I'm going to be completely blunt and say that if any ideas involve dice with numerical faces, where different sides are objectively (or generally) superior to others based on how high (or low) they are, I'm fully against the idea. There may be exceptions within that criteria of games I enjoy, but none comes to mind (outside of role playing games.)

Game ideas:
Dicey Dungeons
Fantasy game where players have different skill cards that can be activated by expending a combination of specific dice ("Cleave" requires 123, "Viper Sting" requires 11, etc.) Each round, a bunch of dice is rolled in a communal pool, and players take turns drafting dice to use their skills. Can be either competitive or collaborative. You can upgrade and specialize your characters by attaining new skills, and maybe the number of dice you can draft (and contribute to the pool.)

Wheels of Whimsy
Roll and move game where you can use dice in four different colors, for the four cardinal directions. You may choose to use up to one dice of each color, of varying ranges. After rolling, you may apply the movement in any order you like. Try to reach different checkpoints and not crash into too much (other than your opponents).

More to come at some point maybe.

I'm not sure if you're suggesting that the elements are on the faces of the dice, or we use the standard numbered dice but in different colours for different elements.

To mitigate the luck factor I thought that players would be able to interact with the communal dice to reroll dice or block people from using them etc.

@cky: I don't like the political nature of your game idea. The communal drafting is neat, the elemental structure less so. I like the general idea of having a character and there being a communal pool to pull from. That sounds like it has potential.

@Brentain: I think the dice dimensions should serve the game needs rather than the reverse. But it does bring up a simple point: upgrading from D6 to D8 to D10 to D12 is a natural progression that's easy to express and design around. I quite like it in theme.

@Mown: I can see your point, though the application of "strictly better" sides doesn't come up that often. Risk is a good example of where it does, but even a game like Monopoly isn't always rewarding to higher rolls. Anyway, I completely agree. I really like the concept of Dicey Dragons. My main concern would be in making the play experience dynamic. It's fine, for example, to have a character that needs and to just draft . Obvious routes are good. But I'm concerned with how to design the game so that less obvious choices might be made. This isn't really a complaint as much as a question on how to execute the idea. Wheels of Whimsy also sounds neat. Sort of a Robo Rally with dice. I think both ideas are very workable, though the first is more in tune with what others want.



Let's work on this idea of drafting from a communal pool. Do you like the idea of drafting from dice already rolled or from dice that represent possibilities that you get to roll later?

You could just make a 2d map for Wheels of Whimsy and the game would be playable, so it's probably not an idea worth conceptualizing.

Anyway, I'd much rather draft results than dice themselves. I think that leads to decisions that feel more meaningful, and there is a lot of flexibility in how to utilize it. I also generally prefer game mechanics that trend more towards input randomness than output randomness.

Results seem interesting to me as well. I feel like you could use those in somewhat of a Dominant Species system, where there's a grid with a ton of options all pushing you toward different goals, with the dice roll outcomes + draft order dictating a lot of what you can do.

Wheels of Whimsy has got me thinking. Not the direction we're going, though, so I'll put in in a spoiler block.

Dammit, TP, that avatar is confusing.

Don't worry, I fixed it.