These LED-Lit D&D Smart Dice Add +10 to Your Charisma

We’re living in something of a board game renaissance right now and innovative new games are frequently being released through Kickstarter. You no longer need to rely on that tattered old Monopoly for family game nights, which is for the best if you want to avoid fist-fighting your own siblings. But even the most ambitious new board games can’t come close to competing with your imagination, which is exactly why Dungeons & Dragons is still so popular. That doesn’t, however, mean that pen and paper roleplaying games can’t benefit from a technological overhaul. Pixels are new LED-lit smart dice intended for tabletop roleplaying games like D&D and they provide exactly the right amount of new technology.

Pixels smart dice are launching through Kickstarter and already the campaign has raised a whopping $1 million. In fact, that number is ticking up so quickly that I can’t even give you a current estimate. That is more than that five times the primary funding goal and exceeds than the conditional funding goals, which means all of the dice options are available to you. There are four colors to choose from: Onyx Black (normal black), Hematite Grey (normal gray), Midnight Galaxy (black and sparkly), and Aurora Sky (translucent black and sparkly). All of the standard sizes are also available, including: D4, D6, pipped D6, D8, D10, D12, D20, and D00 (percentile). This means you can completely replace your dice set with Pixels smart dice.

These truly are “smart” dice. They light up with cool LED effects, but that is only part of functionality. They also connect to your smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth. When you roll a die, the result of the roll will show up on your screen. You can even configure roll-specific sound effects to play, like a trumpet blast when you score a nat 20. Best of all, the dice integrate with D&D software like Roll20 so you can use Pixels seamlessly when playing online with friends. Each die is completely sealed in cast resin, but can be charged wirelessly when stored in the special charging case. Cases are available to hold a single die or a set of up to eight dice. With LED effects turned on, the battery life is good for about 1,000 rolls. They dice are waterproof in case you plan to do outdoor gaming in a thunderstorm for ambiance or something.

Balance and frequency of rolls are extremely important for dice and Pixels have been thoroughly tested to ensure that they’re fair. They are just as fair as Game Science dice and even better than Chessex dice. Both the Pixels hardware and the software API are open source, so you can tinker with them however you like and ensure that no funny business is happening behind the scenes. That is particularly important if you plan to use Pixels dice in official games in the future.

If you want to get your own Pixels dice, the Kickstarter campaign will be running until April 8th. A single die with an individual charger costs $35 and a set of eight with the charging case costs $199. Rewards are expected to be delivered in March of 2022.