Or Monopoly when you’re five away from the spot you want to land, and you get a four on the two dice, and now you have to hope no one else lands on it before you get around again, even though you’ll probably not land on it yet again.

In Clue, when you need to get into a new room to find out some information, and the room is six spots away, but it takes you three turns to get into there, so you’re way behind on information as compared to every one else.

Your troops are poised in Risk to take out the single troop, and you have five, but you end up rolling every single time below what the other person rolls and you lose your troops until you’re down to one, and now you’re wide open for the next person’s turn, even though you should have been able to beat the other person on one of those dice rolls.

Those are the classic frustrations that came with dice in board games that people grew up on. Maybe not teens now, but when I was a kid, those were the games we had and man, it sucked. A game that could have been fun, ended up being ruined by a bad roll of the dice. But, there are still dice in games now, how are those games not ruined by the randomness of dice, and are dice always bad in a game?

There are some games that still use what is called the classic roll and move. If that doesn’t make sense, it’s when you’re rolling a die or two to see how far you move. So it might mean, if you’re rolling two six sided dice, and this is especially noticeable in Clue, you roll and you can go two spaces while someone else rolls and they can move twelve. This is generally still considered a really bad thing in a game. Because someone with a bit more luck with the dice might be able to run away with the game.

So what are dice doing in games now that is good?

The first thing that games are doing is making the dice mean something beyond movement, or maybe they can be movement, but they can be other things as well. When dice are used as movement or in a lot of games now, they are rolled in what is known as a dice pool. A great example of this is Dead of Winter where you have a die for each survivor plus one that you roll at the start of the turn. You can then use those dice to perform certain actions. Each character has a search level and killing zombie level that if they can match or beat higher on the dice, means that they can do that action. But what if you roll below? If you roll below that number or even if you don’t need to search or kill a zombie, you have other actions that require a die. So you could use a die to barricade against zombies or clean trash out of your base. But you’re always able to do something useful, but maybe not as useful or not exactly what you had hoped. There are a number of games that do this or something similar, and that keeps you always able to do something.

Dice are still very common in the genre of game known as Roll and Write games. Yahtzee is an example of this where dice are rolled a specific number of times and you’re hoping to get what you need to score the most points. While the point thing is still huge in a lot of these games, a number of done away with the dice mitigation of rolling multiple times that Yahtzee has, we’ll get back to this mechanic in a bit. Instead of looking for something very specific, they pretty often look for where you place a certain number. And depending on where a number is in conjunction to other numbers or things printed on the board it is worth points. These games are generally a bit tricky to explain abstractly without the game being in front of you, but the rules are generally simple. The dice randomness makes the game play differently every time as well.

But let’s hop back to the Yahtzee mechanic, the roll dice, take some dice, roll again, take some more, and roll one final time. This works in two types of situations, one where the game is fairly silly and the other where the game is more serious, but the dice are always useful. Kind of like Dead of Winter, in the last of the two options for the Yahtzee mechanic, it sets you up so that you can do stuff, but you might not be able to do everything you wanted. The Reckoners is a game like this, but along with that, they also tend to give you a large number of dice to roll, so that you can always do something that is very good just by sheer number of dice faces you’ll see. However, silly games are probably more common, and even in those cases you can generally use most of your dice. King of Tokyo is the prime example of this. Monsters fighting in Tokyo, trying to punch each other, get energy to buy more powers, heal up, get points, you are doing a ton of things with dice. Because of this, it keeps the game moving well and generally as compared to a roll and move game the game doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

Now, there are a number more things that dice are still used for. And a lot of custom dice that come with some of those things. Dice are still used in combat, but now, instead of the Risk mindset of roll and whatever you roll is what you get, you can use cards to boost results, to change results, or to roll again. A game like Star Wars: Rebellion actually adds in some more with that by having different troops roll different dice, which isn’t unique to that game, but it makes there be even more strategy with what troops you are bringing into the battle. This bit of added strategy makes the game feel much less random in combat than Risk does. The larger force of troops should generally win.

Dice are also used to simulate things that are difficult to do. And this is generally tied into your characters ability to do something. Fantasy Flight has a number of great examples of this with their Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness games. In these games you have different skills like strength, agility, observation, will, and more that you will be tested with at times. Instead of just rolling a die to see if you get it, if you’re a strong character, you’re going to roll more dice on a strength test, but if that character also has a weak will, you are going to roll less dice for a will test. So while you still might not be able to do this impressive strength test because of a poor roll, you’re going to succeed with that more often than you will with a will test. And when you get a tough will test, it feels like you’ve really accomplished something. With this, they also do away with some of the pass or fail die rolling that people expect. A good will test might not stop all the horror from coming through, but you’ll be able to stop some of it. This is pretty common in combat dice as well, where a die roll might give you defense to stop some damage but not all of the damage.

This is getting to be a pretty long post, but you can see some of the ways that dice are being used now that is different than your standards from Sorry, Monopoly, Risk, and Clue. And I hope that while I was negative with dice in those games, you can understand that dice are great in some games when used correctly. It’s when dice are used too simply that they can become an issue. There are a lot more examples of how dice are used well such as in games like Sagrada where they are being drafted or how dice can change throughout the game, such as in Dice Forge.

What games do you think use dice well or how in modern board games do you think dice are used best?

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With people who think of Monopoly or other classic games, what games can you recommend that might take them further into a journey of board gaming? I’m going to try and take a stab at what classic games can be replaced or have a game that can be used as an advancement into the board gaming hobby.

If You Like Clue
T.I.M.E. Stories or the Escape Room board games, Unlock and Exit are two of the more popular ones would be good options. These games are cooperative, which might be something different, but there is still the puzzle aspect of trying to solve the escape room or in T.I.M.E. Stories trying to solve the case presented to you.  T.I.M.E. Stories is my recommendation here, however, there are games like Chronicles of Crime and Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game that if they are looking to solve a murder, might work better, but I haven’t played them yet.

If You Like Chess
Now, I personally think Chess is a really interesting deep game that I’m not good at. It probably doesn’t need to be replaced, but if you have someone who likes Chess, there are a lot of other abstract board games that they might like as well. Onitama is my recommendation here. It’s a fast strategy game where you can have any of your pieces do one of two moves you have in your hand, however, whatever move you use goes into the middle and your opponent will get it in their hand after their move. The game has a ton of really interesting strategy to it as you try and eliminate the others players “king” piece or get your “king” to the opposite side of the board. From there, you can branch into a variety of other abstract games, but Onitama has a nice Chess-like feel to it.

If You Like Risk
I only have one replacement for this game, and that’s Smallworld. Smallworld takes the area control and conquest aspects of Risk and makes it so that you can’t hide in Australia. The conflict in Smallworld is high, but everyone is in conflict, so it isn’t like you should gang up on a single person. The variable powers of the races and then random ability that they get paired with makes this a fun game. It also almost eliminates the die rolling luck aspect of the game as well and the game play is so much faster as it has a limited number of rounds.

If You Like Scrabble
Personally, I think that Scrabble has aged quite well, but can be a bit slow as people try and figure out words. My replacement for Scrabble is Unspeakable Words. The game has a Cthulhu theme on it for no good reason, other than to be silly, but there is luck involved in this game, and the ability to make a big word isn’t always the most useful. And even if you are falling behind and have gone insane, you are still part of the game. It’s a simple word game, there are others out there that I want to try as well, but for someone who likes Scrabble, but it’s too long or they aren’t the best at word placement, Unspeakable Words could be a fun time with them.

If You Like Sorry
Sorry has some very frustrating rules as you race around the board and get sent backwards and then as you are about ready to win, you have to sit there until you roll the right number. It’s a bad game that ends up with people annoyed at each other. I actually have two recommendations, and I haven’t played either of them. The first is CamelUp, it’s a camel racing game through the desert where instead of a person having their own camel, you bet on which camel is going to be ahead at time and roll dice, but if a camel lands on another camel, they stack, and if the bottom camel moves, all of those on top of them move. The other one is similar, but it’s auto racing and Downforce is the name of the game. In this game, you do have your own car, but you bet on peoples cars if yours isn’t doing too well, and you have difficult decisions to make, because you have a card you have to play on your turn, and it will probably move your car, but will also move other peoples cars, so you have to pick which card you play carefully.

If You Like Trivial Pursuit
I have so many issues with this game, one person can simply be better at trivia and run away with this game. And not just that, you might not get the pie piece you need. Most trivia games are going to suffer from the one person knows more issue, so what is a trivia based game that might not do that? Wits & Wagers is my choice. In the game, everyone is answering a question, like how many yards does the record rusher in the NFL have? Now, Gary might be the trivia expert, so his number might end up being the closest, but everyone writes down a number ,and then you bet on which one you think is the closest without going over. So even if Gary always does the best, you can bet on Gary and you can play as many or as few rounds as you want.

If You Like Monopoly
I’m not going to say that someone is a bad person for liking monopoly. I know that a lot of people have fond-ish (or horrible) memories from playing it growing up, because there weren’t that many game options out there. But there are a lot more now.  Monopoly is a tough game to suggest a replacement for, because there’s the buying property aspect, there’s a collecting set aspect, there’s the collecting rent aspect, and what is really the aspect that people like in the game? My choice is going to be considered an odd one, but I think that Ticket to Ride can be a decent Monopoly replacement. This is especially true if you’re playing at higher player counts. There’s a card set collection aspect, there are locations that you’re getting to, and there is a take that aspect that you can block someone out of a place that they wanted to go. Definitely not a perfect replacement for Monopoly, but I think it’s a game that someone who likes Monopoly would enjoy.

What other classic games need to be replaced? Are there any games you think would make sense to replace or to be suggested in place of the ones listed that I’ve missed? If so, comment them below.

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