The Timestop D-20 is completely unique, and one of the most charmingly niche watches I’ve encountered in a long time. The conceit of the watch is relatively simple: it’s a straightforward digital watch with a design that seems to be inspired by classic Casios and other simple, affordable watches that have been ubiquitous for decades. It’s technically, I suppose, a “multi-function” watch, but rather than a robust array of calendars and chronographs like you’d find on a G-SHOCK, the D-20’s signature complication is a random number generator. The name D-20 is derived from the tabletop gaming world, where a 20 sided die might be regularly incorporated to keep the action moving. The watch, essentially, is meant to replace physical dice, and can simulate a number of common scenarios you’d need to replicate in a live game, including rolling multiple dice simultaneously, and rolling dice with multiple sides. Timestop has produced a helpful video that breaks down the various features of the watch, and if you’re a serious gamer (and even if you’re not) it’s worth a watch.
I’ll say upfront here that I’m not a big board game guy (with one key exception that I’ll get to momentarily). So you might think that the D-20 could be one of those watches that just sort of missed me – something I could certainly recognize as cool or fun, but not really connect to in a meaningful way. What I’ve found though in my short time wearing it is that it has, in a small way, unlocked some new perspectives on collecting that I hadn’t really considered, and illuminated some now obvious connections between the gaming world and watch enthusiasm.
The random number generator feature is a true novelty and it’s kind of an ingenious idea to work it into a watch. While gaming is the lens through which Timestop presents the D-20, the fact is that there are many, many potential uses for a random number generator outside of gaming. Think of all the times you make innocuous or mundane decisions from day to day. We all suffer, in one way or another, from analysis paralysis. Can’t decide what to order at a restaurant? What prestige TV show to catch up on later tonight? Staring at a closet full of clothes but feeling like you have nothing to wear? Assign a number to your options, push a button on the D-20, and the decision is made for you in a literal second.
Gaming though, is inextricably tied to the D-20, and while I’m not a player of the table top RPGs that the watch was designed for, it was hard not to reflect as I wore it over just a few days last week on how games, in one way or another, have played a role in my life. It honestly made me feel quite nostalgic in a way that I usually feel immune from when it comes to watches.
If you spend a certain amount of time with me, eventually my great uncle Alfred will come up in conversation. He was the inventor of Scrabble, and my relation to him has been the subject of every “fun fact” for every icebreaker at every job I’ve ever had (a quick sidenote: we don’t really do those at Worn & Wound, which I’m eternally grateful for). Scrabble, of course, is not a dice game, but I have many great memories of playing with my family over the course of many years, and wearing a watch conceived by tabletop gamers made those memories bubble to the surface regardless.
It’s hard to convey the importance of Scrabble in my family. It’s not something that is dwelled on constantly (Alfred passed away in 1993, and I never really knew him) but it remains an immense point of pride. Not just because we all like playing Scrabble from time to time, but because of how the invention of the game was one thread in a remarkable life. Alfred had a once in a lifetime idea that was born out of a careful study of popular games at the time, and wound up creating something wholly unique that has endured for nearly a century.
My own family’s ties to board game history notwithstanding, it was a night out with some friends that really made the D-20 resonate sharply in my mind. I happened to be wearing this watch a few Friday nights ago on an evening where we’d celebrate two of my favorite people who will, sadly for me, happily for them, be moving to a new home a few towns over, well outside walking distance of our favorite downtown hangouts. For years, they’ve been a text message and a 10 minute walk from grabbing a coffee or a beer, or, on this particular night, a very strong martini that on a nearly empty stomach almost had me in a state where I’d need to be peeled off the floor (in a good way).
I got to know these friends, and our larger social circle, well over a decade ago through weekly trivia nights at a local pub. If you’re a certain age you might remember that bar trivia was a bit of a phenomenon for a period of time in the early 2010s. We saw our trivia host expand his business from a one man operation to a thriving business operating in multiple New England states during that time, and for years trivia night was a weekly appointment that we kept to religiously. It was fun, competitive (we had established rivals and everything), and we were probably way too selective about letting outsiders join the team. You had to have a proven specialty in an area we were weak in. The “Name that Tune” round was always tricky for us, and we never quite found the right ringer to bring in to consistently help us when we needed it most.
These are some of my very closest friends and while we don’t get to trivia quite as often these days, it’s a big part of our shared history and the basis for an untold number of inside jokes and the setting for just as many hysterical stories when we get in the mood to reminisce. The fact that a game is the genesis of all this, one of the great chapters of my life, isn’t always at the forefront of my mind, but with the Timestop on my wrist the connection was easy to make.
And after giving it some thought, it’s fairly obvious to me now that the tabletop gaming crowd and watch enthusiasts surely have a great deal of overlap in how they come together and share the things that interest them. Community is essential in both. You need people, of course, to enjoy these games with. They take time to play and, I would imagine, the bonds formed over years of playing a tabletop RPG aren’t so different from those created through weekly trips to the pub for trivia.
The Timestop D-20 really surprised me, and it’s an easy watch to recommend considering its low entry price (a black resin model retails for $99, an orange resin version is $119, and the stainless steel watch seen here is $159). Also worth noting is that the dice rolling module is a custom build for this watch – it’s not an off the shelf movement. And for a watch under $200, the quality of the machining on the stainless steel case, and the tactile feel of the buttons, is excellent. This does not feel like a disposable toy, but something that was designed with care by people who love and appreciate both watches and games.
There are all kinds of connections to be made between watches and the many other enthusiast pursuits that we all take an interest in. We talk a lot around here about EDC, movies and entertainment, car culture, and so on. Tabletop games are yet another way that our community connects to others, and while I might have been skeptical about this hyper specific watch, I actually found it to be quite universal at the end of the day. To one extent or another, all of us, if we’re having any fun at all, are playing games, and the Timestop D-20 is a good reminder of that. Timestop
Zach Kazan
2025-09-22 19:00:00