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Comments on How do I search for d6 dice with a blank 6th face?

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How do I search for d6 dice with a blank 6th face? Question

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I haven't found what I'm looking for online, so I'm wondering if there is a specialist term for this type of dice that would give me better luck.

What I'm seeking

I'm looking for dice that are identical to standard d6 dice (pips representing the numbers) except with only the faces 1 to 5 having pips. The 6th face is blank.

Proof of existence

I know these exist, because they are the input resource for companies that print a customised 6th face. However, I haven't been able to find a source for the raw dice without any customisation (which presumably will be considerably cheaper).

Terminology

Is there a name for this kind of dice, or a search term that will work better? So far I have tried terms such as "d6 blank 6th face", "zero-indexed d6", or "customisable d6". The nearest results have been either completely blank (no pips on any of the faces) or pips on 5 faces but uninked, so the pips are barely visible. Since I'm aiming to prototype with several hundred d6 dice, I'd like to avoid having to ink them myself if possible.

Purpose

I'm working on a board game where each piece is a dice, and the number on the top face indicates which player controls that dice. A dice with 3 pips on top is controlled by player 3. All dice start out neutral, which in a 5 player game can be represented by showing 6 pips on top. The game would start with all dice showing 6, and then they would change to other numbers during the game, as players convert them.

It would be much easier to see where the neutral dice are if they showed blank faces instead of 6 pips. I'm open to other suggestions of how to make the neutral dice stand out, but all I can think of is printing a custom image, which is a more expensive option than simply having a blank face.

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3 comment threads

Alternative solution for my particular game (1 comment)
If it is just for your personal use, bundle all the dice together with the 6 up and spray paint this ... (3 comments)
Why do you need this? (2 comments)
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I don't know about the terminology, but a lot of Warhammer (Games Workshop) dice have a special design on the 6th face. This is not the same as a blank, but it could serve your goal of emphasizing the 6s (Warhammer also likes to emphasize the 6, which is why the dice are made this way).

For example:

But, GW being the greedy company it is, these are around 1-2 USD per die. Meanwhile, it seems like you can order a large lot of custom dice (and just give them a blank image for the 6 face) for less than 1 USD/die (vs. 5-6 USD/die for small orders): https://baronofdice.com/products/custom-dice So if you are planning to order "hundreds", and it's for your own original game, the custom dice are probably more cost effective than Warhammer dice.


PS1: I don't know anything about the merchants in this post, I just found them on Google as examples.

PS2: This seems like an XY problem to me - what you really want is not terminology but to get a large number of semi-custom dice on the cheap. The obvious missing piece is how much you would be willing to pay, at most. Also, how many you want, but since you say "hundreds" I suppose we can assume 200 would satisfy you.

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2 comment threads

Numbers and costs (4 comments)
XY problem (1 comment)
Numbers and costs
trichoplax‭ wrote 6 months ago · edited 6 months ago

Thanks for the info. Yes using a blank image for custom dice is going to cost more than I want to spend (around USD\$0.90 each). Your 200 was a good guess - I have a board size that uses 199 dice. However, I'd also like to playtest with larger board sizes, and also have the potential for more than 1 playtesting game running in parallel to speed things up, so I'd like at least 400 ideally. That would cost USD$360 which is more than I want to spend (the game is free so there will be no income to offset the cost).

trichoplax‭ wrote 6 months ago

In the meantime I've ordered some dice that have different colour pips on each face, so the 6th face is distinguishable as the only face with purple pips.

For comparison, these cost USD\$0.06 each (thanks to buying in bulk as a set of 500).

trichoplax‭ wrote 6 months ago

My estimate for custom dice with a blank image was based on my own research before asking the question. I've just checked your link and in sufficient bulk the cost plus shipping to the UK could be reduced down to USD$0.75 per dice. This is still more than I want to pay for a free game but significantly less than the best I had found myself, and might be useful for someone else.

matthewsnyder‭ wrote 6 months ago · edited 6 months ago

Yeah, it looks like if you want much less than 1 USD/die, it would be hard to do it with custom. I think a custom die seller would not want to sell them at 0.1 USD each, because then they would only make money from bulk orders - you'd have to sell a lot of 100 just to cover one hour of a minimum wage employee for instance. But retail custom dice by their nature are something that people would order in small quantities.

I would guess that if your game started a production run, you'd go to the manufacturers (probably in China) and ask for a wholesale order of 5000+. Then you'd get a much better price. But with 200 you're neither here nor there - too expensive for retail, too little for wholesale.

It could be that these "one face blank" dice really do have a niche market and someone sells them retail though, so maybe someone can find them. Good luck!