Let me explain why I'm writting this. (damn near every other review I've read here has one of these so why not me?) The groups I tend to game with seldom do our gaming at a table to roll dice, if there is a table it's usually covered with other things, be it pop cans, porn, anime, rule books, whatever. Which means there isn't a whole lot of room to roll a hand full of dice. Usually we end up rolling on a hardcover book, but this can be a problem if the book in question is the rule book for the game, especially if there is only 1 or 2 copies of the book in a group of 3-10 people...
With this in mind I decided to find another way of rolling dice without having to resort to using a book. I tried many things, and nothing really worked. Then I read Shane Hensley's post on the creation of Savage Worlds one day and in one of the pictures, I found the answer to my quest. A round wooden dice tray.
I then embarked upon a quest via numerous search engines to find a location to purchace one of these items. Finally I found one through my FLGS, ordered it and awatted it's arrival with glee.
Admittadly what I got was octagonal not round, but I recieved it none the less.
Octagonal dice Tray
It is 8 inches across, made of wood, solidly constructed, and the bottom of it is lined with felt. It also came with 2 wooden d6s. I paid $25 plus tax. one can be purchaced at this site here . All and all it is quite nice.
Travel Yahtzee deluxe
This I found at walmart last week and purchased. It is made mostly of plastic, comes with 5 plastic dice, a scoring pad and a pencil. I paid $15 for it, and saw it for the same price at my local book store.To be honest I would recomend the purchace of the Yahtzee over the dice tray. the dice tray, while nice, is large and fairly heavy, and takes up a lot of room in one's bag. Travel Yahtzee is as tall as an average gaming book, and half as wide, so if you have a pile of books in your backpack it would actually slide in beside the books quite easily. Plus it also includes a small dice cup, a pocket, (which can be used to store a character sheet) and a sewn in elastic loop that can hold 2 pencils, as well as being able to be zipped closed (holding ones dice so they don't end up scattered along the bottom of one's book bag).
If where you tend to game has no real place to roll dice, I would recomend you buy one of these items, but if you have to choose which one I'd go with the travel Yahtzee, it has a couple nice extras, and is a bit cheaper, so you can buy a game book as well with the difference in price.
