In last month's blog post, I spoke about all the amazing people I've had the pleasure of meeting since founding Dark Elf Dice. Gaming truly is a social activity, and it's the friendships and personal interactions that make RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons so much more than simply dice rolling and story telling. Recently I had the opportunity to get to know one of our customers a little bit more and learn about an exciting project he had in mind.
The D20 Shift Knob
Like many of us, Brandon Rubeck is passionate about RPG games and gaming dice. He's also a creative problem solver, and decided to take his enthusiasm for gaming to the next level by making a custom d20 shift knob for his car.
We had been exchanging emails when Brandon first told me about his idea. Needless to say, I thought it was brilliant. My first car was a stick shift, and I still have a lot of great memories about driving that old car, and really being "in the moment" while tooling around town. If you've ever driven stick, you know what I'm talking about. As Brandon succinctly put it:
I know it's nothing fancy, but right now I drive a 1995 Honda Civic, but downshifting to have some power to pull out of a turn is one of the funnest things you can do while driving. You just don't get the same experience while driving an automatic.
Dang straight! But anyway, back to the D20...
Brandon's idea was to take one our our giant D20's and convert it to a shifter knob. The d20 fits nicely in the palm of your hand, and would be absolutely perfect. Unfortunately, I'm not very mechanically inclined, so I couldn't give Brandon any advice on how to make his idea a reality. I encouraged him though, and I'm happy to say that the results came out amazing!
As I mentioned, Brandon is a creative problem solver. As he told me:
It wasn't difficult to do, although I did have some help. First we had to measure the thread pitch of my shifter to know how we should cut the threads. Then we drilled a hole slightly smaller than the size of the post for my shifter. Using a tap die kit, we cut the threads and then stuffed paper into the hole to make the die line up the way we wanted.
As the A-Team's John "Hannibal" Smith used to say: I love it when a plan comes together!
Until next time fellow travelers! If you're not mechanically inclined like me, you can always pimp your ride with a set of fuzzy d20 dice.
Remember: life is an amazing adventure. Have fun and make every moment count :)
