We're dNumber (or 'dNo' for short), a hobby universe centered around beautiful, playful, collectible digital items – dice, figures, tiles and stories. Around these digital items we’re building games, working with our community to nurture a brand new hobby together.
What does that mean?
At the heart of dNo are our collectibles – unique, beautiful items you can play with, trade, modify and even create. These will ‘drop’ over time, starting with dNo Dice, later adding dNo Figures, dNo Tiles and dNo Stories. Every set of dice, individual figure, tile collection and story module will be secured using blockchain technology meaning, once it’s yours, it’s yours to keep. You might choose to play with it, make something new from it, keep it forever or sell it on – that’s up to you. They’re yours and you can do whatever you like with them.
What can I do with them?
Anything. They’re yours. But to start with you can use them in the games and apps we’re building for the dNo Universe. Part of our core mission is “immediate utility.” This means if you have a dNo collectible you can use it right away. We don’t believe in promises of utility at the end of a long roadmap. We'll keep developing and improving our games, and our community of creators will build more using our SDKs, but it’s important to us that you can play with every object in the dNo universe as soon as it’s released.
dNo Dice
The starting point is dNo Dice – beautifully crafted sets of seven digital dice – the same kind of sets you’d use to play tabletop role-playing or war games. Each set contains a d4 (four sided), d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and d100 (which has 10 sides, numbered 00-90, some people call them d%). And every set is completely unique; not just visually but in terms of how it affects the games you’ll play in the dNo Universe.
Genesis Dice
First, we’ll drop our “Genesis” dice. This is a very small drop (around 100 sets), exclusive to those people who’ve found out about dNo somehow and made their way to our Discord server.
As soon as we drop these dice you’ll be able to use them in three “early access” preview apps/games: dRoller, Dice Goblins, and Hex Gen. Right now they’re all early, with simple art and prototype game mechanics. We want to learn what our players like, what they don’t like, and what they’d like us to add or change so we can – with your help – evolve our games and choose where we take the dNo hobby together.
So, they’re all games about rolling dice?
No. Game designers can interpret the dNoDice traits in whatever way they like; Hex Gen is a great example. The dice are used to create playable characters by dropping them in various slots (like a slider in a character creator) . The game then looks at what dice you’ve used and generates a character from your choices. After the Genesis drop we’ll be issuing dice in themed sets, the early ones being based around character classes: rogues, wizards, barbarians and so on. So, if you drag all rogue dice into the character creator, you’ll generate a stealthy assassin type. Swap out a couple of those for some wizard dice and you’ll imbue your character with unique magical powers.
dNo Figures
The second pillar of dNo is figures, the playable characters inside our games. As well as being able to create (and, ultimately, mint on the blockchain) your own figures using dice, we’ll also be releasing figures to collect. From there you can play with these 3D figures in Hex Gen and any other games in the dNo universe that support them.
We’re planning to let you customize your figures as well, allowing you to make them even more unique.
dNo Tiles
Tiles are the hexagonal building blocks of the dungeons you’ll battle through in Hex Gen and other games. Once we drop the tiles, you’ll be able to construct your own dungeons, play those created by the community, even play daily challenges procedurally generated by the game.
Tiles might contain pieces of land, stone, walls, pillars, lava, treasure chests, traps and much more!
dNo Stories
Stories represent the world dNo games are played in. Think of dNo Stories as our equivalent of the campaign modules you might use in familiar tabletop games. Stories detail what – or who – can be found in a world, the world’s lore and history, and possible narratives you may encounter while there.
Driven by our Community
We’ll be developing our games in full public view from day one. You’ll be able to see – and play – new games and game systems as soon as we create them. This includes very early experiments, some of which will work, and some won’t but, with your feedback, thinking, and creativity we’ll grow this hobby together.
Additionally, we’re giving the community access to our technology so you can develop your own games, tools, tweaks, and mods to the dNo Universe, bringing our collectibles into your own games. Love something? Get involved and help us make it better! Hate it? Download our SOLID SDK and make something you’ll love instead! SOLID will be initially available for Unity, but we plan to release versions for other game engines like Unreal in the future. We’re also really excited about the idea of bringing our collectibles into other games too. One day we hope you’ll be able to use your dNo items anywhere in the metaverse!
Never say die
Grammar purists among you might notice we’re using the word ‘dice’ for both singular and plural. We decided that’s how we like it, language evolves and all that.
Join Us
We'd love to have you along for the ride as we build our toys, games and hobbies. Why not check out our Discord Server, where we're developing everything in full public view. We'd love to have your input on what we're doing!