Summary
Hasbro’s Wizards of The Coast has teamed up with Sirius Dice and Daniel Quasar to bring a beautiful new limited editionDungeons & DragonsProgress Pride dice set to celebrate Pride Month. The Progress Pride dice set has been designed by Quasar, who created the Progress Pride Flag, with each die featuring a different color of the original rainbow pride flag and the Progress Pride Flag inside. This is a limited edition set with only 1,500 made and with each set purchased $30 is donated to the Trevor Project.
These dice are the perfect way for LGBTQ+ TTRPG players to celebrate Pride Month and add to their dice hoard. Dungeons & Dragons has become a safe haven for many, with LGBTQ+ players able to explore their own identity through their characters as part of their journey to self discovery. Quasar themself has experience asan avid Dungeons & Dragons playerof using their agency as a player to explore identity. Now, they can play with the dice they created.
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Screen Rantinterviewed Daniel Quasar about teaming up with Wizards of the Coast and Sirius Dice to create the Progress Pride Dice set. They explained the process of designing the dice, which of the dice is their favorite, and their desire to team up with Wizards of the Coast and Sirius Dice again. Quasar also reflectedon how Dungeons & Dragonshelped them with their own journey with identity and how it feels to see their flag around the world.
Daniel Quasar Talks Bringing The Progress Pride Flag Into Dungeons & Dragons
Quasar explained how they find the balance between what they envision and what is actually possible, teasing an idea that never came to fruition. They did share what inspired the idea of having not just the Progress Pride Flag in the dice, but the different colored dice as well.
Daniel Quasar: That was an interesting process because I feel like as a designer your mind runs wild, and then you have a bunch of different ideas, and then you have to kind of sift through them and figure out what is the most interesting, but also what is the most doable and the most economical? I definitely had an idea for a set that was way out there and would’ve been really cool, but also totally not feasible. But that’s just the dream.
So what ended up becoming the actual dice was just the best of both worlds in terms of what works for me as a designer and what I find interesting, because that’s always important. I don’t want to put out something if I don’t find it interesting. And then also what works best for Wizards, what they’re wanting to accomplish. Also, what resources we have and capabilities we have. So when I was working with Sirius, who was the company that manufactured the dice and are the ones who are selling it, basically came to me and were like, Hey, we have these different options, one of which was you can put in a printed disc type of thing that can have anything on it, essentially.
And I was like, Oh, perfect. Then that should make it fairly easy to get the design itself in there. Beyond that, I kind of wanted to do a little bit more to it than just have my flag as a symbol inside the dice and call it a day. I asked them if all the dice had to be exactly the same and they said no. So I opted to have each of the dice be one color from the traditional pride flag, the traditional rainbow. So it kind of, in a way, still allows it to be a little bit different than your typical dice set where it matches across the board. That was really fun.
Quasar also reflected on the collaboration process with Wizards of the Coast and Sirius Dice. They explained why this collaboration process was so smooth and why they appreciated the creative freedom they were given. Quasar also shared their hopes of collaborating with them more in the future.
Daniel Quasar: I can talk from the perspective of collaborative work. I’ve done a lot of collaborative work over the years now, especially since creating the flag and working with Sirius and Wizards has been phenomenal. They’re probably some of my favorite people to work with so far. I mean, what can you expect from a bunch of nerds? That’s just how it is. We do well in groups of our own, but it was just really smooth, honestly.
I feel like there have been collaborative efforts with other groups of people where it’s a little bit tougher, and that’s just normal, just corporate-level kind of things that just always occurs. But with Wizards and Sirius, it just was really smooth, really easy. Everyone kind of had the same goal in mind, I think it just was a really perfect set of people all from different places working together, and that just synergized really, really well.
I just had a great time, and I felt a really high level of freedom and input that isn’t always present when it comes to working on something, design or art oriented with a company. I just feel like that they were a really great team, and so it was just super fun. Honestly, I would work with them again in a heartbeat. Definitely trying to.
Quasar’s redesigned pride flag was first launched in June of 2018. The Progress Pride Flag includes the original rainbow colors as well as elements of the transgender pride flag and a black and brown stripe on the new chevron. Quasar shared the impact it has had on them to see their flag around the world and incorporated it into things like this dice set. They explained how it has touched countless lives and spread to places around the world they will never be able to visit.
Daniel Quasar: Besides just being able to see it everywhere, which is always a fascinating thing for anyone really, but for a designer, I feel like that is pretty top tier. 10 out of 10, pretty awesome experience to be like, I made a thing and I see it everywhere, which is cool. But I think my favorite thing is that I just really like hearing people’s experience that is completely separated from me as a person, but involves the thing that I made. Just being able to see how something I did has impacted them. It’s just really, really fun.
I attempt to hold onto those moments a lot. It’s just because there are so many of them, and it’s just kind of something I talked about in one of my speaking gigs that I’ve done over the years is that I have gotten to speak to so many people across the world with stories that are just uncountable because there’s so many of them. But even beyond that, I’m like, this flag has gone places I will never be, in person I’ll never see. It has gone to touch lives of people that I don’t even know about yet.
So that kind of idea is really cool to me that I’m just like, there are things that I am aware of that are really awesome, and then there are things that I’m completely unaware of that are probably also just as awesome. I’s the idea that every day I can be presented with a new, oh, by the way, did you know your flag is doing this? Or it’s here, or I get a photo from a friend who decided to go on vacation, and they’re like, Oh, I saw it here. And they send me a picture of it. That’s pretty cool.
Daniel Quasar Explains How D&D Helped Them In Their Journey Of Self Discovery & Identity
The fantasy role-playing aspect of Dungeons & Dragons is not just an opportunity for players to have the freedom to guide their own story. It can also be a chance for players to self-reflect and explore aspects of their own identity. This was the case for Quasar when playing a non-binary character before they identified as non-binary themselves, and they aren’t the only LGBTQ+ person who has had this experience with the game.
Daniel Quasar: I came up to speak with Wizards. I got a chance to talk to their employer resource group, which was really fun. But I spoke a lot about D&D and identity and how the two kind of clash, well, not clash, but how they kind of come together. I guess in a way, it’s a clash because the D&D presents you with the opportunity to do whatever you want and to be whoever you want, and that can quickly clash with who you are as a person. A lot of what I realized playing D&D over the years was kind of just like, Oh, I’m actually test-driving things that I ended up just identifying with later on.
I remember this was a few years ago, I played a character that I coded as non-binary, but I didn’t know what that was at the time. I didn’t identify as non-binary at the time like I do now. So it was fascinating to come out of that. I didn’t call them non-binary, I didn’t have the language. I just was like, I want to make a character that’s a really pretty elf that someone will look at and see the most beautiful person they’ve ever seen, or at the same time somebody else will look and see that the most handsome person, if I were to use gendered versions of those terminology.
This idea that they’re ambiguous in terms of what they are, and who they are, and how they identify, and stuff like that. So coming out of that and then years later being like, Non-binary, oh, that’s totally me. Oh wait, I did this already with a character in D&D. That’s fascinating. More recently, I did something similar with a character that was a half-elf bard, but was actually a Changeling bard. The only person that both in-game and out-of-game knew was the Dungeon Master. We left it out of the group.
I was like, I’ve known these people for years. I’m not going to tell them because I want them to have this meta thing going on. And so I think as queer people, we are given a chance to really grasp a sense of agency of ourselves that I think a lot of non-queer people do not have the opportunity for. There are more opportunities for us as queer people to be more in control of the agency of ourselves and what we do and who we are and things like that. That’s kind of unique to our community is that we’re open to so much more than just the general norm.
So that was my idea of taking agency over my character or the character taking agency over their situation and having a coming-out moment, and doing all of that, and having control of all of that was really cool. It really allowed me, as somebody who struggles with anxiety issues, and panic attacks, and somebody who deals with virality and having something so big and huge outside of them, that it was a way for me to play with agency of self again. So it was kind of empowering to me as a person, not just empowering to me as a character.
When asked which of the dice is their favorite Quasar struggled to choose. This was the toughest question as they initially picked the D20 with the D8 and D12 quickly coming into play as well.
Daniel Quasar: I’m always a fan of a D20. I know that’s probably pretty typical, but the big decision maker it’s what I like. If I were to tell you my second favorite, which I think would be more interesting, is I really like a D8, and that’s because I play a Bard right now, and so I use a lot of D8 just for bardic inspiration and everything else. So that one is there to, I guess I like a D12 also, but that’s just because it’s a really good shape. Honestly, it’s hard to pick one. And I don’t want to! They all work together. They’re all important.
Although nothing has been announced Quasar hopes to continue working in the medium of dice as a designer. They would love to work with Sirius on more dice, even beyond the Pride dice they deemed too difficult for this limited edition set although they do hope to create those in the future. Quasar also wants to continue collaborating with Wizards as well.
Daniel Quasar: Once I find a new medium of art and design, I’m just like, I’m going to think of a thousand and one different things. I would still love to be able to make that crazy version of the dice that I had in my head at the very beginning. Obviously, it would be a lot, but it’d be super fun to figure it out. Sirius has been super kind and very open to the idea of just even stuff beyond Wizards and beyond anything in particular. They would love to continue working with me. And I’m like, Great. I would love to continue making dice designs. So there will be more dice coming from me, hopefully, in the future.
And then as far as Wizards, opportunities, whatever they want to do or are willing to, I’m down for because I think what I got to learn besides just getting to do this experience and it’s all part of this long pride-related activation, which was just that I got to meet some really cool people and some fellow queer nerds who were super fun and are super fun. Beyond that have friendships now with some of these people. Whatever capacity I’m working with Wizards, whether it’s because I know them, because they’re my friends, or we’re doing something official. It’s all there and available in some way.
The Progress Pride Dice areavailable now through Sirius Dice, but this is a limited edition set with only 1,500 total sets available.
