The Game – Trek 12

My initial impressions are that Trek 12 is a fun game, but maybe not one of the best roll and write games out there. I do think that the challenge packs, things you can unlock, will keep the game in my collection for a while. I want to unlock them or open them and see what they are. And I do think that this game can move up higher as I do an expedition, not just a single trek. And as I play with other people.

Solo Mode

Some of what just keeps Trek 12 in that fun range is that the solo mode on the game is fine. The issue with the solo mode, and I mention it, is that you are basically playing two characters or two times. The mechanics work well enough for the AI, Max, but it’s also extra work. And when I do something, I want to make it good but not too good for Max. So it feels like more of a balancing act.

I don’t always want a beat your previous score, but compared to this mechanic, I think I prefer that for solo game play. And in all fairness to Trek 12, I do think I could just play it solo as a beat my own score. There is nothing that Max is doing that really pushes me at least in the trek style of game. Maybe the additional rules will make more sense for an expedition.

Different Mountains

I do think that the mountains in the game are interesting. The first one that I played is very basic. Most things connect nicely together so you can get those groups or those runs of numbers. Then the other two in the base box, they start to stretch that out a little bit further by making the difficult spots to go. And the expansion one, I like how it changes up the numbers on things. It makes you have to plan more.

Is there enough difference overall, I am not sure. I think that is one of the things about this game. It feels interesting, but the different maps don’t feel interesting enough. Or maybe like they could do more with them. Or even, maybe just make people start in the bottom corner and build out to make it feel more thematic like climbing a mountain.

Upcoming Streams

I think my plan for next Monday is to continue with roll and write games. Most likely looking at Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw. Or maybe one of the other roll and writes, I still have Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write to play as well. That is likely going to be the plan of attack for the next few weeks, though I know that some crowdfunding games that I likely will unbox aren’t too far away. So those will get slotted in when they show up.

And on Wednesday I am going to be playing some more Stars of Akarios. This week it won’t be more space combat. Instead, it’ll be time to get down onto a planet and start exploring. I am excited to show off different mechanics than the ones that we’ve seen so far. It does mean that I need to brush up on the rules as well.

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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?

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Now, I’m not the only one talking about this, D&D Beyond has put up several articles on it, but I got the chance to run a quick session of Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday night for some friends and my wife via Google Hangouts, so I wanted to talk about that and what else you can use as well.

Let me start off by saying that as long as people have access to a way to roll dice, playing Dungeons and Dragons across a distance is easy. You need a webcam, someone with access to another device to go on D&D Beyond, and even with the free stuff there and the limited character creation, you have enough to run an enjoyable game for a little while without it becoming boring or stale. However, that’ll limit you a little bit, so I’d strongly suggest someone grabbing the books either digitally through D&D Beyond, or pick up a physical copy of the core three books, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide.

The only real physical thing that is nice to have is for players to have dice, but again that isn’t even needed. On Google Hangouts, they have commands that roll dice for you so you can do that in the chat section. And other virtual tabletops, like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20.net will also give you the ability to roll dice as well. Personally, I like rolling physical dice, but those are something that can be gotten easily from your friendly local game store that is hopefully doing curbside pick-up of orders or delivery now, as well, of course as places like Amazon or if you want fancier dice, Easy Roller Dice. You might just have to wait longer for those, even though, I think Amazon should consider dice to be essential items that get priority shipping.

Then you can really just dive into playing. Make up your own world, do theater of the mind, and just let the game and imaginations run wild. Now, I will say that if you are starting out, I’d recommend that people roll up characters for the first time in the limited options on D&D Beyond. Or that the person who is running the game does that for everyone simply so that you don’t have to start by going through the process of creating characters over the internet. But if you have a group of more experienced players, you probably have more of them who have the player handbook or can find online resources to build out the character that they want on their own or during a session zero where you talk through a story idea.

Let’s talk a little bit about theater of the mind, depending on what you’re playing on, you’re going to need to determine the level of theater of the mind. If you’re not familiar with that term, it basically means that your combat and encounters are all done in your head, when you describe it, people picture what you are saying in their head, and they can’t look down at a grid or anything to figure out how close their characters are to the bad guys or anything like that. With some of them Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, you won’t have to play that way, if you don’t want to, but it’ll add in more prep and planning to your game. The advantage of theater of the mind is if a combat happens, it can just happen because you don’t need to prep a map, put characters and monsters where they are supposed to be. I personally prefer theater of the mind and find it easier and easier for online because it requires considerably less work. However, in a major boss battle, it can be fun to set the mood for the combat with a map as well.

What are some pitfalls when playing online? Obviously internet connectivity is a must and it might be possible that you’ll run into situations where someone freezes or lags. So someone might be trying to say something and it gets lost because of that, also it’s harder for people to talk over each other and for everyone to hear everything. So, this is something I picked up with podcasting, try and not talk over each other, in particular, if you see someone is starting to say something at the same time you are, pause and let them go first and then jump in fast so that you can say what you want, but so that you aren’t stepping on someone else’s toes. The more people in more different locations the more likely you’re going to run into this issue.

There’s also going to be a learning curve for players who are familiar with Dungeons and Dragons because it plays differently than it does at the table. I feel like playing online requires a little bit more buy in and a little bit more go with the flow of what is being presented. Going back to Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, you can set-up a map for an encounter, but you aren’t able to pivot as quickly as you might if you were playing all at the same location and you could draw it out or set it up on the fly for whatever encounter your players get into. This is going to be something that trips up players who are familiar with playing that style, versus new players who might be jumping into it for the first time or so.

With those two negatives for it, or not really negatives, but potential pitfalls to watch out for, I will say that compared to board games, Dungeons and Dragons is way easier to do over physical distancing and if you’ve been in a situation where you don’t have people around to play with, this is a chance to try digital and find people around your area and all around the world who would want to play some Dungeons and Dragons with you.

Have you played D&D online? Are there any tips or tricks that you recommend for people starting up playing digitally?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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