Sugar and Gloom with The Reliable Rogue
For more incredible photos, check out @TheReliableRogue on Instagram.
Episode Summary
Nichelle jokes that people describe her dice as "Dark and Gloomy", but it's clear that she's anything but! We talk about art, inspiration and why cap moulds amd Zona paper are the worst invention ever and why everyone needs a precision exacto knife!
Coming soon!
Episode Links
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[00:00:15] TalkingDice: G'day, everyone, and welcome to the Talking Dice podcast. Whether you're a dice maker, collector, or just a tabletop rpg lover, we've got you covered. I'm Aaron, the host of the show and author of the Crypt Maker Guide to Dice Craft, now available on Amazon.
Running a podcast in 2024 is expensive with hardware. Hosting, production, and advertising costs us a large sum of money each month. If you like this podcast, please consider a one time donation via Ko fi. Or if you love it, please consider supporting us on Patreon. For details, please check out our website, talking diocese. And on todays episode were talking with Nichelle, the Reliable Rogue. With a background in fine art, music, photography and journalism, Nichelle has been setting the scene on fire since 2019 with unique designs and colors. Welcome to the show, Nichelle. I'm a huge fan of your work.
[00:01:00] TheReliableRogue: Oh, thank you.
[00:01:01] TalkingDice: It says in your profile that you've been into tabletop role playing for over 13 years. What sort of campaign are you playing now?
[00:01:07] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, we just actually started a new one. I have. So I have two groups. I have one that plays on Thursday, which is about a three, four hour session, which is good, and then I have one that plays on Sunday, which is a longer, like six hour twelve to 06:00 p.m. so. But, yeah, no, I'm having a lot of fun. I really like my new character, and I'm playing a bard this time.
[00:01:27] TalkingDice: Ooh, a bard. Tell me about the bard.
[00:01:29] TheReliableRogue: The bard has a very short attention span and wants to be doing something, and if there. If she's not doing something, she starts to get antsy. So the longer time goes on, the more antsy.
[00:01:43] TalkingDice: This sounds like me.
[00:01:48] TheReliableRogue: It's been a fun character. We've only had a few sessions so far, and then we've had. We've always had something to do, and we just had a bunch of downtime. So during that downtime, well, there's nothing to do. So the antics get ramped up and ramped up and ramped up, and we're probably on the verge of being kicked out of town soon, which I'm sure has nothing to do with me.
[00:02:07] TalkingDice: You know, I'm pretty sure you're not a party until you've been kicked out of town for something.
[00:02:10] TheReliableRogue: Yeah. Antagonizing people, it's not killing someone they shouldn't have been.
[00:02:15] TalkingDice: It's, you know, annoying and in keeper.
[00:02:18] TheReliableRogue: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's my Thursday character, too. Just can't keep her mouth shut.
[00:02:23] TalkingDice: Right. And what's the other character?
[00:02:25] TheReliableRogue: The other character is a 13 year old rogue who just wants everybody to be her friend to a point that she will sit there and just, like, talk to a guard for hours during their shift when they can't, you know, a captive audience, they can't leave. So they're quite similar this time, I think both of my characters I'm playing, so.
[00:02:47] TalkingDice: And channeling the inner child. That's such a cool role play idea.
[00:02:51] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, no, I love that. So that character I've actually been playing for probably eight years, off and on. We do a lot of breaks during our big campaign that our forever DM runs. So she's very near and dear to my heart. She started it as a nine year old rogue, I think. So. It's been a few years as we've progressed.
[00:03:11] TalkingDice: Oh, wow. So she's aged as you've gone along. That's, again, such a cool role play.
[00:03:16] TheReliableRogue: Oh, yeah. She's having her preteen mood swings, too, which is. Which is.
I don't want to say it's fun to relive. It's fun on this side to relive. Maybe not so much like when it was actually happening.
[00:03:30] TalkingDice: Well, I was wondering how the rest of the party feels about that.
[00:03:33] TheReliableRogue: The worst part is, I think most of them, they would never admit it and they're probably going to listen to this, but I think most of them think she's the leader or at least lets her lead. I'm not sure why they let this happen because, like I said, and then they egg her on. Like, we all play off of each other, which is why we always get kicked out of towns. Like, I think every town we've been to in my Thursday campaign, we get booted out instantly.
[00:03:59] TalkingDice: And do you play in person or do you play online or.
[00:04:02] TheReliableRogue: We used to play in person. My Thursday group did. The Sunday group is in California and I'm in Washington, so it's a bit of a distance. But we used to play online in person, and then we switched to online after the pandemic and, you know, people had to move away, so. But we still have that, that core group, which is really, really nice. They used to all be my husband's co workers, and now we kind of live in different spots, but we still all get together every Thursday in game, which is really fun.
[00:04:32] TalkingDice: So the Thursday one's been running for how long?
[00:04:35] TheReliableRogue: About eight years, I would say.
[00:04:38] TalkingDice: Wow.
[00:04:38] TheReliableRogue: Okay. Yeah.
[00:04:40] TalkingDice: And is that, is that the same campaign or.
[00:04:43] TheReliableRogue: We play it off and on. So we have our forever DM. We try to give him a break every now and then. Cause like, it's been a long time, so someone else will dm. We've done, you know, call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun. I played Dragon age when they released, like long, long ago when they released a Dragon Age tabletop game. We played a little bit of that. I saw that we dabbled in a little bit of stuff, but you, you know, our forever DM always picks it back up and.
[00:05:11] TalkingDice: Okay, so you've crossed genres there. That's, that's quite interesting.
[00:05:15] TheReliableRogue: Oh, yeah, we've done a little bit of everything.
[00:05:20] TalkingDice: Yeah, I had a DM years ago where we were playing dungeons and dragons for quite a long time, and we just started all getting bored with it, I think. And this is when I was much younger and we were playing Warhammer forty K and, you know, other tabletop games like that. And one day he's just decided that our party would jump through this portal. And we jumped through the portal and ended up in the Shadowrun world.
[00:05:42] TheReliableRogue: Okay, sure.
[00:05:43] TalkingDice: You know, which is like cyberpunk. And so that's great.
[00:05:46] TheReliableRogue: I love Shadowrun so much.
[00:05:48] TalkingDice: And so literally what he did there was, you know, threw away the D and D book and, you know, gave us all the Shadowrun rule sets. And so we kept running the same characters as if, you know.
[00:05:59] TheReliableRogue: Sure, that's great.
[00:06:01] TalkingDice: It was quite, quite an interesting little turn of events there.
[00:06:03] TheReliableRogue: And that's awesome when you can like, float seamlessly into another setting. Heck, even into like, another rule set is pretty awesome.
[00:06:11] TalkingDice: Oh, absolutely. So across genres, what's your favorite class to play?
[00:06:15] TheReliableRogue: Um, well, I mean, listen, it's in the name, right?
[00:06:19] TalkingDice: Yep. Yep.
[00:06:19] TheReliableRogue: I like playing a rogue. Those are my favorite. Hands down. I am a clumsy oaf in real life. So, like in D and D, I get to be anybody I want. And I choose to be someone who doesn't knock over ten things off the desk whenever she moves her arms, you.
[00:06:35] TalkingDice: Know, high acrobatic score.
[00:06:37] TheReliableRogue: And yes, yes, my real life deck score is probably in the single digits, so I just want to be graceful for once.
[00:06:48] TalkingDice: Now, you mentioned there the rogue being part of your business name. And what about the reliable bit?
[00:06:52] TheReliableRogue: There's a long story to the business name. Actually, there's a short and a long version.
[00:06:56] TalkingDice: Give us the long one.
[00:06:57] TheReliableRogue: The long one. So I actually started as an embroidery business. I started like, sewing geeky bags. I would do like, dice bags and messenger bags and backpacks. And I was, I was epic embroideries. And I did that for about five years. And then when I got into dice making. I thought I'd really like to sell my dice, not because I wanted to sell them, but because I was practicing a bunch of things. Now I have all these dice and like, what am I going to do with them? And the hobby is expensive, so I was like, I want to sell them. But I felt really like boxed in with the name that I had chosen with my epic embroideries. So I thought it's time for a, you know, a redo.
[00:07:40] TalkingDice: Epic dice making?
[00:07:42] TheReliableRogue: Yeah. So I thought this time I didn't want to be shoehorned into anything. So I thought, okay, I want it to be, you know, kind of nerdy, tabletop focused. I didn't want it to just be about dice or about sewing or anything else. So I thought, well, I'm playing my rogue. I love my rogue. And then I thought, well, rogues don't really have, stereotypically, rogues maybe don't have the greatest reputation around as like, you know, con men and thieves and stuff. And I thought, well, you know, I consider myself to be quite a reliable person. And if I were making a character in when I dm, if I were making a character in a game, what would I want their shop to be called? That my players would trust them, that my NPC's would trust them, they could build a reputable business. So that's kind of where the reliable rogue came from.
[00:08:34] TalkingDice: And, I mean, looking at your Etsy scores, it's, you know, there's a lot of five stars there. So I guess, I guess people, people feel that you're quite reliable.
[00:08:44] TheReliableRogue: I've actually had people saying that, oh, yeah, she lives up to her, to her name, the reliable rogue. And it's like, well, that's, that's very nice. I always get a kick out of those ones because, like, I consider myself reliable. But, like, you know, maybe, maybe that's just from my own perspective.
[00:09:02] TalkingDice: And are you still doing any of the embroidery as well on the side?
[00:09:07] TheReliableRogue: I am not. I do the sewing on the side. All of my dice sets come with a little, like, matching zipper bag.
[00:09:13] TalkingDice: Oh, wow.
Yep.
[00:09:16] TheReliableRogue: Well, I shouldn't say match it complimentary where I use all of the scraps from my previous sewing business because I don't know if you know, how much waste sewing, like big bulky things can make there is. I have so much scrap fabric, so I make these little tiny, I'd say they're like four by five inch zipper bags. And I use my scrap fabric and I match it to the die sets as best I can. So it kind of helps me reduce waste, and I know everybody really likes them. And so whenever I think maybe I should just get rid of these because they take so long to make, and then it was like, I just love that your dice come with these bags. I'm like, well, I guess I can never get rid of them. So there's still a bit of sewing.
[00:10:02] TalkingDice: Right. And if the customers love it, they have to stay, right?
[00:10:05] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, yeah. Every time, I think. Because it's just. It's just added work, and I don't mind it. They take, like, maybe 510 minutes to throw together. But when you're doing 1012 sets of dice, and then 1012 things like that can really add up. But everybody loves them so much. And honestly, I have so much fabric left over, both scrap and non scrap fabric, and I keep buying it. I don't even sew stuff anymore. And somehow I still wind up at the fabric store.
[00:10:33] TalkingDice: Literally me in art supply stores all day, every day. Now, Nichelle, tell me a bit about how you got into dice making in the first place.
[00:10:41] TheReliableRogue: Well, I started. So I've been playing tabletop games for years. It's gotta be close to 1213 years now.
And, you know, back before, maybe before probably 2018, the dice selection was, like, limited, right. You were forced to pick from whatever your local game shop had on hand. And I'm big into, like, I don't want to say visuals, but, like, the aesthetics of things. I like to have my character art. I like to have my dice that match. I want you to show me pictures of the scenery in addition to explaining it to me. So I was always lacking that dice cohesion with everything that I like to get into character. So I started. I started seeing videos in maybe the summer of 2019. YouTube was like, you should check out, you know, this. And I watch it, and it's this person making dice. And I'm like, you can make your own dice.
And I'm like, I could do that. You fall into the rabbit hole, and you start watching video after video after video. I could do this. And then I look, you pan up to the rest of the room, and you see all the half finished crafts that you've been getting into.
And, yeah. And so I was like, no, I better not. I better not. And then, of course, the algorithm's like, well, you watch 15 of these videos. So over the next few months, they're like, you should watch this one. You should watch this one. So eventually, so my birthday and Christmas are, you know, in kind of the same ish area. I'm I'm a November. I'm a Scorpio. I'm a November birthday. So I kind of pooled my money from my birthday and Christmas to buy a pressure pot and some resin. And I thought, I'm just going to give it a go. It'll be fine. It's, you know, I'm just going to make stuff for me. And then it kind of just went from there.
[00:12:36] TalkingDice: Wow, you really jumped in at the deep end, Zachary.
[00:12:38] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, yeah. I was like, if I'm going to do this, I'm getting everything I need to do it. And it was, oh, my God. And, like, we were finishing the basement. The basement was like studs when we bought this house. And so I'd been buying drywall and, like, everything for that. So I was really strapped for cash. And I'm like, I shouldn't be wasting money on this, but I can do it. They'll be fine. I can do this. It'll just be a little hobby on the side. I won't throw this away like all the other hobbies I've picked up.
[00:13:03] TalkingDice: Ah, you stuck with it now.
[00:13:05] TheReliableRogue: And look, I haven't the first promise I've ever kept to myself, and I'm.
[00:13:09] TalkingDice: Sure none of your customers would want you to give it up at this point.
[00:13:12] TheReliableRogue: Anyway, I keep. I always joke that there'd be riots in the street if I ever, like, decided to stop because I get so many messages and requests for things. I'm not complaining. I love it. I like that people like my art enough that I couldn't quit even if I wanted to. It's good. The pressure feels good.
[00:13:34] TalkingDice: Now, mentioning your art, tell me about your style. What is the definitive, the reliable rogue dice look like?
[00:13:41] TheReliableRogue: Well, I don't know that there's a definitive style that I have. I know that everybody says I have a vibe, and that vibe is, like, gloomy, gloomy, which is, you know, that's okay. It's like art. Art deco plus gloomy, which, you know, honestly, I can't. I can't say that's wrong. I can't say they're wrong. But I would say most of my designs come from a few different places, like my d and d games.
[00:14:10] TalkingDice: And looking at your instagram, I'm looking at some of those ones, like the gooey eclairs.
[00:14:15] TheReliableRogue: And that actually came from my Thursday game with my 13 year old rogue.
She sold just a little bit of her soul, just a partial bit for a plate of deliciousness. She's got a sweet tooth, so it, like, makes sweets on demand. And I thought, oh, this would be so funny to make these really, like, gooey, messy dessert dice, and it kind of exploded from there, so they.
[00:14:41] TalkingDice: They all look so tasty and so edible.
[00:14:44] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, no, don't. Don't eat the dice. I promise. They. They don't taste as good as they look. Not that. Not that I would know, but, you know, and they don't.
[00:14:54] TalkingDice: Something else I've noticed about your dice before, as well, is you use a lot of different shapes, and you've got a lot of different styles of dice, as well, which I find quite interesting.
[00:15:04] TheReliableRogue: Yeah. I really have been enjoying making the crystal dice or the faceted dice. The potion bottle dice are my newest weird thing that I've been doing.
They are not fun to learn how to sand those tiny facets by hand. I knew you had Doug on not too long ago, and I was like, I don't want to follow up Doug with his fat. No, I sand mine by hand, and they do not look. They do not look as clean as his do, but I really enjoy doing it, and they make the dice shine so nicely, and I'm so impressed.
[00:15:40] TalkingDice: I'd love to have a go at doing those little. Or something like those little potion bottles at some point.
[00:15:46] TheReliableRogue: So, no, we figured out. So I'm part of the revel broker discord, and we all share little tips and tricks to how we do things, and they had some weird dice that they put out, and we were all trying to figure out how the heck we were going to sand them. And my friend Tara over at red wine Dice had mentioned these, like, weird foam sandpaper.
They're, like, foam backed so you can hold on to them easier. And it makes polishing and, like, sanding all of those so much nicer, like.
[00:16:16] TalkingDice: Micro mesh or something like that.
[00:16:18] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, they're like a three m brand sandpaper, and they're like, yeah, they're fantastic. I don't. Honestly, I don't know where I would be without them.
[00:16:28] TalkingDice: Right, and so you mentioned the rebel broker. And have you used many of their masters before or their designs?
[00:16:35] TheReliableRogue: Oh, yeah. No, they. They sponsored me for a while back when I. I don't want to say I first started. I'd been doing it for about a year, and they were the only people that were making my masters. I had found their shop on Etsy, and I thought, well, I'll give it a go.
And so I bought them, and I was like, I really like these. I didn't have whatever the God, whatever this cure inhibition is called. I didn't have that to a point. I'm almost embarrassed that I had to ask. In their discord, at one point, everybody was talking about, I'm like, what is cure inhibition? Because I've never.
Their masters are so good because I've just never had that issue. But they had reached out to me back when I was around. I was kind of stalling out at around 300 followers and offered to sponsor me. So they kind of invited me into the fold. They sent me free masters and just kind of helped boost my business.
So I've been working with them for years now, and they've been primarily my sole provider for masters up until recently. I kind of graduated out of their sponsorship program. I got my own printer, and I've been designing a lot of my own dice ever since, which I all learned from their discord. So if you are trying to make master dice or learn to print your own, that's the place to go.
[00:17:53] TalkingDice: Yeah, that sounds absolutely awesome for anyone listening who's wondering what all this cure inhibition is. Basically, it's the way that certain types of silicon react to the chemical components in 3d printer resin, and what happens is it actually prevents the silicon from curing altogether. Unfortunately, it's a really common occurrence in dice making for anyone who's tried printing their own masters. And, Nichelle, I'm guessing now that you're doing your own, you've probably come across this a few times now.
[00:18:20] TheReliableRogue: Yes.
I found a good workaround for it. I didn't do it with my newest ones. I thought, I haven't had any problems with cure inhibition, so I'm just going to mold these right after I printed them and, like, clean them. And that was a mistake. That was not a good choice. I made bad choices that day, so now I have to wait the week before I can try again.
[00:18:44] TalkingDice: I know that feeling so well, I've got to say, I tried so many different ways of getting through that while I was writing the book. And if you jump online or any of the groups or Reddit or anything like that, there's a lot of good information, but there's also a lot of superstition. People are like, if you turn around on one leg and put your right arm up in the air and only use the specific type of resin, then you won't get cure inhibition. But at the end of the day, it's a chemical reaction and it really depends on so many different factors. We're going to be discussing that one in length in a future episode. I'm hoping to have someone on who's an expert in, uh, you know, the chemical components in resin and silicon. So, yeah, keep an eye out for that one. And make sure you subscribe on, you know, whatever platform you're listening to this on. So, you know, when that episode drops. Now, I know you said that some people think your dice are a bit gloomy. I completely disagree.
[00:19:40] TheReliableRogue: Obviously, they're just a little dark, you know, the themes and stuff. Maybe not so much recently with my dessert dice, but, yeah, now I'm going.
[00:19:48] TalkingDice: To pick on one of the darker sets that you've done. I saw an Instagram a while back, your infernal contract dice, and they were absolutely fantastic. They had these little, these little scrolls in them. And the fire, they were, they were absolutely amazing.
[00:20:02] TheReliableRogue: I, you know, the funny thing about those dice. So that fire effect, that actually started as, like, a mistake. I bought the wrong thing. I, like, mixed it. I mixed everything up. And I was like, this is horrible. And then that, everything that I bought for it went in that drawer. That drawer of this was awful. I hated it. Never again. And then every now and then, I'll come back to that drawer and I'll say, okay, I spend a lot of money on this stuff. It's time to, you know, do something with it. And that's actually how that fire effect was born. And then I was like, well, how can I do this? How can I add this in, in a way that's really interesting? And another part, another big inspiration for me is, like, video games and characters and things. And normally I don't, I don't advertise, like, what my inspiration was, if I can help it, because I want people, when they look at something, I want them to feel what they feel about it. I don't want them to go into it having a specific theme in mind. I want them to say, oh, this reminds me of, you know, a murder mystery party or, you know, the sweets from this thing. So I. But those ones, the infernal contract, were actually modeled after Raphael from Baldur's gate three. I don't know if you've played or not. Oh, I've played it, yeah. I got a lot of sets that I'll model after, like characters from video games or, you know, ideas or themes.
[00:21:25] TalkingDice: I think, and I think Baldurs Gates been a huge inspiration to a lot of dice makers.
[00:21:29] TheReliableRogue: Oh, absolutely.
[00:21:32] TalkingDice: You're not the first person that said that to me. And I'm Gary, guaranteeing you won't be the last either.
[00:21:37] TheReliableRogue: Oh, probably not. No.
[00:21:39] TalkingDice: When you're not playing Baldur's gate and when you're not, you know, finding inspiration there, you tend to plan out your sets, or do you just kind of go wild with them?
[00:21:48] TheReliableRogue: Like, I have mood boards that I do for, like, characters or, like, settings that I find in video games that I really like. Otherwise, the other form of inspiration for me is that drawer, that drawer of stuff that I bought that just never, ever worked out. I will just open that, sit down, and say, okay, we're doing something with some of this stuff right here, right now. And that's where a lot of, like, some of my weirder sets. I don't know if you've seen the one that's, like, half gold leaf and half, like, striped. That was. That was a bunch of stuff that I bought. And I'm like, well, I've never used this before. Let's do something with it. I've got these random blanks that I poured, and I've got this weird stuff. Let's throw it all together and see what happens.
[00:22:32] TalkingDice: It's funny you mention that. I saw a post on Reddit the other day where someone was trying to use the browning effect. You know, sometimes you put alcohol inks into resin and they kind of burn. And so someone was trying to see how they can, you know, capture that and turn it into something useful.
[00:22:48] TheReliableRogue: That's. That's part of, like, the fire effect, too. Like that, I bought this ink, and it just burned the heck out of my resin. I'm like, oh, this is so ugly. Throw it in a drawer, forget about it. And then it's like, well, how can I make this work for me, you know? And you start trying things out and practicing with things and trying out different resins and different ways to introduce it until you get a result, and you're like, oh, hang on a second. This is actually the coolest thing I own. How was it sitting in that drawer for a year and a half, you know?
[00:23:17] TalkingDice: Yeah. And I think we probably all got that draw. And you're right. Maybe the best thing that we've never used is lurking in there, because, you know, one day it did something that we didn't want it to do. So do you find these days you spend more time experimenting, or do you tend to just do the things that, you know, kind of work out for you?
[00:23:34] TheReliableRogue: I jump back and forth. I try to keep in my shop, I try to keep stocked, like, the things I know people want. I'll get a lot of requests for, like, remakes. So I know kind of what's popular. So I try to keep at least, you know, some of those things flowing through my shop constantly.
Otherwise, I kind of have free rein. And that's what's so beautiful about running your own business, that you can do whatever you want. I mean, you know, obviously, you want it to sell, you want to keep product moving through.
But I have that freedom. It's so nice because I'm lucky enough to have that freedom to be able to experiment and do weird things. And, you know, if they don't sell, they don't sell, and that sucks. But whatever. We don't really depend on my income to pay bills, so I'm in a position where I can take those risks.
[00:24:25] TalkingDice: Yeah, like, you know, I think that's. That's so important. And you do this full time now, Nisha?
[00:24:31] TheReliableRogue: I do probably more than full time, actually. But being honest, since I've gotten into, like, printing my own stuff, it's. Yeah, this is my only job.
[00:24:41] TalkingDice: It's definitely a time sink, I must say. Once you get into printing.
[00:24:46] TheReliableRogue: Yeah. And then there's like, oh, well, I printed this really weird shape. Guess I have to go print a mold housing for it now. And it's a lot of work, but, like, it's so. It's so much freedom to be able to just. I have an idea. Go to the computer, plan it out, get it on the printer, you know, the same, or next day, and then go print your own mold housings and, like, get it in the works without having that second or third party that you have to go through and then wait and wait. And I'm like, I hate to say it, I'm a control freak, right? So if things aren't quite right, I can go back and fix it, and I don't have to feel bad, because I would feel terrible if I had to call up, like, jay from revel broker, and he's like, listen, I designed this thing for you, and I say it's not the right size. I don't like it. I think that this. I would feel so bad constantly going back and making a pre do things. So it's nice to be able to do those myself.
[00:25:41] TalkingDice: It absolutely is. And look, another thing, too, is looking through your work. There's a lot of shell cast dice or blank or inserts or whatever people want to call it. Is that a big part of what you do? Is it something that you really enjoy doing?
[00:25:56] TheReliableRogue: Yes. I would say that's probably 99% of what I do now is the blanks and then the shell casts.
I love the freedom that I get with blanks because you can decorate them however you want. You can add themes and ideas and things that you just couldn't do in normal resin in just, like, a one cast thing. So I adore using blanks. It's probably one of my absolute favorite things and probably what I do every time now.
[00:26:29] TalkingDice: But that takes a degree of patience as well. Right? Because you have to double cast them.
[00:26:35] TheReliableRogue: Yes. Yeah. You cast the one, and then you pull them out, and it's like, if they pass. If they pass, and you're like, oh, this is pretty good. They just need some extra decoration, and then I can do them. Or they. You pull them out and you go, oh, these aren't super great. I'm just going to throw them in this bin, and then that's when I do all my experimenting is with these weird extra blanks that I. That didn't pass the test, you know? But, yeah, no, I don't mind the double casting. It's really become second nature to me. Like, it's. It's a rarity and shocking when I do dice that only take one cast, and it's like, whoa, this is so easy.
[00:27:09] TalkingDice: Yeah.
And look, I think shell casting is generally quite forgiving, but the only problem there is if you. You know, you mess up the outer shell, right?
[00:27:19] TheReliableRogue: Oh, my God. You have no idea the amount of times I've openly wept opening up some of those molds, and it's like, no, I didn't. Or, like, you pull them out just a little too early because I usually use sprue molds, so they have to come out at just the right time where they're still kind of flexible, and you can cut all the, you know, the bits off of them as opposed to cap molds because I always get voids and hate them.
So. So you'll pull the dice out and you'll go, I pulled these out an hour too early, and, like, all the resin has, like, sucked into itself, and they've got these weird divots and bubbles, and it's like, I spent an hour decorating these blanks. I spent an hour, and now they're. And now they're ruined.
[00:28:01] TalkingDice: So frustrating.
[00:28:02] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, no, it's rage inducing.
[00:28:06] TalkingDice: Yeah. Look, I think anyone who's used cat molds has probably had their fair share of voids, but, you know, I think I've just kind of made my peace with them now and have it down to a bit of a fine art.
[00:28:16] TheReliableRogue: Well, I found the funny thing is, and this is kind of why I've shifted to working with only blanks when I use my blanks in my cap molds. I never get voids. I never, ever, ever get them. If I don't use blanks, if I just fill those cap molds up, there's always a void. It's massive, and it's like, where did this air even come from?
So that's helped. I have been slowly transitioning to cat molds, and I know every dice maker who I know that hears out is going to be shocked because I'm so openly against cat molds. I hate them so much. And now that's all I'm working with.
[00:28:56] TalkingDice: Look, I don't think you're the only dice maker. When I was researching for the book, I did reach out to quite a lot of dice makers and say, should I include something on, you know, sprue molds or, you know, other types of molds? And the funny thing is, I reckon about 50% of people said no. You know, no one, no one cares about sprue molds anymore. And the rest said no. Sprue molds are great. And, you know, they still very much have a use in dice making.
[00:29:21] TheReliableRogue: Yeah, I will say with sprue mold, it was nice coming into the, the art of, like, designing and printing your own dice with all of the knowledge I have, because I've primarily worked a sprue molds. Like, cap molds are new to me. So I've come into this with the knowledge of both while, you know, the, the cap molds is a little bit less knowledge. Um, so when I make these weird shapes, I can look at some of them and I can say, oh, you know, I could do this as a sprue mold and it would be ten times easier than trying to do it as a cat mold. Like, some of them have, like, rounded tops and bottoms and it's like, well, how do you cap that? You know, you just, you don't. You have to do a sprue mold for it. And so I've had to, like, I've had to learn how to adapt, like, new styles of making molds for some of these weird shapes and.
Yeah, and it's just nice coming in with all that knowledge and knowing exactly what to do and what would be good and bad.
[00:30:17] TalkingDice: Absolutely. And you know what? There's so much knowledge out, you know, outside of dice making there, on how to make correct molds and using vents and things like that. And I think the problem with dice making is people have just said, you know, this is the way, this is the way we do it. And, you know, there's just so much, so much knowledge that's probably lost there. And traditional mold makers are probably looking at us going, why?
[00:30:40] TheReliableRogue: Why do you do things that, why wouldn't you do it this way?
[00:30:43] TalkingDice: There's so many easier ways.
[00:30:45] TheReliableRogue: Yeah.
[00:30:46] TalkingDice: And also too, like, a lot of complex shapes, you know, could probably benefit from some vents and things like that. Or sprues, as we like to call them in dice making.
[00:30:54] TheReliableRogue: Yeah. So that would be one that when I do them, which I, you know, I did, and then I ruined them because they got cure inhibition. But when I do them next, which should be on, like, Thursday, I think I have a plan to do, like, a hybrid sprue mold. So it's going to be a cap with a sprue on it so that I don't have to worry about voids. Because I swear voids are, like, the bane of my existence.
But, like, also the beautiful thing about designing them, too, is I can take into account when I'm putting them together. Like, how is this going to mold my original d twelve for that bottle set had, like, this really tapered long, and it was so beautiful when I printed it, this beautiful tapered long potion bottle. And I was like, this is so wonderful. And then I printed it, I went, how the hell am I going to mold this thing? Like, I can't do it on the bottom like the rest of them because it's so tiny. I'll ruin my mold. Every one, you know, pull that I get from it. So I had to go back in and redesign the d twelve to be a bit fatter and shorter and have that bigger opening so that I didn't have to worry about that.
[00:31:56] TalkingDice: Now, you've said to me a few times, you're not very technical, but here you are designing dice. What. What are you. What are you doing that in?
[00:32:05] TheReliableRogue: I equate that. What? I absolutely complement that to rebel broker. They taught me everything I know. Their discord. They had classes. I think they still do them. And they'll do, like, individual classes.
[00:32:18] TalkingDice: Okay.
[00:32:19] TheReliableRogue: But I do them in Tinker and Tinkercad. I. Listen, I've tried blender. I can't. I am not technological by any stretch of the imagination. So Tinkercad is beautiful because it's just, you just have to understand shapes. And I actually went to art school. Not that that necessarily means anything, but, like, I've kind of studied how shapes interact with each other and, like, how I have kind of a better grasp on how things will look together. But essentially, Tinkercad is, like, playing with toy blocks. Right. You can just take a circle and a triangle and mash them together, group it, do some cutting, and. And you have a potion bottle. You know, it's. It's super, super easy. Blender is like that, but on steroids. Like, I can't. I don't understand this at all. There's too many buttons. Why. Why is everything hidden?
[00:33:11] TalkingDice: Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I've spent most of my career as a programmer, and I still find blender really challenging, but. So tell me, you went to art school. You've done embroidery.
Have you always been involved in the arts in some way, shape, or form?
[00:33:29] TheReliableRogue: I have. I've actually, throughout, like, my school career, I played the viola for the majority of my school and then a little bit outside of school, so I've always at least had that going. I didn't really have a chance to take, like, any art classes. I always wanted to, but, like, orchestra really took up a lot of my electives during that time. And then when I got out of high school and I thought, well, I'm gonna go to college, I thought, I've always wanted to do art. Let's just jump in. And I got just a general fine arts degree. So I've tried everything. I did jewelry making. I did, you know, all the different kinds of painting.
I did, like, a weird found art class, which was so strange, because it was, like, bring in a book, and let's, like, make sculptures with it. And then we learned how to make paper. And so I've touched on a lot of different art things, and so to finally be outside of college and, like, doing my own thing and having my own business and having it be.
Having it be resin dice for, like, d and d is shocking to me. If you had told me this back when I was in my twenties, I probably would not have believed you. Like, I would have never expected this to be the avenue, but, you know, I'm making a thing, and people seem to really enjoy the thing I'm making, and that brings me so much happiness.
[00:34:50] TalkingDice: I bet it does. And are you getting a lot of people wanting custom work or commissions done?
[00:34:55] TheReliableRogue: I do, yeah. I actually normally, I used to just kind of go. Go with the flow. If anybody contacted me, I just make them what they wanted. But for some reason, over the last, I want to say maybe four months. I'm not sure where all these people came from, but, yeah, I get a lot of requests to a point that I had to finally, like, sit down and actually hammer out. This is how many I can do. It was, like, ten slots that we put up, and I was like, I overdid it. I got halfway through the month, and I'm like, oh, my God, I'm not going to have anything for my restock. Like, I. Yeah. So I had to sit down and say, okay, this is how it's going to work. So take five per month now for, like, one week, but they usually are gone, you know, within the first day or two.
[00:35:40] TalkingDice: And do you ever get any strange requests for commissions? You know, any. Anything unusual or different that, you know, you'd like to talk about?
[00:35:48] TheReliableRogue: No, no, they're great. Normally, I get 50 50. Most of the time I'll get remakes. So, like, it's a feeding frenzy when I restock my shop, like, to a point that even I'm shocked every month. So I'll get people saying, you know, I really liked this set, and it sold out so fast. Can you remake it for me? Which I'm always happy to do because that's, you know, that's an easy commission. And then the other half is, like, character based dice, which I love doing character based dice, especially the ones where people are just like, do whatever you want with it. Like, here's my character. Do what you want with it. And I love having that creative freedom. Of course, I want their input on it, you know, but I'll send them to, like, a Google Docs where it'll just ask all kinds of things about the character. You know, what do they do for fun? Like, what's their general mood? How would you describe them? Things like that, so I can get a feel for them.
I would say there's nothing really strange that people ask for. I had, the newest one I had was right in my wheelhouse, which was for a vampire wizard character that was very victorian and dark and red and bloods, and I'm like, that's me. I can do that. That's what I do. That's my vibe. Oh, wait, no, I don't have a vibe.
Oh, no, no. It's dark and gloomy.
You came to the right person.
[00:37:10] TalkingDice: And, Nichelle, it sounds like you got a pretty well kitted out workshop there. What's one piece of equipment that you just couldn't live without?
[00:37:17] TheReliableRogue: Yes. I have a precision exacto knife. I tell this to everybody that will listen to me. I will preach this. This is the hill I die on. The precision exacto knife. It is to die for. The thing is so awesome because it's like, I don't know how to describe it. It comes to a point. It's super short, and it has, like, a ring at the end that you stick your finger through, right? So you're almost wearing jewelry, like, super sharp, very dangerous jewelry. And then you can use your finger to glide where you're cutting. It helps me with all my sprues. Not that, like I said, many people use sprues, but, you know, it'll help. It helps with, like, everything. Not just dice making, like, everything. The Fiskars precision exacto knife. Trust me, it will change your life. Oh, and wait, there's one more. The, um. The dremel I polished my stuff with a dremel. Could not live without the dremel.
[00:38:11] TalkingDice: Do you do that from the. From the beginning? Or, like, do you start with, you know, your zona paper polishing paper?
[00:38:18] TheReliableRogue: I do not use zonas. I am starchly against. I am starchly against Zona. Like, the. The dislike I have for cap molds doesn't come close to the dislike I have for verging on baby hate for zona favors.
I just. Listen, I started with them. I used them for a very, very, very long time as.
[00:38:42] TalkingDice: As people do.
[00:38:43] TheReliableRogue: Yes. And then I learned about this other method, and I was like, well, that looks pretty cool, but I already have the zonas. I already know how to use the zone. So I kept using those for, like, another six months before finally I'm like, no, something's got to give. So I tossed those. I got my three m sandpaper, and I started sanding them with that. And then I go right to the dremel, like a 10 00, 20, 00, 30, 00 on, specifically three m right to the dremel with polishing compound. And, oh, my God, they polish up like glass. And it's like, a fraction of the work that zona papers are and.
[00:39:18] TalkingDice: And a fraction of the cost.
[00:39:20] TheReliableRogue: Yes, yes. And like, and like. And I spent. And I'm so mad at myself for spending those extra six months with the. With the Zona papers that, like, everybody that will listen to me, I like, no, you got to get rid of them. I like, I'm like a preacher on my soapbox, like, screaming at people to ditch the zonas.
[00:39:39] TalkingDice: It sounds like we might have to do a deep dive into that in a future episode. And, Nichelle, around the socials. Who are the people that we should be following? Who are the people that inspire the.
[00:39:49] TheReliableRogue: Reliable rogue rebel broker productions? For sure. If you're. If you're wanting to get into printing your own masters or designing them any anything that has to do with printing, find their Patreon, subscribe to, like, the lowest tier. I don't know if they have a cap on it, but I think it's like $1. It'll get you into their discord. They have a ton of information already gathered, but they'll do. They'll answer any of your questions. It may take a day or two, you know, to get back to you, but it's so, so great and full of just a ton of helpful people from all different stages. So definitely check them out if that's something you're interested in. As for dice makers, I would say probably red wine dice. Tara and I have been really good friends for the past couple years now, and we've shared a lot of tips and tricks. So if people are listening to this, because specifically, it's about me, she's got a lot of the same techniques that I use, but she does them in a different way. You know what I'm saying?
She'll take. We'll kind of take each other's ideas and, like, put our own spin on them. So if there's something that you like of mine, definitely check out her page. And can I plug one more thing that's not dice, but is super cool and totally D and D related?
[00:41:07] TalkingDice: Yeah, go for it.
[00:41:08] TheReliableRogue: Okay, so I have this, another collab that I did was with adventurers kiln.
And she makes the coolest little dice boxes. She, like, takes these tins. They're almost like, like Altoid tins, but a little bit bigger.
And she does this clay work, and she'll do scenes in clay on top of these boxes. And you can put your dice in them, and they are so cool. And I'm. It should be a crime. She's only at 150 followers.
She made me the coolest.
All I told her, we did a trade. All I told her for mine was, I want something for my. My treasure map dice. And I don't like bright and cute. I like dark and gloomy. You can see a theme here. I like kind of dark and gloomy. Can you do something with that? And she made me the coolest, like, stormy shipwreck with a little, like, loch ness monster out in the water. And it had this mask, this, like, broken mask that I could set my dice on top of. And the thing is so stinking cool. One more weird one that I really like, the steeping dragon. If you like tea. She does like D and D flavored themed teas. I got one of her advent calendars last year because you know, it's hard to order something if you don't really know what it tastes like and you can only go off of a description. So I got the advent calendar.
[00:42:36] TalkingDice: And what does dungeons and dragons taste like?
[00:42:39] TheReliableRogue: That's a very good question. I still don't know.
I tried, like, every flavor that she had and I actually, my two favorites were, like, some of her winter blends, which I think I then went and bought her out of because she only had them at the wintertime. And I was like, I can't live without these for the rest of the year. So.
[00:42:57] TalkingDice: And I love that. And I think that there's nothing an adventure needs more than great tasting tea. And down under in Australia right now, I've got to say it's absolutely freezing and there's probably nothing that would be better than a hot cup of tea. Nichelle, if people want to reach out to you and, you know, and see more of your dice and, you know, maybe get on that exclusive commission list, what's the best place for people to do that?
[00:43:20] TheReliableRogue: Well, my Instagram. I only have the one social media. I technically have a facebook, but let's be real, I don't update that very often, so Instagram is really good. I have a link to my email, a contact form on my website, which is just thereliablerogue.com dot. You can also find a link to that in my Instagram bio as well as my commissions page, which will outline everything I do. I don't do when my commissions are open. It outlines price guides, all of that on the commissions page on my website, also in my bio link.
[00:43:53] TalkingDice: Thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure today. I've really enjoyed chatting with you and I really hope our listeners have really enjoyed this. And, yeah, please, please follow Nichelle, the reliable rogue, and by her dice, they're absolutely fantastic. So, yeah, thank you so much.
[00:44:07] TheReliableRogue: Well, thank you for having me. I've actually really, really enjoyed my time here. So this has been fun.
[00:44:23] TalkingDice: And if you're hearing this message, you've listened to the entire episode of talking Diving, and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please give us a big thumbs up and leave a review. And don't forget to check out patreon.com talkingdice if you'd love to help us in the best way possible. And we'll catch you in the next episode of talking Dice. Goodbye.
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