Loot Drop: Automatic Dice Roller

At risk of a repetitive strain injury from hurling buckets of dice across the table but turned off by the idea of virtual replacements?

Well, help is at hand in the pleasingly retro shape of the Automatic Dice Roller, a device that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the rec room on board the USCSS Nostromo. To find out more we caught up with Critical Machine’s Priyan Gami. 

Hi Priyan, we love the Automatic Dice Roller, but have to ask what was it that made you think, “I need to create this oddly retro-futuristic thing”?

Priyan Gami: I had been introduced to gaming when I went to one of the D&D London meetup events at the beginning of 2019. I started dropping in as often as I can and some time after that I was playing a 7th level paladin in a Curse of Strahd game.

On some turns I was rolling a d6 + 4d8 + a modifier for attacks with smite. In reality, adding these up probably only took a few seconds but in my mind I was fumbling with the different dice (because I only had one of each) and it felt like I was taking an age to finish my turn. I thought there must be an easier, faster way to do this.

So shortly after, I decided to fuse together a mechanical gaming keyboard, calculator and a set of polyhedral dice, which resulted in what I call the Automatic Dice Roller.  

After about 3 hours sitting in front of a domain name checker, I was surprised to see that criticalmachine.com was available.

An elegant, if remarkably involved, solution! Do you have a background in electronics?

PG: Around the time I first started gaming I also started playing around with Arduinos, tiny computers that can be programmed and customised.  

I did GCSE Electronics at school so I knew a bit about circuits, but it had been about 10 years since I picked up a soldering Iron.  The first batch with the cream cases were all soldered by myself, and the keycaps are still being printed by hand in my garage. 

The ADR essentially does one very cool thing, very well. Was it a relatively simple product to design?

PG: The first designs and drawings were started in 2019 and the ADR went on sale at the end of 2021, so it took almost 2.5 years to develop. In hindsight the final product could have been pretty simple to develop, but it took a lot of trial and error (and youtube tutorials) to get it finished.  

There were several prototypes over the years, some of the early ones being about the size of a shoebox. The keycaps are also all custom printed using a dye and heat press, I try not to think about the hundreds of keycaps I've accidentally melted and had to bin.

Gamers are quite attached to their physical dice, do you think the ADR scratches that itch in our increasingly digital world?

PG: I think of the ADR as an addition to a table, my dice collection doesn’t gather dust, I still use them for low level games. I did initially think about just using an app for those big damage rolls, but bringing too much tech to the table never felt right. I still print out blank character sheets and fill them out in pencil when playing in person games. 

The ADR seems like a good middle ground, It could easily go unnoticed in an 80s D&D advert. Also making the ADR with standard push switches would have made economic sense, but the tactile click you get with gaming switches is an important part of the product.

Since you launched it seems to sell out every time there's any available, what's been the biggest hurdles in manufacturing the ADR?

PG: Shipping delays and lost prototypes have had a big impact on availability. We actually had a late-stage prototype lost in the post at one point so there was a bit of waiting involved between the first batch and the second injection moulded batch.  

But things are now back to normal, both in terms of importing parts and shipping units out to customers. There is still a limit to how many keycaps I can print in my garage, but we get most orders out of the door in a couple of days.

You've just released the ADR in a couple of new colours but what's next for Critical Machine, do you have any other products in mind?

PG: Aside from streamlining the production process, my main focus is to get the ADR in front of more gamers. It's hard to describe the feel and the muscle memory you develop when using it.  With some practice, you can calculate damage for a fireball in under a second.   

As well as making more colours available, there is definitely a potential for collaborations with retailers and content creators in the future. 

I recently got back into 40k, so maybe a d6 centric ADR could also be on the table in the grim darkness of the future.

Order the Automatic Dice Roller now from criticalmachine.com

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 4 (April '23)