Q-Workshop Dice

I have a lot of dice. I actually got into collecting many more sets than I needed in the last few years. Most recently, as I've finally moved into metal dice, of which I have a fair number of sets now, I've found that my older resin dice of the type I'd used for years appeal to me a bit less. But of those that I do have and still could use, the Q-Workshop dice are probably my favorite. Not only are they intricate and colorful, and have pleasing designs on them, but they are also branded, so they have ties to something that you may be playing, or at least enjoy. I became aware of them years ago as they were producing a licensed set for each Paizo adventure path, but then some additional ones came out as well. They've also got Call of Cthulhu licensed sets, The Witcher licensed sets, and others that aren't licensed but are just their own designs.

Now that I've bought them, I'm not sure which adventure path or other source the dice sets belong to anymore, in all cases. I know I have a Pathfinder First Edition, or maybe a Pathfinder Playtest set, for instance, and I know that I have a dice set that's Elven runes or something like that (but in an unusual color) and I know I have a Halloween dice set. I think the rest of them belong to one of the Paizo adventure paths.

I'll show them; you'll probably see why I've gradually decided I don't need anymore of these. Not only do I have more than I can ever use (and this is just a small sampling of my many dice sets), but a few of the sets are hard to read; the intricacy of the designs may look pretty, but it can reduce the functionality of the dice. And two of the sets, perhaps coincidentally both yellowish in base resin color, do not actually look that great. The Legacy of Fire set in particular was really disappointing. This is what they look like on the storefront image:

Bright, clear, colorful. This is what my set actually looks like. Although I didn't take this professionally with a camera and lens and background and lighting designed to show it off, even so the difference is immediately noticeable.

Instead of bright yellow, my dice are "spicy brown mustard" and the color of the printing on them is somewhat pinkish. Due to the relative lack of contrast compared to the top image as well as probably not the best execution on this set, it comes across as very muddy, hard to read, and kind of ugly. Prepping this post made me think that, "hey, why haven't I reached out to Q-Workshop, and asked them if that's just what this set looks like, in spite of the professional picture?" so I did, including sending them both of the above pictures so they can see the contrast themselves. I ordered these in March. I probably should have thought to do that right away, but I didn't. Apparently, their dice are warrantied, although against what exactly I'm not sure.

The other muddy pair is, I think, the pirate-spiders themed adventure path set, if I remember correctly. They're not as bad, but they're not my favorite either. Sorry; I got half the set in my own shadow. At least the printing is pretty clear, although the mustard color makes them look a little muddy again.

A few more of the sets that I like better. The black with red lettering is also hard to read unless you're playing outside under bright sunlight, however. But that's as advertised, so I can hardly complain about it.

These really snaky ones are pretty cool, and the snake scale effect on the printing on them is an interesting and unique effect.

And of course, the Halloween dice. These are really cool. There's also one of the adventure paths that is very similar, but it's got demonic icons on it, so I like the Halloween ones a little better. Let's not let the Satanic panic people actually have evidence to tell us that they told us so.

Finally, the Strange Aeons dice set, which is the Cthulhu-themed adventure path. This one is my clear favorite of all of these sets. Followed by an image of all of them on my counter together. The little brown tobacco pouch is what I keep all my Q-workshop dice in. Ignore the paper. My wife is out of town, so that's just a reminder to myself of what food's available in the house so I don't overlook something and let it go bad or whatever.

Although that shows two dice bags, I actually have six or seven more dice bags as well, and another one that's full of my metal pirate coins, which I use for tokens, since I have a Heroism point mechanic in my rules-light fake D&D game.

I may yet get another set or two; I'd like the actual Call of Cthulhu dice, and maybe the Horror on the Orient Express set too. Other than that, I think I'm over this particular kind of dice, however, and I've taken the other sets off my Amazon wishlist, probably for good. The only reason I haven't bought those two is that they're quite expensive. I think almost $20 for a set of resin dice is a lot of money (most of the sets I have were either naturally cheaper, or I bought them when there was a price drop on Amazon for whatever reason.) For that kind of money, I can get a nice metal dice set, and I tend to like metal dice better now anyway.