Every detail about RARE CHANCE DICE...

An introduction, explanation, and background to a unique gaming dice innovation…

Hi! I'm Ben, aka Tibs. I'm the inventor and only regular employee here at CtB Games. Other than a lot of help from a few friends and some family, this is a one man show. So, nothing moves fast here except when I have orders to fill. Anyway, let’s talk about Rare Chance Dice!

What are they? Why are they? What games can I play them into? Do they work? Can they really be patented? Are they really a new invention? What's the deal with the wild packaging design?

All fair questions that I’ve heard along the way. Rare Chance dice are a simple idea that got complicated really quickly. First, a little history of why…

OUR STORY

CtB was started on a gaming dare.

During a camping trip in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, two brothers and their sons spent their days hiking and their nights playing board games. Many were played, but the boys especially liked a Choose Your Own Adventure game. The dads did not.

Having a big mouth, one of the dads bragged that he could make a better game. His son dared him to.

The dad with the big mouth is me, Ben, and I set off to do just that: make a board game good enough to entertain my family. While building the game, I had the common idea to incorporate dice to randomize events, but wanted something that could bring low probability results to game play, thereby increasing replay value. I went out to find it at my local game store, but it wasn’t there. Then I looked on the internet where you can find anything. And while I did find a lot of interesting dice, the one I was looking for was nowhere, so I made one with a D6 and some sandpaper.

From there, I searched for patents for this creation, and it yielded no results. So, I patented it. (A lot more on this later)

Then, the real work began. As simple of a concept as it is, it proved difficult to get just right. If the landing planes were a little too small, the dice would almost balance on a Rare Chance and then! … topple over to a number, too small to stop the momentum of the roll. The difference of a millimeter and the percentage dropped precipitously. A little too large of a landing plane and the percentage was too high to be special while also taking too much off the 1-6 probability.

After testing many prototype sizes printed to CAD specs at the manufacturer, the perfect balance was found. To be absolutely certain, that final dice shape was rolled 100,000 times.

The years-long process completely derailed my own game-making since I was also overemployed elsewhere. But along the way, I started incorporating it into other board games and RPGs. At first, players didn’t know what to think of it or how to incorporate it, but as soon as the first Smiley rolled, the players were quick with creative ideas and new house rules for the Rare Chance rolls.

I figured that other tabletop gamers would enjoy playing with them as well. With the help of my ex-wife and brother, I launched CtB in the spring of 2026.

So that’s why they exist. But what exactly are they? Do they work? What games can they be used for?

Playing a bit of Betrayal at Baldur's Gate while in the camper after hiking

What are Rare Chance dice?

Rare Chance dice should be considered a D6 even though they have two additional low probability planes. Officially, that makes them a D8, but they can’t replace a D8 in game play because they aren’t balanced to have equal landing probability on all 8 planes. Instead, Rare Chance dice have 6 landing planes of equal landing probability and 2 additional planes of low probability planes. These unique dice are therefore intended to replace regular D6 and give players the ability to assign house rules to the extra two planes. 

As of this writing, all of the current editions have opposite results: Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny, Edition 002 Sword/Shield, and Edition 003 2x and 1/2x Multiplier. Each of these Rare Chance low probability planes has a ~5% chance to land (5.15% after 100,000 test rolls of final prototype), or 10% for hitting either Rare Chance per roll. I’ll get into more detail of how I developed the exact size of the planes below, but for now, I’ll just point out that designing dice with a probability that wasn’t too low or too high is the key to making these fun to toss into games. There’s a sweet spot for making these dice work into normal game play without adversely affecting game dynamics. I think I’ve found that perfect balance.

The first three editions of Rare Chance dice (Photo by Kim from That Board Game Life)

Do they affect the probability of landing on 1-6?

Yes, but it’s split evenly amongst 1-6. Using Edition 002 Sword/Shield as an example, a sword plane is bevelled off of 3, 5 and 6. A shield is bevelled off of 1,2 and 4. Because the planes are opposite each other and each affect three planes of a D6, each number is reduced by ~10% per roll. Another way to state that math is that 1-6 is reduced from ~16% to ~15%.

Not to get too into the math weeds, but let’s talk a bit about probability since I’ve had to field this question a few times. The gambler’s fallacy is a term that many people unfortunately fall into. It is the false belief that past random events will change the odds of future random events. We all feel lucky some days and unlucky on others. If I roll a 3, I am just as likely to roll a 3 on the next roll and just as likely to roll a 3 on my third roll. The probability stays the same every time. But it’s very natural to our pattern seeking brains to create narrative arguments to this truth. It’s why gambling can become such an addiction and it feels like there’s support to these arguments because we do get different outcomes when repeating a gamble. The odds are the odds though, the probability is always the same. This is also true of Rare Chance dice. I made a roll test video here to demonstrate. An average of 10 out of 100 rolls will have a Rare Chance result, but each set of 100 rolls will be different.

What games do they work for?

The short answer is: Any game that uses a regular D6. Rare Chance dice don’t work well in games like Pandemic or Betrayal because their six sided dice have special characters or counters, but we’ve used Rare Chance dice in so many games. Here’s a quick list of some games that most people will be familiar with and how we used them:

Chutes and Ladders

We replaced the spinner and use Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny. A smiley roll results in going to the nearest ladder and a frowny results in going down the nearest chute.

Yahtzee

We used Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny. A smiley we used as a wild. A frowny resulted in losing the die for the round so that a player could no longer get a large straight or Yahtzee.

We also used Edition 003 2x and 1/2x Multiplier. If you got the multiplier, it would adjust the final score of that round and you’d reroll for a number.

Monopoly

We use Edition 002 Sword/Shield and keep a regular D6 in play. If a sword is rolled and a player lands on another player’s property, it results in a die roll battle to steal the property out from under them. If a shield is rolled and a player lands on another player’s property, we call that "renter’s insurance" and don’t have to pay.

Catan

We use Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny. If a player rolls a smiley, they go\et to choose the number/resource. If a player rolls a frowny, the player whose turn is next gets to choose the number/resource. That player does not skip their next turn either, so it's like getting smacked twice to roll a frowny.

Dungeons and Dragons

We like using Edition 003 2x and 1/2x Multiplier anywhere there is small weapons damage, and in spells like lightning bolt and fireball. We also love these for the rogue class generally and can serve as a blessing or a curse. We use them liberally with the rogue class, but sometimes less multiplier dice is better because it can get crazy.

Slay the Spire

We use Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny. A smiley results in choosing the creature power and a frowny results in the strongest creature power.

Bar Dice

If you’re not from the upper midwest (or just not from Wisconsin), you may not be familiar with bar dice. Bar dice uses poker rules to roll for the best score of five dice in the same way as Yahtzee except that ones are wild and you need to roll a one before you can keep any other dice. A one can be whatever other dice you’ve rolled, but can’t be a six unless you also roll a six. You roll three times for the best score. There are also fouls in bar dice if you roll off the bar. When we do this, we get everyone playing to throw in a dollar. We like using Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny. A Smiley results in an instant win of a dollar or whatever you anteed, and then the player rerolls. A frowny is considered a foul, resulting in a shot of rail gin and a reroll.

Playing Choose Your Own Adventure: War with the Evil Power Master with Edition 002 Sword/Shield to adjust the power meter

Playing Titan with Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny for troop movement and Edition 003 2x and 1/2x Multiplier for battle.

Those are just a few examples to open you up to the possibilities of game play. Rare Chance dice are intended to encourage house rules and creative play. I love it when I get emails from people telling me how they’ve incorporated Rare Chance dice into board games I’ve never heard of. I’ve even gotten a note from a Magic the Gathering player who bought all the available editions and colorways just to use as counters. They’re cool and unique dice even when they don’t add anything else. I gave Rare Chance dice to a couple that use them every evening to dice off until one of them gets a smiley or frowny in order to decide who has to do the dishes. Everyone loves dice!

Is it really a new invention? Can it really be patented?

Yes and yes. But this is going to be a much longer answer because it was a long process. As I touched on before, I made these dice because I’m working on a game and wanted to include low probability results into game play. My inspiration for them actually came from Pass the Pigs, but I needed them in dice form with numbers and symbols. I made the first Rare Chance dice with a regular die and some sandpaper. It worked pretty well and I had fun tossing them into various games and using as inspiration to create my narrative adventure game (still in the works - making games takes even longer than making dice). I wasn’t satisfied though. I’m not a machine and my sanding job was uneven with one side slightly bigger than the other. When I couldn’t find the product to buy on the Internet, I did a patent search.

Many people don’t know that there’s another side of google dedicated to US patents. It’s a fascinating rabbit hole of every invention since 1790 when George Washington signed the first US Patent Act. For about a week, I searched the database after work. I found some really interesting patents and it was super cool to see the original dnd dice set among them, but this simple thing I had dreamt up wasn’t there. The closest one was an abandoned patent that also used low probability planes for dice but did not use the base cubic form. (It’s too bad it was never made. It’s hard for me to imagine any practical uses, but still would have been cool to play around with.)

Patent illustration of the original DnD set using Platonic Solids

 

I called a local patent attorney. He basically laughed at me, told me that he makes $500/hr, rarely works for individuals unless backed by significant investors, didn’t want to hear about what the invention was, and ended the free consultation in less than 10 minutes.

So, I bought a patents for beginners book. As stupid as that sounds, it was helpful to get my outline together, help with some of the legalese, and provide some rudimentary templates.

But can I patent a shape? I certainly didn’t invent a shape.

There are 3 types of patents in the US: design patents, plant patents, and utility patents. Design patents are for new and ornamental designs for an article of manufacture, or how an item looks and not how it works. Plant patents are for new and distinct varieties of plants that are reproduced asexually like Pepper X and countless flowers. Utility patents are for new and useful processes, machines, manufactured items or useful improvements on them. To be eligible for a utility patent, something needs to be new, useful, and non-obvious. My Rare Chance dice are new because they didn’t exist before, and useful because they played in many games in place of a regular D6. I wasn’t sure about non-obvious. Afterall, it’s a simple shape and I wasn’t inventing a new shape.

A quick diversion here about polyhedra, specifically Platonic Solids and Archimedean Solids. Platonic Solids are convex 3-dimensional polyhedra in which every face is the exact same congruent regular polygon and the same number of faces meet at every vertex. They are the tetrahedron (4 faces), cube (6 faces), Octahedron (8 faces), Dodecahedron (12 faces), and the Icosahedron (20 faces). These are your standard dnd dice set. Archimedean Solids are a set of thirteen convex polyhedra but are only semi-regular at their snub or truncated corners. The truncated cube is close to my Rare Chance dice except that it has all its corners cut into triangular planes. This shape is the basis for my patent design, but cutting all corners has less practical purposes in most games and would have to have a game designed specifically for it. (Let me know if you make one and I’ll help you sell it.)

The Five Platonic Solids

If you’ve read between the lines there, you’ll notice that dnd dice are both patented and Platonic Solids. Any new use then, even without inventing a shape, is therefore non-obvious. That said, I bet someone did this before me, likely at home with sandpaper like I did. Maybe they just knew better than to spend so much time on patenting, manufacturing, getting packaging together and starting an online business. (Happy to play the fool for y’all though.)

I finished my patent with the USPTO in December of 2025 and received my official stamped patent in April of 2026. While it was patent pending, I got started on manufacturing and package design.

Patent illustration for Rare Chance dice

How was it manufactured and what’s with the wild packaging design?

I wanted a simple shape, but it still had to be mathematically true. I hired a CAD designer to create the STEP files required by a manufacturer with 4 versions showing different millimeter lengths of the landing planes in order to test various probabilities.

Bescon, an international leader in dice production, made me the first prototype samples. Rolling them was finally proof-of-concept for me but it became clear during testing that the difference of even a millimeter made a significant change in the probability. Eventually, I chose one with a low probability plane big enough to land but not too big to land too often. As I said above, this was the most important consideration that determined whether I had something exciting for gaming or just an oddity that people would throw in a bag but never take out during play. After testing that final prototype 100,000 times, I was sure.

Original prototypes including the one I made with sandpaper

For the packaging design, I initially tried to do it myself, but again, not my specialty. I also didn’t know exactly what I wanted for a design. Should I rip off some dnd style art? That felt too specific to one group of gamers. Should I center the art around fantasy, sci-fi, horror? None of it felt right.

Katherine, a good friend of mine and artist came over to discuss packaging together because she was also facing the same issue with a product she was trying to launch. Katherine (check out her work here if you’re interested) asked me a simple question, “what kind of packaging art do you like?” I was drinking a Karben 4 Fantasy Factory while we were chatting and I pointed to the can. I also pulled out a framed image from the wall that I took out of my young daughter’s magazine. It has always made me laugh. There are so many odd choices put into the design that I don’t understand.

Packaging design for Karben4 Brewing's Fantasy Factory by Joseph Kinstler at High Craft Creative

Magazine image with a dog that is apparently on vacation but needs a vacation with like a tequila sunrise background and a tongue photoshopped in. Still makes me laugh.

I pointed to these things and Katherine chuckled. She told me to lean into it. Things that are fun are also attractive to people. To get the idea more sketched out, I spoke with an acquaintance friend I knew who managed a local sandwich shop. John was a 60+ acidhead that worked in a laid-back campus neighborhood and he spent his free time drawing horror comic art on the leftover cardboard from deliveries. I told him my ideas, my tagline “A New Way To Die,” an idea of possible art direction and he sketched this:

John Kimble's original sketch

I never got him to do anything more and I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I liked it. I still like it. But it wasn’t going to work. I needed something fully polished. However, something clicked for me when I saw the image. My first edition dice are Smiley/Frowny. Using an odd combination of happy and sad imagery in a comic style (done dramatically and with some silly humor)fits with the odd story of making this dice project come to life and the intent of their use in game play. I hired an internet illustrator, sent them the sketch, some other reference images and some new instructions and I got this:

Internet illustrator version. Getting closer and stranger.

I like it well enough. Still makes me laugh. But it isn’t set up for packaging. That would require proper layout, vector images, etc. I needed a professional. For that, I found the man behind the can, Joseph Kinstler from High Craft Creative, the artist responsible for the Fantasy Factory design and so many other local Madison beer labels.

But first I needed the packaging. Joey needed some bleed lines to work with. Believe it or not, individual dice boxes and wholesale point-of-sale boxes aren’t a thing. My ex-wife Sarah, a veteran of ecommerce operations, shipping and receiving, has a long history with making special boxes for boutiques. We got to work designing the specs. After a year of prototyping, we finally had the box canvases for the images.

Joey put together this for me based on those crude ideas and sketches:

Joseph Kinstler's take on A New Way to Die based on the previous designs

By the time I was able to print and receive the packaging, I had already been sitting on a cupboard full of thousands of loose dice for over a year. I spent that waiting period passing out dice to anyone I met through work or in gaming and had some good feedback. People didn’t always get how to play with the dice at first, but with a few use cases, they started to see, play, and generate new ideas.

The packaging finally arrived in March of 2026. We turned on the website in late April, I quit my job doing pest control, and started folding boxes. We sent out flyers and free samples to independent gaming stores with our fingers crossed.

Individual dice box packaging. (Photo by Kim from That Board Game Life)

Unfortunately, there was a packaging malfunction. Of the few stores that picked up my dice, they didn’t get a sellable product. Dice routinely arrived loose in the packaging due to the inserts and rubber glue dots failing during transit.

We rethought and repacked dice with a pretty elegant solution and replaced the orders with our apologies. But it still wasn’t a perfect solution. Sarah designed a new insert to fit perfectly to the odd shaped dice and we got rid of the messy glue points. Very proud of the final product and presentation now.

Edition 001 Smiley/Frowny

Edition 002 Sword/Shield

Edition 003 2x and 1/2x Multiplier

And that’s the current state of things as of this writing in September of 2026. The word is out and sales slowly trickle in from around the US. Rare Chance dice are in the hands of people in over 30 states, some fine folks in Canada willing to pay those shipping costs, and even a couple of people in the UK, despite not selling to that market (they reached out directly, very cool).

It’s time to approach stores again, get a set up to do a convention or two, and play some games!

It’s a great day to play!

-Tibs

September 3, 2026