice. You pair Pixels just like you pair a set of headphones.

The app also lets you send “Profiles” that run on the Pixels dice. Out of the box, it came with “Rainbow” running. This was a cool effect that lights up a different color for every face.

You can also program your own profiles. Kind of like “when” and “then” logic. I created a profile for when the up face is 20, it then plays a rainbow effect over all faces, but only on a 20. I want that TPK to be glorious when it happens in my campaign.

Here’s me trying to roll a 20 to test out my new profile running on my Pixels D20.

Pixels Community

In order to pull off an ambitious project like Pixels, you have to have a strong community. This team started with the Kickstarter project and stayed in constant contact as the project unfolded. They hit some challenges, but the stayed transparent and authentic which helped keep all of us engaged. Now, the team is publishing code on GitHub with an open source license and engaging early adopters, gamers, and developers on their Discord server.

I am excited to be a part of this community and see where all of this goes. I am building some custom integrations with ThingSpeak and CheerLights, but you probably already guessed that.

Roll on!

In my latest board game design, I want to use dice as both a way to resolve combat and to enhance abilities on a player card. The random dice I have sitting around my desk were quite large and helped me get my idea across.

I wanted to fit more dice on the player card, so I started looking for smaller dice. This lead to a few hours of research one late night and I found some options on The Game Crafter. I bought 8mm dice in different colors… and some Arkham Horror-inspired dice… and a t-shirt.

I placed my order and it only took a few days to get my bounty. What I am concerned about is that I didn’t move the design forward at all while the order was in process. Yikes. I wasted a lot of time thinking about some new dice, visiting a bunch of sites, and finding a vendor. I wasn’t game designing. I might in fact enjoy collecting dice more than designing games. And, in some cases, I might enjoy collecting dice more than playing some of the games that I have.

The new dice arrived. 8mm is really small – probably too small for practical purposes. They don’t feel like “real” dice in terms of size and weight, but they are functional. I played around with them for a few hours, and eventually, I came back to my game design work that prompted my purchase.

So, how small are 8mm dice? I took some dice out of my component bins and found a few that represented different sizes. 16mm is considered the standard size. You are probably the most familiar with the 16mm size.

I can’t vouch for my board game design process. If I had better results, I would be advocating for everyone to take a break and look around for dice or some specialized component. Board game design is hard and it does require some discipline. You (I) probably have everything you (I) need to prototype a new game sitting around you (me). Hours are hard to come by in my schedule and I would have been better served to just move forward without the little dice. I am now trying to salvage this faux pas by sharing my experience with you. Maybe one day I will create a hit board game and then I can claim that my lack of disciple was the key to success.

How do you stay disciplined?