nic

game? designer??

  • they/them

various credits on:
The Banished Vault
Arcsmith
John Wick Hex
Quarantine Circular
Subsurface Circular
Vienna Automobile Society
Sun Dogs

 

P&P microgames:
In the Court of the Skeleton King
The Garden
Tallships

 
Chicago



graham
@graham

When you roll dice, there's usually four questions that are being asked:

  1. How many dice do you roll?
  2. How many faces to the dice have? Aka what range of rolls are possible?
  3. How do you interpret the sides of the dice that are face up?
  4. What is the abstract goal of the dice roll?

For example, in Backgammon, you roll 2 d6 dice and interpret the values as numbers that represent the number of steps a given piece of yours can take each move. There's different goals each turn to maximize your likelihood of keeping your pieces safely moving around the board while also punishing your opponent's pieces.

Below I've compiled a bunch of dice mechanics (ways of answering some or all of the questions above) that I've seen or heard of from various games:

A. roll again and take the new value for better or for worse
B. roll X many dice and keep Y many of them
C. roll and then flip up to X many dice upside-down
D. roll X many dice of a certain value or higher
E. roll so that X many dice's digits in descending order are at least Y
F. roll X many dice and whenever you roll the max value, the die "explodes"
G. roll all the dice and take turns snake drafting the dice you want
H. roll an extra die and after resolving the action, give that die to another player
I. roll a die with something besides numbers on it
J. roll X many dice. You may stack lower valued dice on higher valued dice. As long as it doesn't fall over for the duration of resolving the roll, the height of your dice tower gives you a bonus
K. roll X many dice and then swap any die you rolled with any other die already on the table, keeping the new die's value the same as what it was when you swapped
L. roll X many dice and try to get values that allow you do form this kind of pattern
M. roll X many dice and then change one of their values to Y
N. roll X many dice and add their values together to get above Y
O. roll X many dice and add their values together to try to get up to or including, but not above Y
P. roll X many dice and resolve the action, then if Y many of them matched in value, reroll Y of them and perform a new action
Q. roll X many dice and add them together. That sum is the most common sum for that many dice (e.g. 7 for two dice) then something different happens
R. roll X many dice and you may stow Y many of them for later rolls. You may release Z many of them now if you have any in storage
S. roll X many dice and ignore the top Y many of them
T. roll X many dice and ignore the bottom Z many of them


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