Gaming Pieces

For the feel, heft, and sound — many players think so. Metal and gemstone dice are slower-rolling, gorgeous, and durable. We compare metal vs resin vs gemstone so you know the trade-offs before you splurge.

Upgrade kits swap a game’s cardboard or plastic bits for premium versions — metal coins, wooden resources, custom inserts, deluxe trays. They are how collectors turn a favorite game into a showpiece.

They rarely change the rules — they change the experience. Better heft, clearer iconography, faster setup, and a table that simply looks and feels better. For a game you play often, the payoff is real.

No. Fairness comes from a die's geometry and your throw, not its weight. Metal holds slightly tighter manufacturing tolerances, so it's a bit more likely to be uniform than a cheap hand-poured resin blank — but 'uniform' means fair, not lucky. At any real table you won't detect a difference.

They can. A ~130g cast-zinc die with hard corners thrown onto wood or laminate can leave marks; makers like Die Hard Dice say so directly. Roll metal into a felt- or neoprene-lined tray, or use rounded 'blunt-tip' metal, and the risk drops sharply. On a forgiving surface with a gentle toss, damage is unlikely — but a tray is the safe default.

For collectors and display-minded players, yes — a genuine $75–$100 set from a transparent maker is a lasting, one-of-a-kind pleasure. For players who need provable fairness or who roll hard on hard surfaces, no — acrylic or metal is more durable and better balanced for far less. Worth depends entirely on whether you value the object or the function.

More easily than resin or metal, yes. Even hard quartz-family stones (Mohs 7) can chip on impact with tile, concrete, or a hard edge, and soft stones like fluorite (Mohs 4) can lose a corner from a short drop. Always roll them on felt, neoprene, or in a lined tray, and store them in foam. A tray isn't optional with gemstone dice.

A dice tray is a walled, soft-floored arena that catches your dice when you roll. It keeps dice from bouncing off the table and getting lost, protects your tabletop from scratches (especially from heavy metal dice), and dampens the clatter of a roll. It's a small courtesy to your table, your dice, and the people rolling beside you — and it makes rolls faster and tidier to read.

A dice tower drops dice through internal baffles so they tumble and scatter before landing — its job is dramatic randomization. A dice tray doesn't touch the roll at all; you throw directly onto its padded floor and the walls catch the dice. Trays are faster to use, flatter to pack, and easier to share around a table; towers add theater and a feeling of fairness. Many players keep both. (Puzzlewick has a separate dice-towers guide for the cascade crowd.)

A premium modular DM screen — the Wyrmwood DM Screen System (panels from ~$70) — is the best overall gift, because it is both heirloom-beautiful and used every single session to hide notes, take secret rolls, and organize the game. If your budget is closer to $25, the official Dungeon Master's Campaign Journal is the highest utility-per-dollar choice. Both serve the labor of running a game, which is what separates a DM gift from a player gift.

For a premium gift, the Wyrmwood DM Screen System — solid hardwood, magnetic, modular panels (~$70 for a single elm panel, climbing into the hundreds for exotic woods and full multi-panel builds). For a more affordable but still excellent gift, choose a customizable screen with swappable reference inserts so the DM can load the rules they forget most. The wood is the luxury; the working magnetic note bar and dry-erase surface are the utility.

Yes, in the way that matters most: a tower removes your hand from the throw, eliminating the 'controlled roll' technique that lets a practiced player favor certain faces. A peer-reviewed Western Kentucky University study (30 d20s, 3,000+ rolls each) confirmed that 'the method of rolling heavily influences the outcome.' A tower gives the most consistent, repeatable, tamper-resistant roll on a tabletop. The one thing it cannot do is fix a physically biased die — for true fairness, pair the tower with sharp-edged precision dice.

For most players, the C4Labs Deluxe Dice Tray & Tower combo (~$89.99) — it bundles a watchable transparent-acrylic tower with a velvet-lined catch-tray, so it's quiet, contained, and complete in one box. On a tight budget, the BearDice Wooden Portable (~$25) is the best value; for a lifetime heirloom, the Wyrmwood Magnetic Dice Tower ($115+).

Well-made metal dice generally roll *fairer* than the cheap plastic most players start with, because they're cast or machined as solid pieces with no internal air bubbles or hidden voids to weight a face, and their sharp corners help randomize the tumble. They are not casino-certified 'precision balanced,' though — reputable makers say 'balanced enough for play,' never perfect. The big exception is natural gemstone dice, which are openly not balanced due to internal stone variation.