My SmokyCreation product arrived a week or two ago. I can’t even remember where I first came across its ad, but I had never heard of it before, and it won me over immediately. I’m not saying this post will fully explain why, but I do have a few thoughts that I believe matter from a PlayWise perspective as well.
Let’s start with the fact that I can have this polyhedral die because its Kickstarter campaign was successful. It was backed by 4,931 people, so it wasn’t just a little successful. But why? This is a product that any phone can replace today: we can choose from countless dice apps, endless random number generators, and so on. Yet nearly 5,000 people decided to order a pocket-sized mechanical random number generator. I think that’s beautiful!
I’ve quoted David Sax’s book The Revenge of Analog in several articles before. In it, he considers why we still write in Moleskine notebooks, why music is being released on vinyl again, and why board game cafés keep opening one after another. We are living through a golden age of board gaming—the golden age of an endlessly analog activity, one that requires us to be present, to be in the same place at the same time, and to follow rules together in order to share an experience.
I’m writing this on a laptop. What I write will be published online. We use AI to edit the website, translate, and do research, so it would be hypocritical to claim that we are analog people. And yet board gaming has an important place in my own life for a reason. Symbolically, that is also what my new game—the tri-fold metal polyhedral die—embodies. It is always with me, so I always have a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 at hand. I used to carry dice with me anyway, but now I can do so in the form of a compact, modern yet mechanical design object that also happens to be a great stress reliever. At least, I find myself spinning it quite a lot while I work.
PlayWise’s entire existence and philosophy are built on the idea that board gaming has a rightful place in today’s modern world. Because of our pedagogical approach, we spend a great deal of time discussing developmental benefits, but these are not necessarily unique to board games. Many of the skills we write about can also be developed through online games. What truly places this hobby—or this pedagogical tool and methodology—in a different category is presence, tangibility, and being together. I believe the stakes of board gaming are whether we can still talk to one another. And, for me, an innovative mechanical device only supports that.
A few words about the product itself. The quality is excellent; it really is compact, it works well, and it feels good in the hand. I like the metallic creaking sound when it folds, and it spins beautifully—and sounds great while doing so. I also appreciate little details such as the secondary marker, which ensures that you can always tell what you spun. The case and the clip both feel premium. I don’t have a bad word to say about it. I love it: it’s genuinely special and fits beautifully into my collection. (I already have marble dice, extra-small and very large dice, and even an electronic die—and now I have this too.)
And of course I haven’t just been spinning it at random. Appropriately enough, I broke it in with a few games of Pig, which we discuss in more detail among our games that require little or no equipment.
So dare to remain analog—and roll and spin whenever you tempt fate.
