wow bottom up games are hard. (That's what she said). My favorite games are all simulations so they kinda have to be top down.


But it brings a tear to my eye to see all you young 'uns excited about board games... when I was a boy only losers played games. Us nerds used to play "Car Wars" in the hall ways at lunch. Also, no girls.

Poll when???

Did you delete and repost that?

Sorry, poll will be up later when I'm not paying from my phone.

Step 7: Mechanic vote

The submitted mechanics are below. Vote for as many as you like. The mechanic(s) voted in will be the focus of our first bits of game design, though not necessarily the focus of the overall game.

1. You play the game by posting in a forum thread.

2. A posting game where your post can target a post earlier in the thread, changing the effects of that post on the game.

3. You and your team mates can combo together your actions/ cards/ posts/ dice rolls /whatever we end up using.

4. Players start in different "locations" (however that is represented in the game) and get bonuses once they "meet up" with other players.

5. Randomized events to throw twists into the game, generally to the detriment of the players.

6. Players have a character with a specific role or job that they can grow better at as the game progresses; a tiered level up system so that you make choices on how your character grows which impacts your ability in the late-end game.

7. Halfway through the game one player becomes the traitor. Nobody but the traitor knows who is the traitor. Traitor wins if the players lose.

8. Co-op drafting game with traitor elements.

9. Relative positioning of non-unit pieces matter (e.g. worker placement game where you make patterns.)

10. Dice you can upgrade.

What constitutes as upgrading dice? Does Formula-D and Quarriors! count?

I just assumed you would get higher/lower numbers following the D.

Haven't played either, but I generally think of it as any form of dice game where the dice can mean something at one time and something else at another. It can be as complex as dice that actually have interchangeable faces to something as simple as the upgrade system in Dicemasters where you basically have card effects allowing you to rotate the dice up. Or it could be like King of Tokyo where you get special rewards for specific rolls.

Coming from a tabletop background, I assumed it was something like starting with 1d4 in a certain score and being able to upgrade it to 1d6, 1d8, etc.

Well, at least 2 of the 4 I voted for got the most votes.

Gross, who actually wants random events.

4 people, can't you read?

Step 8: Mechanic vote

The mechanics with the most votes are below. You may vote for 1.

1. Randomized events to throw twists into the game, generally to the detriment of the players.

2. Players have a character with a specific role or job that they can grow better at as the game progresses; a tiered level up system so that you make choices on how your character grows which impacts your ability in the late-end game.

3. Dice you can upgrade.

This vote will end on Friday. Then we'll start getting into the nitty-gritty of things.

So wait...three mechanics were tied, but we can only use one of them? Or we're voting for the one that has the biggest pull out of the three?

Voting for one that we can focus on. If we want to incorporate other facets later, we can, but for now, working from one mechanic seems best.

In that case, upgradable dice seems the most fun to build around. And could technically be the method by which characters evolve.

dice are bad
vote #2

Step 9: Let's discuss dice

Dice have been an essential gaming tool for over 4000 years. From Backgammon to Dungeons and Dragons, they've been utilized in a myriad of ways, to the delight and frustration of gamers everywhere. They are perhaps the best device available for creating standardized random events. And they will be a part of our game.

What I would primarily like from this part of our design is (1) discussion about what you like and/or dislike about dice, and ways they've been implemented that you particularly enjoy, and (2) suggestions on what to do with the idea of "upgradeable dice," which has been left open for you to explore.
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Although frustrating at times, I generally enjoy the way most games incorporate dice. It's quite often imperfect, but the nuances sometimes make up for that. Monopoly is a classic abuse of dice. In general, the higher you roll, the better. There is a bit of thrill to it, though, when you get into positions where smaller numbers are preferable. The board and rules are set up to make this possible. It's still pretty much sucks.

Anyone that knows Backgammon will tell you that luck matters about as much as it does in Poker. The dice can determine the outcome of a single game, but over the long-haul, knowing how to use your dice and anticipating the opponent's usage matter much more. It's an interesting concept, giving you dice rolls and then letting you determine how to best use them. I've always liked the feature.

Risk uses brute statistics to make itself work. That does give you the excitement of defender dice outclassing attacker dice, but it's a pure numbers game and perhaps one of the ugliest displays of dice usage there is.

Settlers of Catan is a weird case. The dice are practically the worst part about the game. The variable board setup is fun and exciting; trade can be annoying, but it's very interactive and at times hilarious; racing to spots is a small but substantial part of the experience. But the dice? They sort of make everything worse. Someone explodes out of the gates due to lucky rolls. Your double 5s never get rolled while someone else's double 9s get there every other time. The 7 always hits you and no-one else. The game is setup to make number-to-resource selection a highly strategic choice, and like many games, good choices will benefit you over a number of games played. But that's all at the cost of a miserable game in which you feel incapable of winning. Compare that to Backgammon, where you unlucky games are still rather quick and engaging. Settlers of Catan is designed to hinge on dice-randomness, and that makes it perhaps the poorest use of dice there is.

Takenoko isn't really a dice game (heck, it only has the single die), but it uses a roll mechanism that simply offers a range of benefits. Sure, some of those benefits might be more useful to you at certain times, but being able to take as much advantage of each roll as possible is a real skill in the game, and adds a small amount of variance to make the game that much more exciting.

King of Tokoyo uses the same basic dice system as Yahtzee, but adds a lot of flare. By creating two variable point systems (victory points and health) and three dice resources (points, battle, and energy), the game offers dynamically different approaches to winning. Ability cards further these differences and are one of the main things I was considering when submitting the idea of "dice you can upgrade." It's one of my favorite games to play (though I wish I could get more card abilities on average) and is a great example of innovative dice usage.

I've never played Dungeons and Dragons. Someone else tell me if RPGs are that tied to dice and whether or not they use them well.

I don't like anything about dice.

Okay, seriously though, I don't like dice in games. I have some 40-50 board games I believe, some of them have dice, and they are probably the worst part of all of them. Comparatively, I love them in role-playing games. Why? When I play board games, I want agency. When I play role playing games, I don't. I could go into depth, but basically, I want unpredictability in my stories, but not in my intellectual exercises. I like cards though, make of that what you will.
So, let's explore "upgrading dice."

Formula D is a roll-and-move racing game where on your turn, you can 'change gear', replacing your dice with a 'better' or 'worse' one, the higher gear ones having higher range and variance. The core gameplay comes down to choosing the optimal gear, as you can't move too quickly through swingy areas, or you will suffer damage.

Quarriors! is the first game that used the deckbuilding formula for dice instead of cards. Basically, you have a bag of dice that represent monsters (or spells maybe). At the start of the game, you start with some rubbish ones, but during the course of the game, you use those dice to buy better dice, slowly accumulating a strategy that ideally beats your opponent's.

Rattlebones is a roll-and-move game where you have a set of dice, and by landing on certain spaces, you can physically replace the faces of your dice according to the space. You win the game by accumulating victory points, which can happen by moving around on the lap, landing on certain spaces, or by victory point generating faces.

Savage Worlds is a Role-Playing Game where your capability in stats are represented by dice, and you can upgrade them from d4 up to d12.

When it comes to dice games, while it's not necessarily related to upgrading dice, it's worth mentioning the movement of roll-then-spend mechanics, like Kingsburg, Troyes, Castles of Burgundy and co. They have a more euro-centric use of dice, in which they operate like the pawns of worker-placement games, where the actions available to you are dependent on the faces of the dice, but faces are only contextually better than each other, and not objectively so.