Donate Life America blends themes of real-world and fantasy healing in a beautifully crafted and delightfully niche campaign from The Martin Agency, which created a set of handcrafted polyhedral “Healing Dice” for tabletop role-playing gamers.

The translucent dice have tiny hand-painted organs and tissues inside them. Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), including Dungeons & Dragons, typically use seven dice, but the Healing Dice set has eight—including a special Lifesaving Die that contains an anatomical heart, to be used only for death saves, which are critical life-or-death moments in a game.

At first glance, this seems like an unusually niche target to engage. But in fact, the themes in TTRPGs—life, death, healing, selflessness, honor—in many ways mirror those in the world of organ donation. Plus, TTRPG players are a very passionate group—and, as Martin found out in its research, a surprisingly large group as well.

Kim Nguyen and Kate Placentra, creative directors on the project at Martin, said the goal was to make something that fit seamlessly into the TTRPG world while nudging gamers to become registered organ donors themselves. (More than 100,000 people are waiting for organ transplants. One donor can save up to eight lives and heal 75 more.)

“My cousins play a ton of tabletop games, and they have a lot of this and that for each game, but there’s usually a set, or several sets, of dice,” Nguyen told Ad Age. “So as Kate and I were talking about how to reach the TTRPG community, we were really drawn to things that they could use and even want to collect. There’s something kind of funny and beautiful and magical about little organs in dice.”

Placentra comes from a sculpture background, and said it was a joy working with the artists who handcrafted the dice, including laser engraving studio Big Secret.

“They made the molds for each dice, tried about five different types of glitter before we found the perfect blue green that wouldn't interfere with the resin,” she said. “A lot of craft went into making sure these dice look great, feel good in your hands, and roll just right even with an organ floating inside.”

A sweepstakes to win one of the dice sets will run from Feb. 27 to March 27. You have to be a registered an organ, eye and tissue donor for a chance to win.

"The Healing Dice offer a unique opportunity to parallel gameplay that honors and protects life with the lifesaving role each of us can play in the real world,” said David Fleming, president and CEO of Donate Life America. “The Martin Agency has once again crafted a campaign for Donate Life America that creatively reaches and engages new audiences. We are excited to see how people incorporate the new ‘lifesaving roll’ in tabletop games with their lifesaving role in the real world to help save and heal lives through organ, eye and tissue donation.”

The Martin Agency has worked with Donate Life America for years. One of their most memorable collaborations was the “World’s Biggest Asshole” campaign back in 2016, reminding viewers that literally anyone can save a life.

See the video below for more about the Healing Dice.