I’ll be honest, I never played Dungeons & Dragons growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Watching the Stranger Things series represents the extent of my exposure to the game, which was made famous in the ‘70s for establishing the table top role playing (TTRPG) genre in earnest. Today, this is a genre that accounts for a huge fandom, as the subject matter has thrived in video games, movies, and books, bringing in scores of new enthusiasts. (Here’s a good primer on the current state of the TTRPG space from Phil Edwards.) Part of the appeal of engaging in these stories in person is the interactivity that’s involved, with a big part of that being the dice involved, which dictate the actions that can be taken by the players. This is the focus of a new digital watch project called the Timestop D-20.
The D-20 is a fully digital watch that took shape, like many projects did, during the pandemic. The idea was to program a module that would allow for random number generation for dice of varying sides. The module would include a quickroll mode to roll a single die with between 4 and 20 sides, as well as a combat mode that would allow you to virtually select and roll up to 12 dice with anywhere from 4 to 100 sides. That last one includes advantage or disadvantage for the D20. If you’re not sure what any of that means, this watch might seem a bit strange to you, but it does feature all the regular digital watch functionality you’d expect as well, such as the time, day, date with Perpetual Calendar, and both 12 and 24 hour modes.
Powering the watch is the Timestop WP1 Module, developed in-house with an 8-bit core. This element deserves a huge amount of respect, as it brings a novel suit of functions to a familiar platform without using an off the shelf option. The process of developing this module is outlined in this blog post from Timestop, which walks through the process of building the functions digitally alongside the form practically, and how they come to converge to result in the final product.
The result is a digital watch that has a certain cassette-futurism vibe to it, with an aesthetic that looks like it could have come from the ‘80s. It’s entirely functional in nature, with no real frills to speak of, other than the color of the case housing, which can be had in black fiber resin, stainless steel, or bright orange fiber resin. The case measures 37mm in diameter, 41mm from tip to tip, and a mere 10mm in thickness. The lug span is 20mm and it’s fitted to a nylon and polyester strap with a hook and loop system.
The D-20 is an inspiring project built to suit a very specific set of needs. It shows a huge amount of ingenuity, and represents a thriving community of enthusiasts within the TTRPG community. The end result is priced starting at just $99 for the base black resin model, rising to $119 for the orange model, and finally topping out at $159 for the stainless steel model. Timestop
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