“OK, make your attack roll.”
“Hold on, I have to find my d20.” (Proceeds to dump a pile of dice out on the table and watch as they scatter in all directions)…
“Nevermind, the dragon just eats you and flies away.”
Most RPG gamers have a love affair with their dice. Whether they’re collecting hordes of them, or buying the next fancy new dice bag, gamers are rarely without a set of polyhedral dice within easy reach. And like most gamers, I not only have an ungodly amount of dice, but I tend to collect accessories for them. Be it a dice tower, rolling tray, or a solitary confinement box to put that evil d20 that keeps rolling 1s. Can’t have it infecting the other dice in the bag now can I?
In this installment of Level Up My Game, we are going to look at a dice accessory that should appeal to many gamers out there. It not only replaces the old dice bag (crown royal anyone?) with a fancy wooden box, but also provides an integrated dice tray. Enter the Tome of Holding.
Designed and built by Alex Ingram, you may remember him from his RPG coasters last year, the Tome of Holding gives you a place to store your dice, miniatures, pens, and other RPG accessories when not in use. As noted in my silly intro, one of the faults of the dice bag is the lack of organization. It’s literally a bag of dice. So your options are to reach in and sift or dump and contain. With the Tome of Holding, there are individual compartments for each of your lucky dice. So if you need to grab your d4, bam, there it is. No more hunting around for your old reliable d20 before you make that critical saving throw.
While the storage is pretty great, one of the nice things about the Tome of Holding is that it also includes a dice rolling tray. Dice trays are a great accessory for keeping your rolling dice contained. Nothing is worse than seeing an errant d20 roll across the table and bumping a bunch of minis, screwing up their placement. Or even worse, falling on the floor to be quickly gobbled up by your dog. I have a golden retriever whose mouth is like a bag of holding. I’ve pulled more things out of there than I care to admit. While dice trays aren’t wholly new, having been around for a while, this is the first I’ve seen that not only combines it with a storage system but looks fantastic at the same time.
And that’s what I like about the Tome of Holding. I was given a prototype to check out and, I must say, the design of it is pretty awesome. It’s designed to look like a book (obviously) with carvings on the front, back, and spine that give it a nice shelf presence. You can even get your tome customized with a variety of different artwork illustrated by Dan Warren. The Tome uses magnets to keep the “book” closed when not in use, which I’ve found to be very strong. I have little concern about this accidentally opening up during travel and spilling its precious cargo.
If you are interested in getting a Tome of Holding, they are now in funding on Kickstarter with pledges starting at $70. Tomes can be customized with a variety of interior storage slots, and the artwork on the outside can also be changed. Head over to the campaign page to see the full customization options and to find out more about Alex’s process, or to become a backer.
