The Forbidden Board Game Mechanism 

"The oldest game dates back 5,000 years to the ancient Egyptians..." *Yu-Gi-Oh theme starts playing in my head*

James Fitz. makes a good point below. Roll and move isn't a lame mechanic unless a designer uses it generically. It's up to the designer how to utilize it cleverly and in a way that is integral and fun. Roll and move deserves to be in a designer's trick bag. This video shows many good examples of this.

This made me remember that brutal Pokémon game, Master Trainer. You always roll first, but from the second city onwards, you decide the path you take and the direction you move. The game was long only due to players' decisions, as you have to plan how to use your cards to catch Pokémon, or even to battle, gather some items, plan the best time to get an event, etc. The dice still decides the move, but you decide what's going to happen once you move. The best part of it is that it is never punishing (yeah, you may have a bad roll trying to catch, but Pokémon can escape, and you may even have a bad roll in a battle but there's always a winner in these); I mean, bad results have a reason, not like Monopoly where once you roll directly to another player's owned property, you're screwed.

In Trivial Pursuit, the 'move' part is not essential. It's fundamentially a stochastic mechanism; you could roll a colored die, or from a deck of cards, to determine the question theme. In Clue, that is even more true: the essence of the game is information exchange, not 'moving' around. I recall playing it be mail (in days before the internet) and the rules had totally done away with the dicerolling. On the other hand, wargames are definitely post-randomness, but the amount of input decision totally overcomes the impact of random results (in good games). So there is nothing inherently bad in outcome randomness. The problem is when there is both input and output randomness and not enough decision, i.e. pure luck. Either with 'move' , or without.

Pre-luck = randomize, then input Post-luck = input, then randomize Luck = randomize with no input Simple roll & move = Luck

I'm loving this channel! Very informative and thoughtful content. Thanks!

I think an important thing to note about this mechanic in games like Ur, Senet, or one of my favourites.. Yutnori, is that the window of possible outcomes is actually rather narrow. Ur being 0-4, Yutnori being 0-5 with a 1/20 chance of a -1 (assuming that half rounded sticks are 50/50) and I assume Senet is similar. Combine this with an equally narrow play space means the randomness it's heavily mitigated. The reason these games have strategy shine through is because the choices are actually meaningful on a scale that small. I believe the bad rap that roll and move gets is purely from the Monopoly era family games. The number pools and board layouts are just simply too large to be interesting or allow for decent strategy.

We were given a game called Brandi Dog, which we haven't played, but it seems to be Ludo, BUT, you also have a hand of cards that you can use to influence your turn. So now you have luck of the roll, and draw, but also decisions to make.

Thank you for this video, it was a really interesting watch. Loved seeing Philosophia: Floating world on the video, looks beautiful and cannot wait for my copy to arrive.

My sense is that calling "roll and move" a single mechanic that includes both Chutes and Ladders (all luck) and Backgammon (pre-luck, substantive strategy especially with the doubling cube) is not particularly useful nomenclature. It's an accurate description of both, but they are so different. I'm also less sure that the pre-luck version is really the default: the roll-and-choose-who-to-move with capture has been used in a ton of games.

It's an exceptional mechanic especially in games geared to younger players. This was a great video...well done!!

one way i worked around this was by changing how you use the results of the dice. you roll 2, then can either use one die, the other, both added together, or one subtracted from the other (sometimes even being able to move backwards). still luck based, but adds choice into it for strategy

TATSU (a game very similar to BACKGAMMON) uses the two dice roll and move method of using dice individually for sepertate player piece moves, or combining to move a single piece future. A very tactical game.

Very nice video. Great use of knowledge. The game Excape also have a nice twist. It got a push your luck aspect. Can't Stop is also a push your luck roll and move variant.

thanks for this video. very informative

Love the vid! I will definitely add it to my next game because players will also be given other decisions instead of movement and you can win without even moving one space forward.

Roll and move mechanic still works for many people the same way gambling does -- magical thinking. It's not logical or rational. But for those who think "here comes a good roll", i.e. magical thinking, the ups and downs of good rolls and bad roles is enough for them to get into the game. I personally don't care for that approach, but I can see why others do because there's lots of magical thinking going on in our world today. Which is unfortunately a bit of a problem for humanity.

Nicely researched and very informative thank you! Perhaps a more general point is that we should not necessarily evaluate mechanisms by some of their more prevalent or popular applications, but instead by their core characteristics. In this case, output randomness is not necessarily a defining feature of the roll and move mechanism and in fact if we consider some of the old classical games (backgammon, etc.)--as you have done in this explainer--then we see that roll and move can have a lot of strategic and tactical gameplay applications. Even BGG's description of the mechanism--which I believe is based on Engelstein and Shalev's book--corrects this "it's all luck" assumption. I am curious which is your favorite roll and move game? I'm interested in trying some of the racing games you mentioned. I don't have a great racing game in my collection so need to find a good one!

Yeah great video great call out to so many games fair play on the amount of research

why Talisman was not mentioned? It is getting its 5th edition and its still just roll and move where the only decision is whenever you move to left or right and then stuff happens and you might roll again. It is a great example how people nitpick at luck of dice, but don't complain about luck of draw of the cards because the limited outcomes unlike a dice where the same roll might show up n times in a row.

Output randomness is certainly not inherently poor. Tabletop RPGs are chock full of it. I think Roll & Move is totally fine as long as it's not so simple as Snakes & Ladders (but even then, as you point out, it is a useful mechanic for kids etc).edit: oops I meant output randomness lol!

One example of terrific and clever use of "roll and move": Games in which player #1 rolls two DIFFERENT dice, say a six sider and a ten sider. Depending on how far away a goal on the board is (close or far), player #1 chooses which die to use to move her piece. The leftover die is used to move a unit or units that move on its/their own to capture player #2's piece. Next turn, player #2 rolls and moves pieces using the same rule. Rinse and repeat. Ye olde Mayfair game "Sanctuary" uses this variation. One die is chosen for the acting player's piece (a thief) and the other is used to move the town guards toward the other player's piece.

Amazing. Congratulations.

I just found this Channel and I absolutely love the hyperbolic humor

I've often joked about designing a board game called "Roll and Move" that would have a basic roll and move mechanism, but there would be several subgames of different board game genres and the spaces you land on in the "roll and move" would tell you which subgame you take your turn in next. It's probably too conceptual to work but I'd play it if someone made it.

I design pretty simple abstract games. I haven't made a roll and move yet but I did have an idea for it. The plan was to use the maximum dice roll as a basis for the turn, and then use the role itself to divide the max number into two different usable numbers. Basically if you rolled 2d6 and got a 7, your move would be 7 spaces but then you would get 5 points towards another mechanic. It gives you all the benefits and simplicity of roll and move but gives you more to work with that any new player can understand. Plus, It's inherently self balancing. You can also just use the dice individually, use different colors, or even different types of dice. Monopoly would probably be a lot more interesting if you rolled a 5, and then a 2, instead of just a 7. I've been thinking about designing a very simplistic BattleTech type miniature game on a hex map that uses Several of these ideas. Something like this.. You roll 3d6, a D4, and a red D6. Each basic D6 is a number of spaces you can move in a straight line. The D4 tells you how many times you can reorient yourself in between these movements. And, the red D6 would be shooting your gun or something. This seems incredibly simplistic but it actually gives you a lot more variety than "your piece can move 7 squares".

Even Hasbro themselves are aware of the pain of classic Monopoly and release new versions either make fun of the classic game (like in the case of Cheaters Edition or Monopoly For Sore Losers) or try to improve upon it. Monopoly Builder for example uses much of the same mechanics as the original but adds Catan-esque resource management, building and trading systems. Or Monopoly Fortnite Edition (yes, really), which adds elements of push your luck and survival as players try to outwit one another by placing traps while attempting to avoid a "storm" which slowly swallows up the board.

This is it! this is the final key for The Dracula by Bram Stoker Game. I'm using this mechanics with a super twist because I believe in your final recommendations. It's simple and fun and super easy to teach. Game designers needs more imagination and creativity. Great video. Thanks!

I actually made a roll and move game. But there were some changes i made to add choice. First players can move up to tge amount rolled sometimes they want to move less spaces. Secondly the board is a maze. Players dont know where their goal is. So they must attempt to create a mental map of the board or watch others and remember how they move through the map. Finally players dont have one set path so they must decide which path is the best for their solution. I also incoperated strong cordination and negotiation with other players and its a fun time

Gameplay mechanics sort of resemble storytelling devices in a way that some of them are harder to implement correctly than others.

Always a pleasure to watch « old videos » from the time I didn’t even know you existed 😊 Hope to play again with you soon !

As a hobbyist, I did this mod: "Blood Rage Lite". It's awesome and free and it's designed by a genuine engineer gamer with no constraints but fun! Get it, for free, from BGG's Blood Rage file section.

damn, I've been looking for a video game toolkit but for board games channel, and I think I've found it, thanks for the interesting video Edit: oh and sub

i would add the new & restored key to the kingdom, a roll & move that mitigates the luck of dice.

I haven't played Ur, but I feel like it is a decidedly better game than Backgammon, multiple d4 where 2 sides count as giving moves is massively bell curved. And being able to determine how to apply those is even better. It's specifically the I rolled and that number is the amount the piece moves. Is so much worse. It's weird how the worst of thousands years old games are the ones I've actually heard of and played

this is intriguing for sure. I have made my own version of the board game "RISK", and one feature I added was that after you have captured a continent, (we use money now as one-form of currency) you can pay $200 from your Defense Fund to choose a group of armies (minimum of 10) that are located on that continent and place a "special forces" token beside them to declare they are an exclusive "special forces" unit. Which means during combat, they are given an advantage with the dice during either the "attack" phase, or when they are being "attacked" by rolling two 12 sided dice and one 6 - sided die.

My game uses this as its main mechanic but lets the player chose how many spaces to move. The number one gets with the dice is only the max amount of spaces one can move in that turn. Its up to each player if they want to advance all the allowed spaces or stop at some point.

8:25 chutes and ladders may be of interesting decisions, but those might not be interesting decisions for us but for nature/god to decide :P

Based on the criteria outlined Settlers of Catan is Roll and Move, but the overwhelming consensus is that it is a fun game with a certain degree of freshness (freshness in regard to longer lived games like Monopoly or Candyland). Good video!

5:20 "Snakes and ladders if you're [British]": No! It's the other way around, "chutes" only used if you're afflicted by being 'murrican. It was a word chosen by a puritan American publisher (Milton Bradley in 1943) who objected to "snakes" that put the devil in mind (the Garden of Eden and all that). All other western languages have "snakes".

The one thing more prevalent to "fun" in board games is player interaction via a common play area. Pre luck, or roll and move, is generally bad but in games like Deepsea adventure or Formula D it's the changing game state that gives agency. Snakes and ladders, or monopoly (but not goose chase) it doesn't matter where other players are. There is no interaction at all. At least in monopoly you have half the time a choice to buy or not to buy. In catan, there's even less of that. The earliest post luck game is probably backgammon (or ur but the rules on ur are so vague I can't consider it a board game).

3:04 This seems very similar to the game Hounds and Jackals we all saw being played by Sethi and Nefertiri near the beginning of "The Ten Commandments." Do you know anything about that game? I'm very curious about it.

Rajas definitely doesn't contain roll & move, at least not anything close to the traditional definition. I think it would be misleading if it was included in the list of game mechanisms.

High rolls must not rule, and low rolls must not suck.

Formula D is good modern game with roll and move as a main mechanic

Chip Theory games has released burncycle at the time of this comment. The game has roll and move, but the way it is implemented is quite unique. Players are given an amount of power for their robot they are controlling, and their power represents their dice pool. In order to perform actions (move, access terminals, open doors etc) the bots must allocate AP, which is done by choosing a number of dice (based on their power and upgraded dice they have unlocked). The player needs to split these dice between several actions during their turn, adding an element of resource management. The basic dice have blank sides, which can either be combined with another to gain a 1 result or saved for a future role, where any dice with a value rolled is used even if the value is in excess. So lower value dice have some value over the upgraded dice, and you can guarantee results when you need to, or you can try and get exactly what you need and risk not hitting the action but getting rewarded if you do. There is also a secondary bot that needs to have AP assigned to it, which gives another place where actions need to be assigned while also giving a place to spend excess rolled results. It's an interesting take on roll and move, because it is less about the movement- players will generally have plenty of movement to do whatever they need. It is more a mechanic designed to facilitate resource management and have a small element of push your luck that can be used in a pinch.

Any mechsnic is lame if it does no MAKE SENSE. For example, during combat you plan, but self performance under stress does not always work as planned. Rolling dice is appropriate. This is why Battletech works so well. Positioning is deterministic, firing has randomness. If you drive a car and you plan to turn left or accelerate, it is almost certain your car will react as planned. So using a card with deterministic outcome makes sense. This us why dice rolling in Formula D is outperformed by card decisioning in Downforce. Sometimes dice automation makes sense. In Rebellion base box, strategy is done by players but tactical combat is automated using dice. In the expansion they added player cards to add a certain level of tactical decision. If you see "how about baseball" it is a dice automation game of baseball. It can be fixed by using rock paper scissors to see if batter succeeds in achieving contact. Rock paper scissors is the best mechanism for a duel between player. This mechanism can be expressed in many ways. In Battletech, mechs are a trade off between firepower, speed and armor. So by facing a mech with one design vs another mech with a different design, you are having a rock paper scissors implied in that mech design. The "I cut you choose" mechanic is a glorified name for rock paper scissors where no one has guaranteed victory. The design trade off of Battletech is also rock paper scissors. Roll and move only makes sense if you model how a butterfly flies and positions itself. Some people may like it. Some will not. For example, make chess to have random teleports that serve as ejection seats. Chess players will hate it as it adds luck to a game where skill to achieve a deterministic outcome is the appeal of the game. The whole point is the MAKE SENSE topic. With thematic games, it is clear. But with ludic games it seems roll and move in Monopoly where you charge money based on where people fall, is more a game about setting a trap to catch flies. One player is the fly and the other is setting a trap. So both players compete to see who screws the other better. I do not find it appealing. But probably some people do.

I dont think its inherently bad. Maybe you roll many die and select which value goes where. Maybe your character augments numbers or you use cards to augment the experience.

agreed

Ludo is goated

2:20 song? 🤔

6:20 technically its not balanced, first to move still has the advantage :P

forbidden

What is the game seen in the intro?

I can't agree with geoff engelstein here. I think the mechanic is inherently bad if it's purely randomness. It's not even that you make a choice and randomness determines the outcome or randomness determines your choices so it's neither input or output randomness it's just pure randomness. I think some mechanics are inherently bad and making some interesting design choices will likely end with a game still worse than it could have been using better mechanics I should clarify if you only have one pawn it's inherently bad . Otherwise you. Have an element of choice

Great channel. So I like roll & move. A lot of my favorite games include it: Monopoly, Talisman, HeroQuest, Clue, just to name a few. I unashamedly defend Monopoly as a great classic. Why? People who hate it probably are not playing using the rules. The game isn't that long usually, maybe an hour or hour 1/2. Play by the rules as printed, don't put money on free parking and all that nonsense. To criticize Monopoly's dice mechanic is to criticize dice mechanics as a whole, or games with luck factors. You can have a bad run and not hit properties, but that doesn't happen all too often. You could introduce homebrew rules by dealing out a number of properties to players to make things more balance if need be. I think people are just mad because they are not good and striking deals and they lengthen Monopoly by hours by using free parking as a lotto, which ruins the game.

what about Risk? or D&D?

Backgammon uses roll and move for thousands of years and it's one of the deepest abstract strategy board games in existence. So, IMO, it's not a bad mechanic at all. Just modern designers lost their thouch how to use it correctly.

I think snakes and ladders isn't a post luck mechanic. It is just simply luck.

If you can script a game to only stop and ask for decision then these would run to completion without single prompt

my game is roll to attack

Great video. Tho it sounds like you are talking in a hollow space. A bit disturbing. Other than that... nice. :)

At first I was thinking, "oh good pre-luck and post-luck should be much less confusing than the typical terms (input and output randomness" then you went on to use those terms exactly opposite how I intuitively expect. You used "pre-luck" to mean a decision made AFTER the luck happens and "post-luck" to describe a decision made BEFORE the luck happens. Wtf?

I think it’s fine but only if there’s other choices or inputs u can do to either manipulate the dice or actions you can do afterwards or between roles to have some form of skill or tactics and not just luck. For example snakes and ladders is the worst game of all time imo it’s only purpose is to introduce the dice rolling mechanic to kids

Candyland isn't exactly roll and move. And it is easily fixed by having more than one card.

Allow player to statically move 3 spaces or rolling a D6. Solved.

roll and move is not nearly a bad as player elimination.

I think you title is misleading. Many games use randomness. The issue with games like Monopoly is the lack of agency; you actually make this point towards the end and it is the really issue here. For example, the royal game of Ur is actually interesting despite the randomness. I also don't think it really matter whether you have pre-luck or post-luck either; it's how it's implemented with the rest of the game. In fact pre-luck might be a bit easier to get right!!!

I completely disagree on one point. A game that is hazardous as a main mechanic is deeply unfair. It's literally the idea. Some will advance, others not, stuff happens, then one player wins because of complete randomness. Luck is profoundly unfair. The nature of advantaging some and not others is profoundly antagonist to justice, equality, and fairness. For that reason, and maybe the fact that luck and life are against me, I have been made hating board games as a whole, even to the point of hating TTRPGs like D&D which have a deep tendency of rulelawyer railroadery, while it was my hobby and passion at the time. I had a bad experience with one guy of this type. Because of this I have almost left games at all, while I was only lacking of narrative, fair games which I didn't knew existed back then. Thought it was important to say. Nature is profoundly NOT just, NOT equal, and NOT fair. Making someone win because of their random characteristics is purely evil. It should be a crime. But I guess thats just my outcast / misfit pov in life.

Snake & ladder isn't a proper game imho. Snake & ladder is as interactive as Bingo or slot machines.

what up its your boy comment

There's no such things as not allowed in game design, only people who think they know better telling you how you should be designing games. I have created a roll and move game that is very popular with "new" gamers. The game design world needs to beware of groupthink and only catering to a certain type of gamer. My two cents.

It is over used.

Unfavored? One reason: monopoly. I don't care if others don't "join the hobby" or not. If many keep associating boardgames with dull roll & move monopoly: oh, well. Their loss. To each their own as it doesn't harm anyone. Only with high stakes gambling and associated addiction or ignoring house chores might be traditional reasons to exit gaming. (Or some personal reasons between one & whomever.) If others judge, that's more on them. Making games with sole purpose to reach larger audience risks making less interesting games as production potentially tilts towards "units sold". Many a licensed game off some pop icon have failed miserably over the yrs. Sorry. Mention of "expanding the hobby" triggers me, I guess. Who cares if others judge. But definitely do your house work & spend time with your family (if you're one whose gaming doesn't include your sig other or kids). Maybe the Splotter folks will do a roll & move someday?