Howdy, everyone!
For our second artistXauthor interview, I bring you Soulforge Dice, my favorite dicemakers! So much my favorite that I worked with them to create custom dice for the guests at my civil ceremony. I never thought that I would become a dice hoarding goblin, and then they showed me the error of my ways. (I think I have seven sets from them alone, but who’s counting?)
Soulforge Dice is a dice-making duo, Hayley and Casey. I’ve got Hayley here answering some questions for us. And not only does Hayley make math rocks, but she draws art for her characters and is part of an actual play, Constructed Chaos.
Subscribers, read to the bottom for a bonus. 😉
Do you have a particular project or service you’d like to highlight for lovers of the queer arts?
Oh man, I'm a kickstarter fiend. I love finding cool indie projects over there. 7 Part Pact is the most recent addition to my crowdfund backlog. I love the worldbuilding, the character concepts, how tactile and interactive the whole experience of this TTRPG looks and I can't wait to get it in my hands. I'm someone who loves to play female characters who test the boundaries of their gender roles, so the concept of playing a wizard expected to uphold the masculine ideals of their station tickles my brain in a good way.
What art called you into this life?
It's funny to look back at all the small moments that tipped me towards this very niche creative field. The foundation of it all is TTRPGs and the way we were drawn into the world of interactive, collaborative, dice-driven storytelling. I'm really not exaggerating when I say that it changed my life. In so many ways. I found myself getting delightfully lost in the nuance of a character, of who they were, the aesthetics and elements that defined them in my mind. From there it was a tiny hop over to custom dice, and then almost seven years of escalating that little fixation into something so much larger.
I have to look back and give credit to the DMs who set us on this path as well. The people who sat us down around a table and gave us the space to play pretend and embrace the collaborative storytelling world for the first time. I was introduced to the idea that a handful of nerds could gather around a table and just tell a story together for a few hours every week and I never looked back.
What hobby do you maintain outside of your art?
I do so many little things. My hands need to be moving for 90% of my waking hours or I feel like I'm not doing enough. I'm working on this, I promise.
When I'm not on the dicemaking grind, my longtime beloved hobby is cosplay. I recently added chainmail to my repertoire and have been designing a couple of costumes inspired by my TTRPG characters. There's something about the process of creating with my hands and thinking about a character and their story that really helps with my immersion. I used to do the comic/pop culture cosplay thing, but I found myself picking apart every reference and angle to figure out exactly how something was created, which managed to drain the creative joy out of the process in the pursuit of making something perfect. These days I enjoy learning a new skill and creating pieces of tactile storytelling from my own imagination.
The musician Brian Eno coined the term “scenius—the intelligence of a whole operation or group of people.” Who is in your creative ecosystem?
I've always felt very blessed to have TTRPG groups who provide me with so much creative inspiration, they're priceless source material for me when I'm coming up with new designs. Whether its making little bounty poster sets for my horrible aasimar cowboy when the party discovers she's a wanted woman, or misty pink and blue for my partner's memory domain cleric, or a design inspired by any one of the characters I've fallen in love with over the years, I've always had people around me who tell beautiful stories that inspire my own work.
I'm incredibly blessed to have a couple of fantastic and innovative dicemakers and artists in my immediate circle as well. Chrissy with SevenLuckyDice sits in a plush little corner of my heart with her wonderful characters and genius dice work, Alex at ConstructedChaos is a powerhouse, running and DMing our live-streamed game, and my own partner Casey can't go without mention. I would forget to eat without his intervention, and I highly recommend having someone in your life who supports your insane creative ideas, it's wonderful.
What role does music play in your life? Your artistic process? What are you listening to these days?
ALRIGHT. When we boil it down, I'm a huge simp for my own damn characters. I build moodboards, I make dice, I commission art and do my own art. But the thing that really makes a character begin to take shape in my mind is the playlist. This is the part that hypes me up for game day, that gets me through long work sessions, it's what fuels a writing session and more. Want an idea? Here's one for Caesaria, the noblewoman warlock I play in our livestreamed game.
Music is the step that immerses me in a story and a character. I have playlists for writing projects, and playlists for campaign prep.
And if you want something that's just good, go check out the newest album by The Protomen. We're about to spend three days live in concert listening to their trio of concept albums and I'm so hyped.
Why is making queer/sapphic art important to you?
This is a fun question because at first glance, there is absolutely nothing sapphic about my art. It's dice. It's resin and colors and inclusions and paint and time. But what you should know is that underneath so many of the dice you see are sapphic stories. Encapsulated in resin are messy queer women and the adventures they go on and most importantly the people they love.
Dice making and roleplaying as storytelling have become my queer art outlet. Tabletop roleplaying games is my coming out story. I like to joke that D&D made me gay, but it really did. For over two years I played a tiny, frail gunpowder-priest cleric named Temperance, and a huge part of her story was the paladin she fell in love with. As I was playing through this story, getting lost in Temperance's character and her feelings for this woman they'd rescued, I found myself realizing that her story was actually true. This experience of putting myself in the shoes of a woman falling in love with another woman was emotional and intense and real.
I am endlessly grateful for the safe space I was given to explore that story and to let it change me as a person on a deep and personal level. And now whenever I sit down and I come up with a new design for a set of dice, there's a very real chance that some little bit of its design inspiration comes from a sapphic story that's coming to life at one of our tables.
Describe your work space.
Alright the first thing you need to know is that we've been running a dice business out of small apartments for the last six years. It's not glamorous, it's not one of those sleek, aesthetic studios that photographs well. It's a workspace that first and foremost serves a function, and while she's not pretty, I'm grateful for her.
God bless my partner for never once complaining about how much of my shit our apartment has to store. I do 3D printing, painting, resin casting, silicone mold making, sanding, polishing, packaging, photography, and sometimes I break out a sewing machine. I have a whole closet dedicated to costumes and sewing supplies. All of this happens in one room, most of the time.
When it's time to work I throw some music onto the studio speaker, kit myself up in a respirator and protective gear, and appreciate that I can see all the birds on the birdfeeder through my studio doors.
What are you reading/watching/playing?
God, my TBR is longer than I'd like.
I just finished Between Two Fires which I've had several people on my ass to read for a while. They were right, it's amazing, I aspire to reach those levels of gripping, dark fantasy storytelling some day. I was ugly sobbing on our balcony bench first thing in the morning when I finished it. I think my next read is probably going to be Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. I need more lady knights in my life.
Speaking of Lady Knights, the gamers should go check out Absolum. It gets bonus points for being local co-op. And it has a badass lady with a huge greatsword which is 100% my vibe.
I'm also watching the newest season of House of the Dragon and having Big Feelings about the arcs given to women in positions of power and how we deserve better female leads in our fantasy media, but I mostly watch it for the costumes.
Favorite book sapphics?
I picked this question and then kept sliding it down the list because man is it hard to answer.
I'm going to do the cheap answer first. Referring back to my "better female leads in fantasy media" complaint above, I loved Luca and Touraine because they were flawed. Because their relationship was fraught and messy at every turn, but they were given space to just be those flawed people just like the rest of us.
This is How You Lose The Time War is one of my most recommended books and I adore its time-traveling protagonists so much. They're unusual in that they feel sort of formless and faceless but you get to know them through their own words and hidden messages which is such a unique way of falling in love with characters. I was so invested in their journey at every turn, and they truly are the embodiment of the Red and Blue Sapphics meme.
How does collaboration show up in your process?
I saved this question for last because I knew I'd have the most to say here.
The majority of my actual physical process is pretty solitary. My partner helps with some of those phases, but most of it is just me hanging out churning out shiny math rocks.
It's the stories that fuel it all, however. And those are at their core, collaborative. None of them would be possible without the other players at the table, each of them storytellers in their own small ways. I couldn't make this set if it weren't for the player who introduced my drow knight to her monster hunter-turned-monster. We each brought these characters to the table, created completely separate from each other, and discovered parallels between them of grief and loss, love and self-worth, and the siren call of sacrifice. They're both defined by the chains of their decisions and their sense of duty. And now, by choice, bound to each other. Could I have told a story like that on my own? Maybe. But it's all the more meaningful because it happened with someone else, who brought an unexpected character and story into my life who I have the joy of writing alongside.
These people whose characters become so dear to me are an irreplaceable aspect of my creative process, and one that I feel so lucky to get to be a part of. You wouldn't have any of this, Soulforge wouldn't exist at all, if it weren't for the stories I've had the privilege to tell alongside other brilliant players and storytellers.
How to support us!
There are so many ways! Buy dice from our shop, join our Patreon or KoFi for exclusive stickers and dice, or just come hang out with us on Discord. All the links to all the things are right here.
I hope you’re enjoying this special interview! If you want to kit out your dice hoard or pick up a new bad habit, Soulforge Dice has offered a discount code to their dice shop for newsletter subscribers. Subscribe, then come back here and it’ll appear like magic.
Thanks to Soulforge Dice for being the 2nd artist in this series of interviews! (You can check out the very first one here.) Check out their Patreon or Kofi, follow them on Instagram, and get yourself some very sexy math rocks. And then share this with someone else who “doesn’t need anymore dice.” 😇
I hope you enjoyed this new venture! Thank you so much to the paid subscribers who give me a little more time to do all the email coordinating that goes into the process. If you want more, please share this! And consider supporting the work by becoming a paid subscriber or dropping a tip in the tip jar, and definitely show up for these artists and their work.
Keep an eye out for the next interview, and until then…
Stay sharp,
C. L.