Not deck-building... DICE building

Personally I'd absolutely love to see more dice-building games and I hope you make a good one!

Yes there are dice building games. The first I remember was "Lord of the Rings: The Dice Building Game" and the latest was "Marvel Dice Masters."

Both game's you start with a small number of weak dice and can purchase new powerful ones as the game goes on.

You can definitely use them to see how it works.

The LotR and Marvel games are derived from Quarriors so I haven't seen anything new in the dice-building genre since then.

Skyline is a literal "dice building" game with some lite yahtzee and dice building elements thrown in.

I am very interested in the direction you take because my original idea Soulstone from two years ago was a muddled mess and I haven't touched it since.

My own skirmish game "Whack & Slaughter" (http://www.catzeyes.de/blog/?page_id=110) takes a different approach on dice building:
While using D6, you "reconfigure" the D6 according to your needs by colouring the pips.

Aside from that, Quarriors and its derivates are the only dicebuilders I know of. But I'd love to see more of those.

Kind regards,
Kai

Ryan - as far as dice building goes, Quarriors --> LOTR/Marvel from Elliott/Lang (same guys for all three of those) is the only one I know that is a "deck-builder". FYI, they TMed the term Dice-Building game...

Anyway, I really liked Quarriors, but I think there's some major flaws in it, at least in the base game, so I was working for a while on version that would fix what I didn't think worked. Even though it was thematically different and the action aside from 'dice purchasing' was different, I ultimately tabled it because the basic mechanic made it feel way too similar to Quarriors. But I definitely think there should be MORE dice builders...I'll probably come back to it eventually.

Right now I'm working on one that involves drawing new dice each turn from an available pool of characters. Not technically "dice-building", but it's in the same family. We'll see soon how/if it works.

The combat is definitely part of it. Certain creatures (looking at you, quake dragon) are just too powerful to be defeated. If you get lucky and roll enough to get one of those early, you might as well start over.

I do like the structure of the combat, where when you introduce creatures to the yard they attack everyone, and you have to weather all attacks to score, but the balance can get thrown off very easily.

Spells...they're too expensive and don't provide enough offsetting value to be worth buying, then cycling through, just to have a 'chance' at casting them. IMHO.

End game comes too soon. Seems like every game, I'm at the point where I have a great 'deck' and I or someone scores enough to win and you never get to use some of your best dice.

I don't want to sound completely negative - I still think it's a great game.

I've been working on a more literal interpretation of the dice-building idea - using 1x1 Lego tiles to represent actions or resources and having players add them to Lego dice throughout the game. Thus, instead of building a dice pool like in Quarriors or MDM, you're actually building the die faces as the game goes on.

That said, I haven't been terribly successful so far - I think the most accurate feedback I got was at Protospiel Ann Arbor last year, where I was told that it was a good mechanism in search of a game ;)

I bought one of the LEGO buildable board games a couple years ago, just to see what it was like. Although the game itself was rather basic and didn't have much going for it, the one concept I liked was the dice.

Each die had six faces, and since they were LEGO parts you actually had to add faces to the dice during the game-building. Each of the faces had a specific outcome, even though it could easily be considered a basic d6.

I hope you understand where I'm going with this...Has anyone else considered (or published) a game that features customizable/upgradeable faces of dice? Would this be a unique feature of LEGO dice?

Personally, when I think of the idea of dice-building, this is what comes to mind... NOT changing the dice you use. That's more horribly random than a deck-building game - and someone else mentioned the extreme disadvantages a player encounters in attempting to acquire any desired result. Using the same dice, but upgrading the faces, might provide more of a sense of progress. It's the way I would build a dice-building game were it in my sights.

One idea I had but that could probably only be done as a video game, or maybe with a set of removable stikers, is to be able to litteraly build your dices.

You can add or remove faces to your dice as the game progress while acquiring new dices. That could be pretty cool.

As for quarriors, I'll easily give my point of view by transcripting my BGG comments

I think I finally have a unique dice building game that can be played with 2-8+ players.

There will be 7 colors of "creatures". The die's color represents the creatures color and the creature symbol will represent its special ability. The goal is to be the first player to collect 3 creatures for four of the seven colors (and any three of their creatures have to be rares).

To start the game. X number of creatures (dependent on number of players) will be randomly drawn from the creature bag and rolled into the wild. Then, each player will take 6 standard six-sided dice (called common resource dice) as their starting dice pool.

Rounds of Play
All players simultaneously roll all the dice in their dice pool.

The player with lowest total roll has priority on choosing a creature or any special actions and priority order continues based on ascending roll totals. Actions and abilities other than capturing a creature can occur simultaneously.

A player can use their rolled dice results to:

1) "Capture" Creatures
2) Add a Common Resource if you didn't Capture Creatures
3) Upgrade Dice

Capturing a Creature

You can capture any number of creatures from the wild per turn as long as you have the dice to do so.

Place a die (or multiple dice) on each side of the creature. The sum of the dice on each side MUST be the same or higher than the creature's displayed value.

Example: The player captures a red creature displaying a "4" by surrounding it with five dice (a 6, 3+2, 4, 5)

The captured creature is added to your dice pool to be rolled on the next turn.

Then, randomly draw a new creature from the bag and roll it into the wild.

If You Don't Capture any Creatures

If you don't capture any creatures this round, automatically add 1 common resource die to your dice pool to be rolled on your next turn.

Upgrading Dice


Any results that have matching numbers can be turned in and upgraded to a higher tier.

Example: Two common resource dice display a "5" so they are paired and both put back in the community pool. Then that player adds an uncommon die to their dice pool. Different rarities cannot be paired together.
Common = White, Uncommon = Grey, Rare = Black
A pair of Common Resource Dice = 1 Uncommon Resource die (4,5,6,7,8,9)
A pair of Uncommon Resource Dice = 1 Rare Resource die (8,9,10,11,12,13)

Creatures

Rolled creature results can be used just like resource dice to capture other creatures or its ability can be used. However, the creature's ability only activates when it is not used to capture another creature.

Stronger creatures have more powerful effects.

Example: A particular creature has an ability that allows you to reroll two of your other results.

The player rolls a 5,4,1,7,and 3 (creature)

In attempt to capture a yellow creature displaying a "4" they use the 5,4, & 7 but only have the 1 or creature's 3 for the last side. So, they use the creature's ability to reroll the 1 into a 6.

Last, every creature has either white, grey, or black ink to associate with a resource rarity. If a player captures a creature with results that exactly add up to the creature's displayed number on all four sides they automatically add that 1 matching resource die to their pool as well.

Example: A red creature with grey ink (uncommon) displays a "9". The player rolls a 6,3,8,1,3,4,4,9,1 and surrounds the creature with 8+1,9,4+4+1,3+6 so not only do they capture and add the creature to their dice pool but they also add an uncommon resource die as well.

Quick question, how many dice would you feel comfortable rolling per player?

I know in Dungeon Dice that 2-3 players are rolling ~4-10 dice at a time (I know thi sgame would be more than that) with all the other unused dice on the table and it doesn't seem too obtrusive or overwhelming. That game now has over 120 dice btw.

Also, I am picturing Quarriors with all the cards and dice and that seems to still be manageable as far as space goes.

While I have no problem rolling 10+ dice in a game, I would worry about the price tag. The more dice you have, the more expensive it will be and the less likely I am to buy it.

I don't have specific numbers, but I'd recommend you look into them. Worst case, shrink the base game to 4-5 dice per player with the understanding that they can buy more for bigger fun.

Thanks for taking a look at IC. Like I said, I tabled it, at least for now, because it felt like a Quarriors clone.

I hadn't even thought of the small hand factor with that many dice. Cups or a backboard to roll into would definitely help, though. Also, I believe Quarriors uses 14mm dice to reduce the overall heft of everything. DD (I was just reading) uses a combination of 18/16/14mm for easier gameplay. I'm sure there's other ways to make the game 'seem' to take up less room too.