Personal Blog

Dice

13 Comments

Our next game assignment in Game Design class is to create a dice game. This is tricksy on several fronts…

1) I am inevitably to face my old nemesis, Math, many times during the course of this assignment. Jesse gave us an abridged probability lesson today, and it’s still hard for me to wrap my brain around.

2) The hopscotch assignment gave us a jump-start. Because we had to redesign an existing game, it was easy to come up with a set of problems to solve. Jesse has said many times that we should come up with a problem statement, and that our design should seek to solve said problem(s). With this, it is more of a “start from scratch” attitude, so I’m a little unsure how to seek out the problems I want to solve with my game…

Am I to think of problems with dice games in general? That seems rather vague. Perhaps I should come up with a concept first and establish my problems after the first playtest? Hmmm….

I am half tempted to create Dieslinger, as wielding large handfuls of dice is something that greatly appeals to my tactile sense. Whether I make that game or not, I will at least cite Dispatching the Dungeon Master in my brainstorming process.

Thoughts? How do you guys feel about dice? What are your favorite dice games? Mine’s probably yahtzee, or shut the box. What do you like about these games? What don’t you like?

13 thoughts on “Dice”

  3. what about using dice as a variant on a standard game?

    like a standard dartboard with a velcro surface. standard six sided dice also with velcro. the number that is stuck to the board could serve as a multiplier to the numbers on the board and if you hit the same number on both, your entire score is reset!

      1. Oooo, another idea would be using magnetic dice! And playing with their polarity and attracting and repeling!

        However…it might be tricky for me to get magnetic dice on such short notice…

  4. I have lots of geek in me, so I’m going to say D&D D:

    What about a game where you have to knock your opponent out cold using a giant dice boxing glove? :b

  5. Which version of Dieslinger are you looking at? Marbles-with-dice or Mexican standoff or something else?

    I think the problem statement of the latter is “what motivates players to create or destroy alliances under pressure?” The dice-allocation is just a neat way to represent that. In the traditional Mexican standoff the motivation would be the stolen diamonds or whatever, and everybody wants a share, and you may be able to get a bigger share if you can survive the confrontation with a smaller but mutually protective alliance. The real-world problem then becomes providing some in-game reason not to just ally with your two best friends every time.

    1. The stand-off idea was the one I was looking at, and these are interesting problems. Perhaps I can start with them as my problem statement.

      Have you played Bang! (the card game) It seems to have a similar theme. I also thought about taking this idea and making “characters” that have certain attributes. Like perhaps the big burly fellow uses a d20, but only has, like, 2 to allocate, or something.

      Ponder ponder ponder.

  6. Here’s a problem: dice are gross. Think about it. Usually when people are playing a dice game, they’re eating. And what are they eating? Chips, pretzels, and other “hands on” food. Pick up the dice, blow on it for good luck, and you’ve basically spit in the next player’s mouth. As we all know from South Park, there’s no better way to get chicken pox.

    1. Ew! That is true, I shall brainstorm a bit on ways to play with dice without touching them (chopsticks popped into my brain).

      However, that problem directly conflicts with the tactile joy that many people associate with shaking a pair of dice in their hands. HMMMMMMMM

  7. I don’t remember what it was called, but I once played a pencil and paper RPG with some friends of mine that involved nothing but a whole slew of 6-sided dice. Like say you had a Strength score of 6 and a Melee score of 6. In that case, for a melee attack, you’re gonna be rolling 12 dice. It was really fun with small dice.

Comments are closed.