Knot Dice

@kos

Thanks! I originally had the idea coming from a flat playing space. I designed a mobile puzzle game which uses the same pieces, but interacting in a 2d space. (The game is Celtic Knots on iTunes). From there I went to flat playing pieces on a table, but the problem is that a huge number of different pieces would be necessary to get the same number of possibilities that you get from the dice (6x as many - of course you could make larger designs with them, but 240 tiles?). Plus you get to add the randomness factor with the dice.

I've also just posted the rules for the first 3D game I came up with for the dice: Hill Fort - http://blackoakgames.com/blog/hill-fort

I have a couple of others, but I'm really trying to iron them out before I air them too broadly.

And I've put up a print-and-play file for anyone who wants to make a personal copy of the dice with 40 3/4" wooden blocks: http://blackoakgames.com/blog/print-and-play-knot-dice

Best,
Matthew

I've talked with J Midea, Ningbo Lijia, Panda Games, Wingo, Shenzhen Hantang, and a few others - prices vary a lot, but the molds plus 5000 dice are always in the thousands for a single design. I'm looking at oversized dice though, so I'm not sure how comparable prices are.

@kos

I tried it out a bit, and the problem is how often it is simply impossible to close a knot using ALL of the dice. If you end up with an odd number of connecting edges on the upright dice, it won't work. It's not quite a 50% chance, since there are even number of connecting edges on 4 sides, and odd on only 2 sides. But that added to the fact that sometimes you can't close it because there are just too many open edges makes for a lot of re-rolling of all of your dice, which I think is a bit too much frustration.

This is after I already made a change so that each player or team is only working with 16 dice, because 16 of the dice don't connect at all with another 16 unless you use the 8 "bridge" dice (meaning you have to be able to close both kinds of knots if you have a single bridge die, and if you have mostly crossed dice but 1 of the other kind, you can't close it at all). It's a bit like if you have a "q" and no "u".

I think I'll need to put up a blog post describing the different kinds of dice. One possibility would be to reject some dice (thereby losing points too), or trade in some dice for others of a different kind.

The bigger issue is the number of times that you cannot close a knot with the dice as rolled (which will be much more than 50% of the time), leading to a lot of rolling all of the dice. Is that just too frustrating?

Here you go - a blog post describing the dice in detail.

http://blackoakgames.com/blog/knot-dice-about-dice

Speed Dice

You have some great ideas about alternative ways to handle this. I think the first question is whether you draw new dice from the bag (so you can't see what kind) or from a pile (so you can see what kind). The pile is faster than everyone trying to get dice from a bag; and if you're pulling from the bag some people would have time to start thinking about their plays before others even have their new dice.

If you're pulling from a pile, that also alleviates somewhat the problem of having impossible hands (7 crossed dice and 2 curved dice - both Not and Knot and Knotted Knot would be impossible) - you can choose dice that will match. But it's still an issue unless you can somehow exchange some of your dice. Presumably players would only take crossed or open dice until they had to take something different, and then once they take even one bridge die, they'll need some of the other kind (that kind they never wanted before).

I almost wonder if you should be able to take dice from another player if you're the caller. It would extend the game (maybe too much), but would allow you to get some of the dice you need when they otherwise might be gone from the center pool...

Hill Fort

Number of dice + smallest dimension is a good solution; I'll need to think/calculate more to determine how well it works in play. Mostly I'm concerned about the 2 x 1 knot, that would be worth 3 points each, for a possible total of 30 points on 20 dice. Two 3 x 3 knots, 9 dice each, would be worth 12 points, for a possible total of only 24 on 18 dice. Multiplying may work better in this situation. However, this may still wind up with people making long single line knots that turn a corner.

Another possibility would be to count the number of connected edges and include them in scoring somehow. It's not as natural as counting dice. But a 2 x 1 knot would only be worth 1 point, a 2 x 2 knot would be worth 4 points, a 2 x 3 knot would be worth 7 points points, and a 3 x 3 knot would be worth 12 points.

The Hill Fort 3x3 variation would definitely work (or 4x4 for that matter) - it's the same as what I had in 5x5 for a 4-player game. The main difference is that there isn't much playing off the opponent's back wall with only the center die as a possibility, though you can play off the sides of the two walls above the side dice. It may end up being a better solution. My hesitation is that your opponent might pay a little too much attention to how the knots on your sides look, and be able to interfere a little too much. I'd need to decide also whether when placing a die, you have to make sure the paths connect on your sides of the die as well as on the side of the die on your opponent's wall.

Best,
Matthew

I just posted another set of rules to my blog. This one is for a brain-burning 3-d Knot Dice game: Gordian Knot.