Spend enough time wandering the dealer hall at a major tabletop gaming convention, and it’s hard not to notice Black Oak Workshop’s booth. The first thing that draws your eye might be the hand-painted wooden road sign, pointing onlookers toward distant places with names like Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and Mystara. Nearby, flanked by dice bags, hangs a sculptured D&D beholder, glaring at passersby. And of course, there are the racks filled with what Black Oak is best known for: custom dice.
Amid this colorful setup, chatting with customers, you’ll usually find Black Oak Workshop’s owner and founder, Craig Zipse. Dressed in a collared Black Oak 
shirt worn open over a gamer T-shirt, with a gray baseball cap perched on his head, the bill slightly upturned, Craig projects an easygoing, approachable demeanor to everyone who stops by to see the dice he makes and sells.
I had the pleasure of meeting Craig at one of such convention, Gamehole Con in Madison, Wisconsin, where we talked about dice, cats, and what Black Oak’s customers mean to him.
Origins of a Dice Company
Black Oak Workshop is based in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia. It is a small, family-owned business made up of Craig and his wife, with help from their daughters. Black Oak sells dice, dice bags, and other tabletop-gaming accessories, all designed in-house. They also handle their own fulfillment, ensuring every order comes directly from the people who created the products.
The initial spark of Black Oak Workshop’s inspiration can be traced to a well-known name in tabletop gaming: Knights of the Dinner Table creator Jolly Blackburn.
“Black Oak Workshop was originally a company that produced resin cast terrain,” Craig explains. “And then a good friend of mine, Jolly Blackburn, told me, ‘Hey, man, why don’t you take some of these 2D design skills of yours and see what you can do with dice?’ And that’s how we kind of made the voyage into dice design.”
From the beginning, Craig was determined to approach dice design differently than other companies.
“Most of the leading dice manufacturers in the market today, the owners of these companies are dear friends of ours,” Craig says. “But we feel like we offer something very different. Just a brief perusal of our products will show potential customers the thematic nature of our dice and the design effort that goes into them.”
Those themes run the gamut, from gelatinous cubes and six-shooters to the Scooby-Doo inspired Ruh Ro d20. One of Black Oak’s most recognizable product lines is Kitty Clacks, polyhedral sets themed around cats. Each Kitty Clacks set has a feline name and matching color scheme, like the purple-and-pink Chesire set
or the black, white, and green Trixie set. Naturally, the highest number on each die features a kitty icon.
“We go all in on the cat theme,” Craig says, laughing. “I mean, who doesn’t like cats?”
On the Road
Black Oak Workshop typically attends about ten conventions each year. In the past, that’s included Gen Con in Indiana, Gamehole Con and Gary Con in Wisconsin, and Lug Con in their home state of Georgia.
“We like to get out there, meet our fans in person,” Craig says. “We’re very much a word-of-mouth growth company, and we do that best by outreach at shows.”
For Craig, that outreach is all about conversations with fans. Shaking hands, talking about gaming, and connecting with people who love the hobby as much as he does.
“I don’t view customers as a source of revenue, much to my chagrin probably,” he says. “If somebody wants to open their wallet and give us money for our creative ideas, that means something to me on a personal level.”
This approach has shaped how Black Oak does business. It’s not a marketing tactic, Craig explains, and it’s certainly not a calculated brand personality. It’s just who he is.
“I really like to meet our customers at the different shows we attend and shake their hands. We build relationships over the years based on that. For me, it’s not a transactional type of relationship. It’s more like Cheers, you know? ‘Welcome back, it’s good to see you, man!’ It just means a lot to me.”
Community & Crowdfunding
Another way fans play a vital role in Black Oak Workshop’s success is through the company’s use of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. As of this writing, they have launched 35 successful campaigns, all fully funded and fulfilled.
“We take fulfillment and backer satisfaction very seriously,” Craig says. “About 90% of our products are funded through the help of backers out there in the world. It is a key component to the success of our company.”
Crowdfunding also makes it possible for Black Oak to produce the highly thematic, niche dice sets that define their brand. By involving fans early in the process, Craig can ensure that even unusual or experimental designs have the support they need to go into production.
“As a child of the 80s,” Craig explains, “I know what it once was like to start a company and try to build it. Crowdsourcing has made so many wonderful creative dreams become reality. They are critical to our company.”
Advent-ure Calendars
Another of Black Oak’s most popular offerings is their line of themed dice calendars. Modeled after classic advent calendars, each set lets you count down to the holidays one door at a time, uncovering a new, specially designed die each day.
Advent-ure Calendars include various themes, from Kaiju Christmas and A Christmas Carol to non-seasonal options like Dracula’s Castle or the Lost Caverns. No matter the theme, Black Oak never fills them with overstock or standard mass-produced dice. Each calendar is packed exclusively with unique, custom designs created specifically for that set.
Great Dice, Human Touch
Speaking with Craig, it’s easy to see why Black Oak Workshop has earned such a loyal following. Whether he’s chatting with someone at a convention or dreaming up the next themed dice set, there’s a genuine personal investment behind everything he makes. Black Oak isn’t just about dice. It’s about a small, family-run business sharing their creativity with a community that loves gaming as much as they do.
If you’d like to explore their full range of dice, Advent-ure Calendars, and accessories, you can browse Noble Knight’s Black Oak Workshop selection. If you’d like to hear more from Craig himself, you can find the rest of our conversation below.
A Few Questions with Black Oak Workshop
Is there any particular product line you like to point people toward to show them what Black Oak Workshop is all about?
Well, where do I begin? I will say some of our early dice are still my favorite. These are our single individual dice from when we could not afford to make seven dice molds. And in those dice, you’ll see a lot of design sweat, and a lot of the hard effort that went into coming up with something unique and beautiful. Some of those early singles are very unique and fun.
But our bread-and-butter product line now would be our Kitty Clacks. And while we just use simple iconography for those dice, we try to give every color variation its own theme, its own art, and its own personality.
I think either one of those will probably speak best to what we’re all about.
For the record, my cats also like your cat dice.
Turns out most cats like our dice! Our cats do, too, and they apparently like them on the floor, off the edge of the table best.
Do you have a personal favorite dice set or theme for you that you love?
I’ll answer that in twofold. My personal favorite dice set that we ever released was from Advent-ure Calendar 8. It’s called the Galaxy set, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. That’s my personal favorite. But you can’t get that set anymore.
Now, standard product lines that we have out there in the world…for me, I think the Tentacle Sets are cool as hell! I’m a big fan of those. And watch for some new colors in that line this year.
Do you have a personal favorite dye type?
Oh, dude. Oh, that’s tough.
Am I asking you to choose between your children?
Yeah. I like the d4s you can find in our Advent-ure Calendars. It’s a standard caltrop-style d4, but we went all artwork on it. I love those because we innovated the
design. Plus, a legend in the industry, Lester Smith, made the d4ce RPG because he also loved them so much. So, I love those dice a lot.
But the d20 is my favorite shape.
Are there any upcoming releases you can tell us about?
We’ve got three new Kitty Clacks sets that are going to debut in 2026. We’re really excited for Cosmo, for Shadow, and for Smokey. Especially Cosmo, which is going to be memorializing a dear friend of ours who passed away this year.
Cosmo will be dedicated to your friend? Can you tell me more about that?
Cosmo is a set that’s going to be memorializing Andy Watkins. Andy was an owner of RPEX, a role-playing experience, which is here at Gamehole Con and a few other shows like Gary Con. It’s an interactive gaming experience.
But Andy passed away tragically, unexpectedly earlier this year. He had a kind of an alter ego that he used at shows, “Cosmo.” And he took that name from his beloved cat, Cosmo. So, to honor Andy, we thought, you know, we’re going to let one of our new Kitty Clacks bear that identity. Just to remember him by.
Anything else?
In the bigger picture, there’s something very exciting that we’re working on in 2026. We don’t know that it will be able to happen yet, but we’re looking at a new product line of dice that is unlike anything that we’ve ever made before. A new and extremely cool line of dice featuring eight dice as the standard set. Fingers crossed that it can happen!
Ok, we’ll have to stay tuned! Craig, thank you so much.
No, thank you, man.
