There’s a lovely promise doing the rounds in TTRPG spaces at the moment: roll your own dice, keep your own minis, and let a clever bit of software carry them straight into your online game. For a lot of us, that’s exactly what we want. The trouble is that “connects your dice to your VTT” can cover a huge range of things, and it isn’t always obvious from the outside which one you’re looking at.
So before you buy, or even just try, any tool that promises to connect real dice to a virtual tabletop, here’s the checklist I’d run through. It doesn’t name names. Think of it as the questions you’d ask a friend who already owns one, rather than a review of any particular product.
First, do you actually want one?
It’s worth saying that not everyone needs a tool like this. Plenty of players couldn’t care less what their digital dice look like. They just want to play, and they love how easy a virtual tabletop makes it to get together with friends who live miles away. There are also lots of people who have only ever played online, so they don’t miss rolling at a real table the way some of us old timers do. And that’s completely fine.
But I’ve also spoken to a lot of people who want nothing more than to use their own dice online. So far, the closest most of them have got is hunting down digital dice on their favourite VTT that look as much like their real ones as possible. If that sounds like you, read on.
How much fuss does it add to game night?
This is the big one because it decides whether a tool survives contact with a real table. Some setup is probably always going to be needed. Most of us live busy lives, and our dice and dice tray spend most of the week on a shelf somewhere, so they get brought out and dusted off for game night. That’s going to mean setting the tray up again and checking the camera, and that’s fair enough. But if it needs much more than that every single session, it will get tiresome very quickly. Ask what a normal session looks like once the novelty has worn off, not just what the first setup involves.
How much does it slow the game down?
This goes hand in hand with the fuss question, and it’s easy to overlook. Waiting three or four seconds while the computer checks your dice and adds them all up is fine. Most of us take longer than that finding the right d8. Waiting a whole minute is a different story, especially mid-combat with the whole table hanging on the result.
What hardware does it need, and what will that cost you?
Some of these tools want nothing more than the webcam you already own, pointed at a tray. Others want a particular camera, a particular stand or a particular lighting setup before they’ll read reliably. Neither approach is wrong, but one of them is a five minute job and the other is a small project. Work out which one you’re signing up for before game night, not during it.
How often does it get it wrong?
No tool is going to read every roll perfectly, and that’s okay. If it misreads a die once or twice in a session, that’s probably fine. If it’s getting every other roll wrong, it isn’t really fit for purpose, however clever it is.
Reliability is about more than reading the numbers, too. Take smart dice, the kind that connect over Bluetooth. The concept is brilliant. In practice, if you forget to charge them before game night, it’s going to be a very short session for you, and I’ve heard people mention the connection being patchy at times. None of that makes them a bad idea, but it’s exactly the kind of thing worth asking about before you commit.
Can you see, and fix, what it thinks you rolled?
Trust is the whole point of rolling real dice, and that trust doesn’t survive a tool that quietly decides you rolled an 11 when everyone watched a 16 land. Look for a result you can check before it counts.
Honestly, I don’t think most players mind the odd misread, as long as they can see it and put it right. Depending on your table, it can even make for some funny moments, particularly when the computer is convinced you rolled a 1 instead of your 11. A quick correction step isn’t a design flaw. It’s what stops a misread from turning into an argument.
Does it work with the platform your group already uses?
A tool can be brilliant and still not be right for you yet if it doesn’t talk to the virtual tabletop your group has built a campaign around. Check which platforms it supports today, and which are planned. Plenty of tools in this space are young and still growing, so a roadmap is a good sign that the team is thinking ahead. If your platform is on the list for later, ask whether you can be told when it arrives, so you can jump in at the right moment.
What do you get for free, and what’s worth paying for?
A free version with paid extras is a common, and perfectly fair, way for tools like this to work. It means you can try the core idea at your own table before spending anything. Have a look at what the free version covers and what the paid version adds, then think about which of those features you’d actually use. That way you’ll know what you’re getting from day one, and whether upgrading later makes sense for your group.
Where does the footage or the data go?
Anything with a camera pointed at your table is, technically, capturing your table. For most groups that’s a complete non-issue, but it’s worth a moment’s thought. Who sees the footage, and is it kept anywhere? A tool that’s upfront about this, rather than burying it in the small print, is usually the more trustworthy one anyway.
How we’ve approached it
None of this is about steering you away from trying these tools. The whole reason we’re building Dice Link is that we think physical dice deserve a seat at a digital table, and we’d want you to ask every one of these questions about us too.
For what it’s worth, here’s how our working prototype handles the misread problem. When you roll, Dice Link captures a video of the roll to show the rest of your table. It also shows you a close-up of your dice and, in effect, says: “This is what I think you rolled, but I’m not completely sure. Can you check?” If it’s right, you click submit. If it’s wrong, you change the result. It adds maybe two seconds to your roll, and it means the right result reaches your table. As our accuracy improves, we hope more and more rolls will be able to skip that check altogether.
If you’ve already tried a tool like this, good or bad, I’d genuinely love to hear how it went. And if you like the sound of real dice making it into your online game without the faff, that’s exactly what we’re building. Join the list at https://realmbridge.co.uk/dice-link/ and we’ll tell you the moment Dice Link is ready to try.
If you have something to add to this, come along and join the conversation over on Discord.
