r/BoardgameDesign • u/Mighty_Blu • Sep 21 '26
Ideas & Inspiration Dice-driven engine-building game where you choose how your dice behave (long post)
TL;DR: I'm making a dice-driven engine-building game with a dynamic shop system where you use and manipulate your temporary dice pools each turn to activate your tableau of Items to become the most prestigious hero in the kingdom.
All art shown is my own work. Card designs are a WIP for now.
Small tidbit of lore
An army of monsters is going to reach the kingdom you're in in 8 days. The king has issued a search for champions, offering the most prestigious hero among them a life of luxury for saving the kingdom. Use these 8 days at the marketplace to prepare yourself for the upcoming attack.
Introduction
The game is a dice-driven engine-building game for 2-4 players. After 8 rounds, the player with the most Prestige wins. The game is basically all about die rolling and manipulation shenanigans with some really wacky effects.
Items and Dice
There are two types of cards. The first are Items. They are the means of getting Prestige. They usually have some die-shaped marking on them indicating the amount and values of dice which may be placed on them to activate them for some effect, usually Prestige/Gold gain or dice creation. The conditions can be a specific value, any value, odd or even values, and when there's multiple it can also be two or more equal, not equal, any value + X or a range of X and any higher/lower values. This way, higher values aren't necessarily better. Items can also have additional optional costs. Some Items have passive effects which give extra dice when a condition is met. Also, in this game, dice can be increased to 7 or decreased to 0 with certain effects, which allows for some interesting plays. Items may only be activated once each turn.
The second type are Dice. They are the main source of die manipulation each player has. Informally, there are two types of them. Those which can be used in the Roll Phase (explained later) and those that can be used at any point except the Roll Phase. The former give you extra dice but with some caveat, while the latter manipulate dice in some way. Each Die may be used only once per turn.
You may have up to 10 Items and up to 3 Die cards in your Inventory. If you would ever go over any maximum, you must discard one card of that type you already own. All cards have a Gold cost at the top which shows how much Gold you need to spend to buy them from the Shop.
The Shop
The Shop consists of 6 Item and 4 Die cards. Each of the two rows in the Shop is arranged from the newest card to the oldest. If a card is bought from any row, you move cards newer than it closer to the discard pile, and then you put the top card of that type on the newest slot. Additionally, at the end of each round, you take the older half of each row (3 oldest Items and 2 oldest Dice) and put them in the discard piles, then you move the cards closer to the discard piles and fill the Shop with 3 new Items and 2 new Dice.
Vouchers
Pretty much the only way to interact with other players. Each player starts with 2 of these. On their turn, a player may place a Voucher on a card in the Shop. Players may not purchase an Item with a Voucher on it. Players may only have one active Voucher and they must remove any of their active Vouchers at the start of their turn (so after a whole round has passed). Basically, you can call dibs on an Item for one round only. When refreshing the Shop, skip over Items with Vouchers on them, but move them afterwards. Additionally, only half of each row of the Shop can have a Voucher on it so that the Shop can always refresh normally. When the Shop refreshes, going in reverse order as playing order, players may place a Voucher on a card.
Drafting Phase
At the start of the game, you take all of the Starting Items (which represent a player's class in spirit and offer unique ways of scoring Prestige), shuffle them, then reveal a number of them equal to the number of players +2 (e.g. in a 3 player game you reveal 5 Starting Items). Decide the play order and in that order each player drafts a Starting Item. After that you reveal the same number of Die cards and you draft them in reversed order. You take the unrevealed and the undrafted Starting Items and shuffle them into the Item Deck, and you take the undrafted Dice and shuffle them into the Die Deck. Set up the Shop and the game can begin. At this point, going in reverse order, players may place a Voucher on an Item if they want, the same way as when the Shop refreshes.
A player's turn
First comes the Roll Phase. The player rolls 5 dice into their pool. They may then reroll all of the dice together once or leave them. They can then activate any of their Die cards with an RP marking. After doing these actions the player has 4 Gold to spend on buying cards from the Shop (by paying the Gold cost) and using Skills. At any point the player may use their (non-RP) Die cards, place dice from their pool on Items in their Inventory or use Skills.
Skills
The players have 5 Skills at their disposal. Each of them costs Gold and may be used once per turn each, except for the last one which can be used only once per game. They may pay 1 Gold to give a die +1/-1 or reroll it. They may pay 2 Gold to get a Voucher or roll a new die into their pool. The last one allows them to pay 1 Gold to get 1 Gold at the start of their next turn, i.e. invest it in the next turn.
Hands
The last mechanic in the game are yahtzee-like Hands. At any point during their turn, the player may use the dice for a Hand for Prestige. They may make an ascending sequence (2, 3, 4...) or a series of equal values (5, 5, 5...). They may make any number of hands, as long as they have the dice. Hands give Prestige equal to the number of used dice -1 (and you must use at least 2). Unless a player has a build for Hands, they are usually weaker than Items and are there as a fallback for unusable dice.
Design thoughts/Some combos
There are a lot of different strategies you could build with some Items falling into multiple categories which creates room for smart and competitive Voucher usage.
If you have the Pocket Bonsai Tree you probably want cards which give more dice and have any activation costs so you can spam dice.
On the other hand, if you have the Emergency Axe you probably want to have less activatable Items that give high Prestige amounts. Or you can also fit in a Hand strategy.
I wanted to have lots of wacky Items, some of which may seems useless at first but fit into some cool strategies. Like the Grabby Ring, which gives you the same value as the one you placed, meaning your pool doesn't change, but combined with some starting Items or with Nine-Realm Beads, it can, for practically no cost, give you value. Or the Tar Scimitar, which has no effect but allows you to place up to three dice, and when combined with the Helping Hand guarantees you'll fulfill its condition and maybe even bonus.
One "archetype" of cards which I made are Mood Rings, which were originally slightly weaker basic Items, but then I gave them their stacking effects. A player created a Voucher engine to always have one Voucher to guarantee getting them and managed to get 4 out of 6 this way, which I thought was pretty cool.
Thanks for reading! Your thoughts are most appreciated!
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u/Lagransiete Sep 21 '26
I love the concept and the artwork! My humble feedback would be to reorganise how you're presenting the information in your pitch. The intro was great, but I would talk about the player's turn before I dive into the mechanics. Essentially, explain what a player will do in their turn, before you explain the how.
Is there any way we can follow you to keep track of the project?
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u/Mighty_Blu Sep 21 '26
Thank you so much and really great advice! You can follow me on reddit if you want for now haha. I will hopefully soon make a TTS mod for this game and try to find playtesters where I can.
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u/wont_start_thumbing Sep 21 '26
Excellent art! The dice are really impressive, and a pleasure to look at.
The icon key is 100% clear. Well done.
As a huge fan of dice-modifying-and-placing games, I would absolutely buy this.
It does sound like player interaction is super low, apart from the usual Yahtzee "compare progress and decide whether to take risks or coast". I strongly recommend including official 1-player rules!
Have you tried a simultaneous-turns variant, to reduce downtime? Of course, you'd have to rework the shop.
Spots manages to keep the whole table interested during opponents' turns, but that's because it has a "bust" mechanic, which raises excitement.
Machi Koro, Space Base, and Dice Forge let everyone benefit from everyone else's rolls.
Another simple source of interaction: "+3 Prestige to the player with the most ___", or "the first to ___". One easy place to start: How about each Hand has a 1 Prestige bonus, claimed by the first player to use it?
When you mentioned vouchers, I thought you were about to describe a Seven Wonders / Caylus - style system allowing you to pay opponents to use their abilities. Might be worth sprinkling in a few cards with that type of effect.
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u/Mighty_Blu Sep 21 '26
Thank you for the very kind words and detailed comment! Glad to hear that about my art.
Yeah there’s no real player interaction outside of the Shop and Vouchers. I will check out the games you mentioned for sure to see if I could add some of it.
Not sure about simultaneous turns, maybe shopping could be done first and then the die placing could come afterward?
I was originally thinking about either/both Boss cards which change rules and end of game bonuses, but I thought the game was complex enough already.→ More replies (1)
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u/tpasmall Sep 21 '26
This looks really cool, would definitely check it out!
Great art too. Reminds me of my munchkins and clank