DCC dice, inking, and pencils

My beloved Kaweco Sport mechanical pencil, which I’ve used in every in-person game session since 2015, finally gave out. Its plastic internals stopped working; all the brass and other metal parts are perfect. I’m hoping to have it repaired, but haven’t had much luck with their US repair partner so far.

The Kuro Toga Advance sounds like a Traveller subsector

In the meantime, I went down the mechanical pencil rabbit hole. When I came up for air I picked one of the consensus Mechanical Pencils Everyone Should Try At Some Point, the Uni Kuro Toga Advance. It’s the white, sci-fi looking instrument between the Sharpie and my Kaweco Sport in the picture below.

Its shtick is that it rotates the lead as you write, ensuring the point is always the same shape. Its not as girthy as I’d like (heh), but it’s thicker than the average pencil — and it feels great in-hand. Writes well, too, and has just enough texture to the grip area that it’s comfortable to use. I’m quite happy with it, and if it keeps growing on me I may just buy one of these every few years instead of going back down the “heirloom pencil” trail.

Inking DCC dice

I’ve also been getting some mileage out of the Sharpie paint marker in that photo. I wanted to find prettier DCC RPG funky dice than the plain purple and red ones I’d been using, and I stumbled across the gorgeous Wizard’s Van Stellar Stowaways set from Impact Miniatures. I love how pretty, swirly, and sparkly those dice are!

Unfortunately, like all of Impact’s DCC sets, the d16, d24, and d30 are too rounded to roll well. They’re tumbled nicely, which is great when the faces are larger — but not so great on any die with small faces. The d14 is mediocre. The d24 is basically a golf ball, and waiting for it to stop rolling is as fun as it sounds. The d30 is tolerable, and I have a soft spot for d30s and large dice, so that one’s staying in my dice bag.

But the d16 and d24 needed replacing. I love precision-edge dice, so I went back to the OG for those two: Gamescience. Purple, of course, which meant it was inking time. As I’ve done in the past, I used an extra fine point Sharpie oil paint marker to ink them. The numbers are shallow on the d24, so that one didn’t turn out quite as pretty as the d16.

I’m still using the Armory d30 Guy Fullerton gave me many years ago. It’s one of my favorite dice, and the only one of my DCC funky dice that hasn’t been swapped out since I first started playing the game back in 2012.

I’ve got a DCC campaign going right now, and have already had a chance to roll some of my pretty new dice. Hopefully next session will call for the freshly inked d16 and d24, too!