Recently, while scrolling through the internet we came across a neat little table top dice roller called: The Knucklebone. While we don’t normally cover kickstarters, this project stuck out to us as the perfect thing to signal boost given its elegant style and straightforward functionality. While our interest in the Knucklebone is for its ability to be a sleek and simple dice roller for Dungeons and Dragons, there’s more to the handy gadget than just role playing games.
If you’re already on board, check out their kickstarter here.
What is the Knucklebone?
Simply put, the Knucklebone is a handheld, e-paper based, dice roller. It can roll all your standard dice variants, up to seven at a time. It uses some satisfying CherryMX keys for controls that are simple, elegant, and functional. You can change which dice you’re rolling and their quantity at a click. Honestly, this alone is very cool, but we’re not done with features.
Most useful for us as online TTRPG players is the fact that it can be plugged in and synced to different types of chat outputs. We love that you can click a button on a physical device and get rolls sent straight into something like Discord. On top of this, the device uses true random number generation and has a roll verification system that allows others to check the validity of a roll.
All of this comes in a nice clean design and looks lovely. Is this overkill for most people’s needs? Yes, absolutely, but it’s very cool and if we only cared about the most straightforward way to roll dice we’d all have one set in plain white.
Check out the various dice modes and options for the device in the table below:
Why We Like The Knucklebone
Because it’s really cool. We see this tool the same way we see fancy dice, which is to say we love it. Dice are as much about style as they are about functionality, and this device wins in both regards.
Being able to handle true random number generation means this will be more reliable than any set of physical dice you could buy. The e-ink/ePaper display is also a reliable way to do something like this. Way less risk of a screen burning out, and likely much more affordable than something like a dedicated full color screen. I can’t see the device burning through battery life either.
Another cool factor here is that the device has a lifetime roll counter. We love this. How often have you asked yourself “how many dice have I rolled?” With this you can know something that is completely superfluous, but somehow also amazing.
Another item that really stands out here is the passion the creators of The Knucklebone have for the product. They really understand dice based games and made something that meets the needs of all sorts of players. Even if this was a purely at the table device, we’d still think it was cool, but the ability for it to connect to online chat and be used as a dedicated dice roller for online play really takes the whole thing to the next level.
And last, but certainly not least, The Knucklebone offers a level of accessibility to dice rolling that we don’t normally see. While there are certainly other ways for people to play TTRPGs without traditional dice, we love that The Knucklebone adds to these accessibility options. Games are for everyone, and any device that helps make that more of a reality is alright in our book.
How to Get The Knucklebone For Yourself
If you’re reading this at the time of writing the Kickstarter for The Knucklebone is live now. If you’re reading this after the kickstarter concluded you can find more information at TheKnucklebone.com
As for what it costs, you can get your own Knucklebone dice roller from the kickstarter for between $65 and $99. The lower price tiers are limited, so if you’ll be rewarded for getting one before the early tiers are all gone. At the higher tiers there are also different color options, and bundles to get multiple units. You can even get as many 5 for $355.
Features We’d Love To See in The Future
With the kickstarter already at 100% funding after the first day, it looks like this amazing dice roller will become a reality, but we hope that this is just the beginning. While we love this current iteration of the device, we’d love to have some options for the games we love and play frequently.
The ability to save quick selections would be huge. We have a ton of dice combinations that we use often while running TTRPGs and being able to quickly switch between individual saved rolls would make this a must have item for game masters everywhere. In the same vein having some sort of variable storage could also be helpful for TTRPGs where we are swapping modifiers on dice often, but need the same set of rolls frequently.
We’d also love to see game specific variants of the device in the future. While we understand the legal and technical concerns of doing so, we would love to give a configurable one of these to a player and tell them to just put in their character stats so they can roll what’s needed at a single click.
Access to a roll log is another nice to have. We often can’t keep numbers in our heads very long, so logging something to go back to could be extremely useful. This also ties into things we have to do for DnD often like rolling advantage or comparing rolls. Definitely doable with this device, but some quality of life features here could really make an impact on future versions of the dice roller.
Even without adding these extra features, The Knucklebone is a really cool piece of tech. We can’t wait to see what they end up doing with this in the future!
So What Do We Think?
Overall the best recommendation we can give the device is that we backed it. We’ve not been sponsored by them, we didn’t get a promotional copy, and we don’t have any affiliate links to help line our pockets. At the end of the day we just like the concept of this so much that we had to lend our support.
For more information on The Knucklebone dice roller, visit their website.