Episode: 2178
Title: HPR2178: Dice Mixer
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2178/hpr2178.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:21:59

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This is HPR Episode 2178 entitled Nice Mixer.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 26 minutes long.
The summary is Klaatu Renews and Nice Mixer Nice Tower.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
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You're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
This is Klaatu.
Today I want to talk about something called the Nice Mixer.
When I first started playing tabletop games in earnest,
I didn't play that many games that required dice.
Eventually, I started to gravitate closer and closer
to the RPG and RPG style mechanic games.
They generally do call for dice.
I think when you start to cross that bridge in your analog gaming journey,
you find out pretty quickly that dice don't exactly like to stay on tables.
The more dice you start using, like if you come across a game
that's like, you know, roll four die or six die or whatever,
depending on what you're playing, shadow run, roll 20 die.
Not 20-sided die, 20 die.
It just gets worse and worse.
You roll dice and they just go flying everywhere,
right off the table, under the chairs, buying the plants
into the cat's food dish, everywhere, but the table.
The obvious solution to this, I would say,
is kind of the Yatsi solution.
You know, how Yatsi, I guess, used to or still does.
I think it was Yatsi.
It came in, like the dice was in a container or something.
That always used to fascinate me as a kid.
Like, why does Yatsi come with the dice in a container already?
You can't touch the dice.
You have to roll it inside this container.
Yatsi, anyway, point being, you put dice in like a coffee mug
or, well, I thought maybe a bowl at one point,
but they're slippery and too shallow, so no bowls.
But you put it in like a cup or a top-of-wire container
or something, shake it and you look at the results.
And that does work unless you've got a lot of dice,
in which case it tends to sort of not fall very gracefully.
You need a bigger and bigger container, which becomes awkward.
And either way, honestly, it does tend to make other players
a little bit suspicious.
You know, it kind of, it introduces that new sort of feeling,
just kind of like this sort of discomfort, you know, kind of like,
well, let's all, we all want to see the dice.
Like, let's see what you rolled.
You know, it's like, we don't not trust you,
but can we see the dice?
You know, and it's kind of like everyone sort of craning their heads over
and trying to look into the dice catcher.
So it kind of, it makes, it introduces awkwardness, I guess,
is what it does.
Now, alternately, I guess you could put the dice in a plastic cup,
for instance, and then shake that and, you know, turn the cup over
and slam it on the table so that you're kind of containing the dice
until they come to a full stop and arrest.
And then lift the cup and then look at the die.
And that does work.
But again, with the complex, more complex games,
you sometimes might have like playing pieces or tokens or whatever
on the table drinks for that matter.
And slamming something down on the table in a rigorous attempt
to shake your die and get them onto the table,
it's not necessarily the best way to go.
So that's not, it works, but it's less than practical.
So there are these things called a dice tower.
And that is not, as I came to learn, a tower made of dice.
It's a tower into which you drop your dice.
The tower's internals sort of are consist of kind of downward
tilting, you know, gravity encouraging sort of stair steps or platforms.
But they tilt downwards so that the dice is definitely going to, you know,
kind of go through the tower, hitting each platform.
And then at the end, the dice hit the bottom,
that you usually a tray at the bottom of the tower
and they come to rest there.
And it's quite simple and in this sort of an elegant solution
to one of those problems that most people don't even realize
is a problem until it starts to nag them on every game night,
you know, that they're playing dice on.
So when I first heard of the idea of dice towers,
I could see its practicality.
The first time I saw a dice tower was about,
well, like shortly after getting to New Zealand,
really, so like two and a half years ago, maybe.
Probably more like, yeah, no, two, yeah, let's say two years ago.
I was volunteering at a maker space in the city in Wellington.
And one of the workers there, one of the full-time workers
of the place that kind of kept it running really.
Actually, the only guy I think who actually did any work there,
used to construct these little dice towers.
You would laser cut them out, you know,
and kind of put them together.
And I would always see them kind of sitting around, you know.
I mean, which is pretty common in most, I think,
maker spaces.
I mean, there's scraps and little models
that people put together and different iterations, you know.
So it was kind of common.
And at first, I didn't even know what it was to be honest.
I mean, I did have to ask.
But he explained to me that it was a dice tower and sort of how it worked.
And I kind of looked at it and kind of forgot about it really.
It was interesting, but I wasn't really actively gaming yet at that point.
So I kind of just, honestly, I kind of assumed it was one of those obligatory accessories
that, you know, that a real gamer had to have, you know,
like a badge of honor or certification for a serious tabletop gamer.
You know, yes, I am a hardcore tabletop gamer.
Look, I have a dice tower, that kind of thing.
So you kind of shrugged it off.
And I think he actually even, he offered me one like he was like,
do you want one?
And I was like, well, no, I don't have any use for a dice tower.
And I'm kicking myself now.
But then I did start gaming, of course.
And at first, didn't really, again, it never really occurred to me that a dice tower was a thing that I would ever need.
But eventually it all kind of came together in my mind.
And I realized that a dice tower is actually a very, very useful invention.
I went to the website of a local hobby shop just a couple of weeks ago now to look for
not a dice tower, but just kind of looking at some of the multi-sided or polygonal dice that they might offer.
Because I kind of felt the need for more than just the usual like six-sided dice that I got in a, you know,
in a random box from the thrift store.
So I was kind of looking around, again, not for a dice tower.
But I was kind of like in the back of my mind, I was thinking, well, I could,
I could use like maybe a tray or some, some, something that would,
that I could throw dice into without it going all over the place.
I just kind of kind of in the back of my mind.
And that's when I saw it right there on gamegames and hobbies.co.inz.
I think it is.
It was the dice tower that my friend at the makerspace named Wolf, by the way.
That's his name, Wolf, used to, used to make and leave sitting around.
Turns out all those iterations that I'd witnessed being laser cut and constructed
and left around the makerspace were prototypes for a custom designed dice tower by my friend, Wolf,
which he calls the dice mixer.
And you can see it actually at dicemixer.com.
The dice mixer, as you will see if you go to the website, is really, really beautiful.
It's laser cut from really thin panels of pine.
It's assembled by you.
Yes, in addition to being a cool dice tower, it is also a puzzle.
I mean, not exactly a puzzle because instructions are actually provided.
But, you know, so you're not getting, you wouldn't get the thing and then never be able to put it together.
But, but it does feel like a puzzle.
It gives you that kind of satisfaction.
You either feel like you're playing with like an advanced level of Lego or,
we're solving a puzzle even though you're looking at instructions.
But, as you construct it, the really cool thing is, as you're building the thing,
you get the marvel, you know, at the sheer complexity of engineering that very clearly went into the design.
Looking at the dice mixer in photos, like if you go to the website, it kind of gives you,
kind of gives you an idea if you really look at it, but believe me, you've got no idea.
But, it does. I mean, you can kind of look at it and see how complex it is in design.
I mean, if you look at it, you see that it's all interlocking parts.
So, there's no glue.
There are no staples, nails, you know, no plastic parts.
It's all pine, laser cut pine, and it's all interlocking.
How cool is that? Well, I will tell you.
The tray that catches the die in the front, that folds up and down,
so it can become sort of the self-sufficient entity.
At the top of the tower where you drop the dice, there's actually a fold up,
and it folds up and slides in this panel so that you can close the top really,
so that you can just put your dice sort of in the top of the tower,
and they won't fall through for storage, and then when you're ready,
you can pull that panel out, and now it's a dice tower again.
So, it's absolutely just brilliantly constructed.
When you're putting it together, at times you're just thinking,
well, this clearly is not going to work.
Like, you know, you're putting this thing together, and you've got three different parts,
and you're just looking at it, and you're just like,
there's no way all of these laser cut panels are just going to slide and lock together
without any bit of glue, and actually stand up on its own.
And the minute I put dice through it, it's going to fall apart.
And I'm telling you, my hand raised on a Bible that's floating in the air,
it's true. It absolutely works. It locks together.
It's all just interlocking parts, not a drop of glue, nothing.
It's all just interlocking panels of wood.
Even, I mean, the fact that the tray folds up and down,
that's just done again with tabs.
It's pretty amazing, frankly. I can't really describe it
as well as it should be described, or I can.
I mean, I just did. I told you all about it.
But, I mean, in terms of the level of satisfaction that you get
while you're building this thing is amazing, because I kid you not.
While you're building it, you will absolutely not believe that it can work.
You're just the whole time.
So it's very, very impressive.
I don't know if he's an engineer or what, but I sort of fell in love with the thing all over again
while I was building it.
So I ordered a dice mixer, obviously, because I'm talking about building it.
Pretty much the same day I found it.
Actually, I think technically it was the next day,
but that was just because I wasn't going to order the day that I was looking.
But I did order the next day.
And I contacted my friend Wolf to ask, first of all, why he hadn't explained to me
that it was his own design, because I felt stupid now,
because I was like, I've seen these in process.
I've seen the design process firsthand, and I had no idea what I was witnessing.
It was pretty cool.
But more importantly to find out sort of more about it.
Like, what did I miss?
Like, even though I was looking at the design process, like, how did it all?
How does one go about designing and interlocking self-contained contraption like the dice mixer?
Turns out that you kind of start with something really basic and really ugly.
And the first dice tower that Wolf made was pretty much, yeah, I just plain.
I don't know what it's called in the States.
In New Zealand, we call it MDF, which is kind of like a sort of a thin particle board.
And so he just used MDF and glue and clamps, you know, just kind of hacked something together
in the form of a rough dice tower.
And he says it's one of the ugliest things he's ever made.
But he still has it, because he can't bring himself to throw it out.
I think probably because he has pity on it.
You know, it doesn't want to see it thrown in the bin.
But yeah, so that's the starting point, which is always comforting, I think.
When you see something that looks sort of too amazing to be sort of made by, I don't know, someone that you just kind of know.
How did you do that?
And then they reveal, oh yeah, it started out glue and particle board that I spray painted black and is just one of the most horrendous things that I've ever made.
It's very comforting to me.
And but based on that early prototype, of course, he built, well, he built two more versions from that by hand.
Just kind of trying to refine it into something, you know, a little bit more elegant.
But the hand crafting process obviously takes a long time.
And I can only imagine the gluing process must, I mean, I don't really know.
I've never been very good at constructing things, like, especially with glue because it's got that setting time, you know, you've got to let it dry.
And I've never been very good at that part.
But he found that that was taking a little bit longer than what he wanted.
So he, that was kind of his first go at laser cutting the device.
But at that point, he was, he was using like toothpicks for hinges and he was still kind of assembling it with glue.
And certainly there was no, there was no lid.
Like I said, like the current, like the one that he's got now has this cool little sliding hinge lid.
And again, there are no moving, I mean, there are moving parts, but there are no, there no, you know, it's all just cut out.
So there's this slide out and fold down lid in the current iteration that just obviously didn't exist in the early ones.
And certainly none of the nice etching. Again, if you go to the website, you'll see really cool looking sort of, I don't know, are they steam punk?
Are they art deco? Are they Maori sort of designs along the side?
So obviously none of that kind of aesthetic choice happened yet.
So once he had started laser cutting, he, he reckons he's had about 15 design revisions, lots of prototypes.
And eventually he got something that he kind of felt was worth selling.
And through those 15 revisions and, and, and false starts, he was able to phase out the glue entirely.
So that just kind of developed as he went, I guess.
And I guess at one point, because I remember, he was making some plastic versions of it as well.
But ultimately he decided that, and he did sell some of those apparently on Etsy.com.
But apparently the, the plastic, first of all, or it had many problems.
It was, it was more expensive to buy, harder to work with, and, and had about a 30% failure rate.
And significantly obviously less environment friendly.
So he eventually decided that he would just use the, the pine pine boards as his raw material and, and laser cut the, the parts.
All told Wolf says that he can identify about 25 separate CAD files that kind of led up to his current iteration.
Which, I mean, that's, that's a pretty good amount of revision and iteration.
That's, again, it's kind of, when you hear about all that work that goes into something that you admire, it's, it's strangely comforting because it's just like, okay, this thing didn't just spring out of his head.
This took, this took work. It took going back to the drawing board several times.
And, and that 25 CAD files, I mean, that's not really, that's like the surviving family tree.
That's, that's ignoring the branches that, that just let off to dead ends.
But it is very cool. The end product is, is really attractive.
It's, it's, it's got a small footprint. It's not a huge thing.
You know, it's something that you definitely have when you're, on your gaming table, even if you're gaming table is fairly small.
Um, me and my, my girlfriend usually play tabletop games on our, this little sort of coffee table thing.
And it's, it's longer than it is wide. So it's kind of a funky setup.
Um, so not, not a whole lot of space. Like there's more vertical, more horizontal space than there is.
Um, I guess vertical looking up down at the table.
But yeah, this dice tower sort of sits off to the edge. And certainly, you know, if you think about when you're throwing dice on your, on a table or whatever, you kind of, you kind of have to carve out an area anyway, because you don't want to throw it on like a board or a set of cards or something.
So you, you kind of have space a lot for dice anyway. And this, this tower actually minimizes that if, if anything, because now you've got like this, this, this, this finite space required for the dice rolls.
And you just drop the dice into the tower. They go down the little stairs.
And they come out randomized all in this little nice little tray that everyone can look at. Everyone can see the results.
There's no kind of suspicion of like, well, you say you got a six, but I can't see that.
Um, so it's, it's all very sort of above board gets rid of any awkwardness, um, and keeps everything together.
Keeps everything consolidated. It is not like super cheap in terms of price.
It's certainly not super cheap in terms of construction. As I've said, construction is completely amazing.
I'm, I'm a huge fan of the construction. Honestly, it's something that you should experience building. It's a lot of fun.
Um, and then once you've built it, you can sit there and just admire it all day because you know what's going on inside.
Um, but it, it's kind of nice because it's, it's that weird sort of, it's that place that dice towers.
Kind of like you could either get a super cheap one made off in China, you know, and it's just like some plastic dice tower that does the job.
But it's not exactly something that you can look at and admire. It's just a cheap dice tower.
But then there are also obviously dice towers that some very avid sort of gamer and craftsman make and it's like this, you know, one of a kind like they make it for themselves.
And if you were to ask them, could you make me, you know, this hand carved marble dice tower, you know, you think you like, yeah, sure.
I mean, you know, for all the labor and all the, all the materials and and a premium to, to bother to make you a hand made dice tower.
I mean, that's ridiculous. So it's, it's, it's one of those, it's like this sort of artisanal custom design and yet easily reproduced tower from a local artist slash engineer.
I don't really know what will cause himself in terms of art versus science, but whatever he is, he made this thing and it's really cool.
Now the dice mixture itself, I know because I worked with its designer, which was cool. And even now it's, it's actually only available in like three local hobby shops in New Zealand.
I don't, I don't believe that it has made, well, I know that it hasn't made it across to the US yet. I don't believe it's even in Australia, for instance. I think it's literally just New Zealand.
But you can actually get one if you want one. The dice mixture is certainly hoping it's, it's aim is to get out into, into stores out out in the world, like the US.
And until that happens, he is offering free international shipping to anywhere in the world. So if you want to buy one from dice mixer.com, I didn't buy one from dice mixer.com. I bought it from, like I say, the games and hobby got code out in Z or something.
No, sorry, it wasn't games and hobby was seriously bored, seriously bored.co.inzend board as B O A R D. I know this because I just so happen to have their business card on my desk as I, as I, as I'm speaking this podcast into a microphone right here.
So anyway, yeah, you can get it from places from dice mixer.com and free international shipping. It's a really slick little package. It's like in the little cardboard box. Maybe the size of let's say a 3.5 inch hard drive.
All the pieces are in there and the little instruction booklet is in there and you get to spend it. It'll probably take you half an hour, maybe 45 minutes if you, if you sort of relish it to put it together.
And then you've got this really cool dice tower that you've, that you've built and you've, you've supported a local artist if you define local as a small island thousands of miles away from where you are.
So if you have a recommendation for stores too, like if you, if you have any friends in the hobby shop business or, or whatever.
And you think wolf should contact them about stalking the dice mixer. You can contact wolf from his through through the contact link on dice mixer.com. And I urge you to do that because it really is a, at least in my view, this is a very unique item.
I, as I've said before, I'm still sort of getting into tabletop gaming myself. So I could be delusional. Maybe this isn't as unique as I think it is.
But even if it isn't unique and I know dice towers are not unique. I know they exist.
And so even if it's not unique in the sense of well, it's just another dice tower. It really is really well made. It's, it's a really cool feat of, of design.
And I think it's pretty impressive. And it's definitely very useful. So if you're looking for a dice tower or if you think you might find one useful, then I urge you to look at dice mixer, the dot com.
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