Frugal GM Essential Gear: Dice Box

Honestly, I thought I was done with the whole idea of "Essential Gear" for gaming, but it was pointed out to me that aside from dice, which I've repeatedly stated I'm not going to cover, there are several more things that I simply don't game without.

One of them is my dice box.

Like so many of you I do have dice bags, with the old standby being the much beloved Crown Royal bag. That was my first dice bag ever and I still have a small pile of them.....our local liquor stores keep them just for folks like me.

Over the last decade or so I've migrated to keeping my dice in a box instead, specifically one that can also double as a Dice-Rolling-Zone (DRZ). I know that DRZs are a bit of a joke from HackMaster/Knights of the Dinner Table, but since I began using a DRZ, things have just been plain smoother for me as a player and a GM. No more fumbling with dice that bounce all over and the only time I have to pick one up off the floor is if I drop it pre-roll.

Right now I have three dice boxes and I'm planning on getting another and then moving down to two. For years my go-to box was this nice cigar box I picked up at an antique store of all places. It's the big box with a "60" on it. While the outside is fine, the inside partitions have gotten beat up a bit and at conventions I think it has been taking up too much real estate at the table, which is why I went to the smaller pelican case as my travel dice box.

At Origins this year I picked up a dice chest from the folks over at Dog Might Games. I'll probably do a review on that box later this week.

My favorite thing about using dice box is having that integrated DRZ. With my cigar box and the travel pelican case the lid serves as the DRZ. The pelican case doesn't quite fold out flat, but the closure can act as a leg or I can put something about the height of a metal bottle cap to do the job.

When I got the cigar box I actually bought two of the same size and cut out two pieces of leather to fit inside the lid. After a small bribe to Jolly Blackburn I got the leather pieces all decorated with an emergency fame rub. The other leather piece had BA on it. I gave my GM friend Topher Kersting 1st choice at which piece he wanted, giving him that inset with the other box.

All three boxes hold enough dice for my normal use, but only the travel case is big enough to hold my d30, so I'm planning on making a custom box that can serve as both my daily weekly use and something worth travelling with (although I'll probably keep using the pelican case because it travels best).

The mountains of dice I don't use or look at regularly are in my Crown Royal bag(s).