I've started giving some thought as to how exactly I'm going to get Manaforge manufactured.
Now, I know that out of all of the components in Manaforge, the dice are going to be the biggest problem. Most games have custom cards, custom game boards, custom tokens, etc. But all of those are essentially paper, in various thicknesses, and printed with something approaching an ordinary printer.
Dice are another beast entirely. Common dice, with number or pips, are so standard as to not be a problem. But custom dice? Custom-made cubes of plastic with custom engraved symbols and ink? That's going to be more difficult. And difficult = costly. I'm coming into this knowing that 40 custom dice, 8 each of five different types, are going to end up being the most expensive part of the game's manufacturing costs.
So along those lines, I've been attempting to contact various game manufacturing companies, with mixed results, for information and prices on dice manufacturing. One company was very responsive. Another took a while but I managed to get through. A couple of others never responded. Of the ones that did respond, I managed to get one quote for just dice costs, and I'm waiting on another to get back to me with a quote for my whole game. (They didn't want to do a partial quote for just the dice.) I have one more I want to contact as well.
It's a slow process, but I'm not in a hurry... yet. I'm just hoping I'll be able to get the dice cost low enough to make the production viable. Between the cost of the dice themselves, plus the cost of the molds or other setup costs spread over the entire batch, I'm trying to keep the costs of the entire game to around $10 per unit, so that I can retail it for around $50. (There's that Board Game Rule of Five... production cost x 5 = MSRP.)
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