This question might seem a bit silly to a lot of people. A lot of board games have dice in them. In fact a lot of the board games we played growing up, Monopoly and Clue for example use dice. You roll the dice and you move. But in hobby board games, people often consider dice to be a bad thing in a game. Should they be considered a bad thing though?

Why Might Dice Be Bad?

Dice add randomness to a game, that in and of itself isn’t inherently a bad thing. But where hobby board gamers often run into an issue with dice is when you can’t mitigate them. Let me explain that a bit more. In Monopoly when you roll the dice you move whatever amount you rolled. It could be two places, it could be twelve spaces. If twelve spaces ends with you on someone else’s property, there is nothing you can do to stop that.

Now, dice mitigation would say something like, pay $50 to the bank and roll the dice again, you must use that next roll. Or it might be something like pay $100 to the bank and increase or decrease the value of one of your dice by one. There is a cost, but it gives you more control over the dice.

So, the most common thing for hobby gamers is that they don’t like that a die roll can determine everything. In Monopoly, a bad roll or two could bankrupt you without you having choice over that. In Catan the statistically more probable numbers might not get rolled as often, it’s just the luck of the dice.

But Are They Bad?

I don’t think that rolling dice in a game is a bad thing. I don’t even think that sometimes just rolling a die and that being your result is a bad thing. Would I still play Catan? Yes, even though I might roll a three every time and give you resources, I would play it.

But I get why some gamers don’t like it. I generally do not want to play a game where dice determine everything. Monopoly, what you roll determines how well you do. I’d play it, but it wouldn’t be a high choice. Mainly because the decisions outside of do you buy a property or not, there aren’t that many. And generally you buy the property.

Most often though, hobby gamers want to have more control over dice rolls and there are a lot of good examples of games like that. Dice are not going away from games. It is often more about fairness in how you use the dice.

Hobby Games Examples

Let’s talk about a few games that use dice differently. I want to explain how different games might do this. And I think there is a good variety of ways and they often give some really interesting choices.

Ganz Schon Clever

Ganz Schon Clever is a roll and write. Roll and write games often try and deal with the randomness by giving everyone the same randomness. If I roll something, we all fill that in on our board. Ganz Schon Clever gives even more control than that.

When you roll and pick a die to use in Ganz Schon Clever, every die with a lesser value gets set on a silver platter. Your opponents will pick one die from that platter. To go along with that, you do that three times. So if I pick a 4 the first time and put two dice on the platter and roll again, I have eliminated dice that I can use. So yes, the dice rolls are random, but I pick what options I leave open for myself and what I give to you.

Dice Throne

Dice Throne is a head to head die combat game where you upgrade your character and can manipulate the dice. The character that you are using, generally, has upgrade slots. Before you roll for attack, you can pay for upgrades that might give you a better attack or, might give you more die combinations that work to attack with. That is one way you can mitigate a really bad roll, make those rolls harder to happen.

But you also have cards that allow you to change die values or reroll dice. They all cost combat points, the upgrades and the cards to change die faces, so that is the cost you pay to get more control. And I like the variety of ways you can change dice. You might get to reroll dice up to two times. You might be able to change a die to a six, or match another die, or increase or decrease a value by one. So there is a lot of versatility.

Plus, in Dice Throne, some of those cards work on my dice only. But sometimes, I can change the value of one of your dice. So I get a little control over what you roll as well. It adds to the strategy of do I want to play defensively a ruin your plan, or do I want to save it for a big hit?

Dice Forge

Dice Forge gives you control over you dice in a completely different way than anything else I’ve mentioned. You actually customize your dice in Dice Forge. Everyone starts off with dice that are the same. You roll your dice every turn, even your opponents, and you can buy cards for points or dice face one your turn. That then allows you to customize your die rolling engine.

Now, there isn’t anything that you can do to change your roll. But you are the one who built your dice the way that they are. If you still have rolls that go poorly, it probably means you need to upgrade your dice more and focus less on cards. If every roll is good, now you flip your focus, or at least every roll is better, and start buying cards.

Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness is a fairly basic way to mitigate dice. When you are doing checks there are success, there are almost successes and there are misses. When you roll and get say a success, two almost successes, and a miss, you can spend clue tokens. That turns the partial successes into fully successes.

So Do You Avoid Dice?

I think that some players have a really strong aversion to dice. They see a die getting rolled and they think that they roll poorly so it isn’t a game for them. I guess that could beg the question if some people roll poorly or not. I don’t think that players actually do or it does even out in the end.

Yes, it might not feel like that when a roll and the end of the game causes you to fall just short. Or maybe it is Dice Throne and I get my ultimate and you can’t do anything about it. But dice aren’t bad for most gamers. And your rolls aren’t bad, no matter what it feels like.

The hobby gamer who should avoid dice are the gamers who want perfect information. What do I mean by that? Precisely what it sounds like, you know all that information. You know how everything will interact and there is little to no variability. It is about building your engine more efficiently than the other person. Or making the smarter moves in an abstract game. Chess is an example, you know all of your moves, you know all your opponents possible moves. If you need that, dice definitely aren’t for you.

Final Thoughts

This last bit is going to be more about what I like. Because I do like a little randomness in my games. I think that it can help keep the game fresh when it isn’t so much of a puzzle or a game where all the moves are available to see every turn. I like to react versus plan twelve steps ahead in a game.

So I like that I can save up in Dice Throne either to stop you from getting ultimate, if need be, or to shoot for one of my own. It makes for a more interesting decision making space for me. It is some of why I prefer Ascension to Dominion. With Dominion, yes shuffling is random, but it is more of a fixed puzzle in each game, versus Ascension which is more reactionary, like responding to a die roll.

That said, I am not going to go out of my way to find a random game. Something like Monopoly where you roll a die and then see what happens. That is not interesting to me. Like I said, I would probably play Monopoly if someone really wanted to, but I know I wouldn’t seek it out. So there is an element of control I want, but I don’t need that perfect control.

Oathsworn

I want to finish up by talking about Oathsworn to kind of demonstrate some of what I mean. In Oathsworn to make an attack or do a check you either roll dice, or draw cards. The cards give you the same randomness that the dice do. So if you roll dice you might get a 0, 1, or 2, let’s say. And the cards also have several 0’s, several 1’s and several 2’s. But the deck doesn’t reshuffle. So you can card count and either know that you’ve seen most of the 0’s so drawing cards and pushing luck that way is great. Or it might not have had any 0’s drawn so it’s cold.

To me that is a fascinating decision point of when you would push your luck with dice or with cards. The dice are always going to be more random. So on a fresh shuffle of cards, you might be able to get higher using the dice. But t here is also a better chance that you’ll bust and the check or attack will fail. It takes a push your luck mechanic and gives it so much more to be interested in the decision.

So to end on a question, do you like dice in games? And do you feel like you have good or bad luck rolling dice in games?

Send an Email.
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.