
Today we are talking about dice versus deck randomness. There are plenty of awesome games out there using either dice or deck of cards for their randomness, sometimes both. We’re going to pit these two board game concepts at each other for the banter and see what happens.
Transcript
hello and welcome to the decking awesome
podcast
my name is Ciara and i’m joined by the
awesome Eoin and Brian
hello hey today we are talking about
dice versus deck randomness
there are plenty of awesome games out
there that either use dice or
decks of cards for their randomness
sometimes they use both
we’re going to pit these two board game
concepts at each other for the banter
and to see what happens
first up what is randomness in games and
why do we have dice and decks
games without dyson decks like chess
are about a strategic fight against each
other
and they pit people’s strategies without
having
any sort of variation in the game you
can play a game of chess
a thousand times and the concepts always
stay the same and you don’t have to
adapt
any of your skills or strategy for
what’s happening on the board
whereas games with randomness which are
quite a lot of board games
from things like king of tokyo or
anything else involve
adapting to whatever happens with the
dice and the deck
so they added more variety they add
different things to happen each game
they make games less repetitive
and now we’re going to discuss which we
prefer which we think are going to work
better
in board games so debating that dice are
king
we have ono and debating that decks of
cards our best is Brian
so Eoin let’s kick off your opening
statement hey so i i totally agreed that
games with randomness are really really
fun i still love chess but yeah the
variety
and the fact it’s it’s a purely skill
game means that
you know two people of different skill
levels can’t really enjoy themselves the
same way
so having that randomness in is always
kind of fun adds a
kind of cool layer to it and dice are
definitely better than decks
definitely so i have my time
the first thing i want to say is that
dice just have a really nice
feel to them they’re a really good
component to have in the game you know
you throw a few dice it’s really
satisfying you know you have monopoly
troll couple of dice it wouldn’t feel
the same with like decks
it’s just it’s just very satisfying uh
then dice can also reduce
the box sizes so you can have like
travel additions
because a deck of cards you can have
quite a lot of cards that can all be
kind of generally replaced with a set of
that dice
and then also when you’re dealing with
like decks of cards you know stuff like
pandemic we’re just
you have to set up the decks a certain
way and it can kind of get confusing
you have a bunch of dice everyone knows
just roll the dice and you get cracking
and that’s me okay so to counter this
we have Brian’s opening statement god if
i knew those were going to be your
opening points i wouldn’t i would have
i would have done half the preparation
for this it’s going to be so easy first
of all with
chess i’m going to throw it back a
little bit let’s add a bit of randomness
to it hide little cocktail sticks behind
your bishops
when your opponent goes to make a movie
you don’t like stab them boom
randomness and chess that’s paint
pending on that one so just i’m not sure
how that adds to the game
yeah pointless do you ever play chess
and expect to get stabbed in the hand of
the toothpick
random oh you’re just having the person
oh yeah
okay cool okay so for decks
which i suppose i’m actually here to
argue decks are way
cheaper way way cheaper first of all
like for prototyping
you know print off at a4 page chop it up
stick it in cards leaves everyone guess
what you’re doing
you know when it comes to manufacture
and we can attest to this
Ciara especially will attest to this
because me and you are constantly adding
dice into games
if you throw custom dice into games you
skyrocket your price which gets passed
on to the consumer
so buying games prototyping games and
making games
all cost a whole lot more if you want to
add dice into them
whereas dex cheap cheerful print lovely
with dice you’re very limited like most
dice you just use six sided
ones in games so you’re very limited
with what you can and can’t do
in them but you want to put in a deck of
cards there’s like 300 different things
you can do
with one deck of cards a really big deck
of cards
you say reduce the size of the box
actually i find that interesting because
i would have said
dice games were bigger than deck games
because like you get a deck of cards
it’s a small little cardboard box you
can have a whole game
compressed into that but dice now you’re
gonna have to put in a big cardboard
box where does that fit in your pocket
it doesn’t
crazy i also think that
decks they they keep the randomness
because you don’t know what cars are
gonna come up you don’t know when
they’re gonna come up but they allow you
an element of strategy
like if you have five or six cards in
your hand you can kind of start thinking
about what you’re going to do what you
want to do
what your next move is going to be you
can think two or three turns ahead cards
you want to save and stuff like that
whereas with dice you have to wait until
you’ve actually rolled them and then you
have to
see what they all are and everyone’s
kind of leaning over the table looking
trying to decide
what could happen what will happen
whereas when it comes to cards you can
go
boom great turn boom great turn boom bj
let’s dice let’s just roll
oh yeah first of all the best first of
all
fourth of all the very best thing about
carrots is that little shh
noise you get when you shuffle them
really well i can’t do it one day i’ll
learn
but that little noise it’s beautiful
yeah also also also yu-gi-oh
you go i’m gonna bring it up i know i
know he said we’re gonna do but i’m
gonna bring it up
you believe in the heart of the cold
plastic dice you
believe in the heart of the cards and i
often find myself thinking what would
yu-gi-oh do
you know in times of trouble what would
yu-gi-oh do probably throw some cards at
someone and run away
save the world thanks for that opening
statement Brian
some interesting viewpoints there from
both of you i disagree with all of them
oh i should have done that in my opening
statement
Eoin there are many games that have both
dice and deck choices
can you talk about some specific games
that are your favorite and why you would
pick the dice option
there are a lot of games out there
obviously there’s lots of games with
dice in them that i love
and there’s lots of games that have kind
of like two versions of the game which i
quite like where there’s
they’ve made a great game and they’ve
added dice to it and
they’ve just made the game better it’s
just become a better game
so the two obvious examples are roll for
the galaxy against race for the galaxy
race reality is a great game
dexa cards give a lot of variety but
what they’ve managed to do
is they’ve managed to keep that variety
but also the randomness becomes the dice
so they’ve kind of cordoned off the
randomness into its own little section
just for the dice
and they’ve kept the variety in the game
and that’s kind of added a whole
bunch of enjoyability to it enjoyability
is a word i’m pretty sure
i think it is a word i think you’re all
right
not in countdown anyway sushi roll is a
great game
more than nine letters i think i think
it is yeah uh sushi roll is a great game
as well and it has the
sushi go is the other one and sushigo
has card drafting
and it has you know all this kind of
social
kind of figuring out people and you know
kind of tactics around it and they’ve
really done a great job
at turning that into a dice rolling game
which is just really fun
lots of cool components good artwork
everyone loves to roll a few dice
except for Brian and
yeah it’s kind of added to the whole
aspect of it i have to say i’m a big fan
of roll for the galaxy i think uh
having hundreds of dice makes it a lot
more interesting
too how much must that have cost them to
make it they’re very tiny
there’s literally like 350 dice or
something in that game which i’ll admit
is really cool just throwing out a
handful of them
but my god the cost of it i can only
imagine it’s a better game though
do you think that the fact that there
are different types of dice in that game
there are multiple
dice but there also have different
probabilities of getting faces on it do
you think that
has an impact on the fact that it could
replace cards
i i think it’s it can get tricky when it
comes to dice
and deck comparing card games like that
because
role for the galaxy was an after race
for the galaxy so they learned a lot
about
race for the galaxy from people playing
it and then they came up with this
version
and so people liked the aesthetic so
they made sure all of the dice
kind of fit in with that team and i know
there’s only one symbol on each side
but under certain colors but i think
they add they make sure they kind of
it’s part of the game
and so they learned a lot and they kind
of used that knowledge
to create role for the galaxy in a very
great way
cool and Brian can you give us some
examples of your favorite game
with a dyson deck choice and why would
you pick the deck option
so we’re avid pandemic players and fans
like we’ve played
them all we played on the brink i don’t
know we’ll come back to them
but we’ve played all the legacy games
we’ve played the base game we’ve put
pandemic cure pandemic the cure is a
dice version of pandemic
and yes i’ll grant you it is a bit fun
but the problem is
this you take all the strategy out of it
like you’re now just going oh there’s
the disease over there i want to fight
it
roll the dice no can’t do it this time
what about you you give it a try
no no you didn’t roll any numbers either
you no oh okay well the disease one
like even having some pandemic as well
yeah i know
you can at least feel like you’re trying
in pandemic like at least if you’re
moving towards stopping outbreaks
you know you feel like you’re getting
there but with the dice game you could
be
perfectly positioned to stop the virus
spreading but
you just haven’t rolled any twos so
you’re you just you lose the game
because of look
you know it’s not strategy it’s not you
know
anything you’ve done it’s just lost the
game because
you roll the wrong numbers yeah it can
make me tricky because
uh sometimes people add in dice into
games like this
and it doesn’t work out so they try it
feels like for pandemic security they
tried to make a dice version of the game
but they kind of lost the concept of
pandemic because there’s no map of the
world
there’s no moving around to like you
know visiting madrid over here and then
flying off to cartoon
and so you kind of miss that team and
that’s kind of style but they did
create like a much smaller kind of
compact game with pandemic to cure but
it’s a totally i think they’re different
games
yeah yeah yeah i mean you’re right
they’re they’re different games they’re
not
it’s not like a pandemic and a pandemic
dice it’s it is a different version of
the game you’re still basically just
trying to cure
viruses but i just don’t think it works
as well because pandemic
in itself is is inherently a very
strategic game where you have to work
together you have to cooperate
you can’t cooperate and go you didn’t
pull your ways you’re not rolling any
sixes
i would say pandemic cure is easier to
set up and easier to play
although it isn’t probably not as
satisfying maybe to finish it
yeah that’s what they kind of set up to
do with pandemic to cure
yeah they also added in dice for
pandemic rome
which is instead of just taking a
disease cube off you roll a dice to see
if you
take a disease cube off and a lot of
people did not like that
because i think that when you’re putting
in all the work and you still might not
succeed
yeah that way in that case you have the
deck randomness and the dice randomness
it’s just too much randomness yeah and
there’s that tipping scale i think when
it comes to randomness
especially in games where it’s either
you’re playing a skillful game
or you’re just letting the game do
whatever it wants yeah and i think they
just didn’t get that right
i still love pandemic rom though and you
think that with pandemic
your problem is that the dice actually
forces your actions
so you don’t have action choice as much
as you would in
pandemic is all about like what you’re
going to do with your four actions
and things like pandemic the cure and
something like
star wars
destiny yeah you’re forced to do
whatever did i say and you don’t have
any
there’s no choice the dice takes away
the choice is that is that the the your
key problem with the pandemic yeah i
think that’s
that’s one of the big issues of a test
you know you can’t go okay well look it
looks like there’s gonna be an outbreak
over there we’ll move over there and try
to handle that
you’re just rolling your dice and going
oh i suppose i’ll
take a little bit out of here but it
wasn’t really a problem but i don’t have
a choice it’s either that or don’t use
the dice at all
like i think that’s just like while it’s
twilight is still a fun game i just
think that’s what lets it down very
slightly
by just adding complete randomness to
quite a strategic game
for a less strategic game you’ve you’ve
got i suppose like bang
and bang with dice dice bang bang dice
i actually don’t know what it’s called i
think it’s just bang with dice but like
with bang where you’re playing with a
deck of cards
you’ve got to hand the cards you can
play cards out in front of you that
protect you that defend you you know
you’ve got a
chance of saving yourself and beating
others while you’re at it you know you
can throw dynamite down and watch it
pass itself around the board
and maybe screw over someone else maybe
it screws over an ally
but with the dice version of it
again while objectively a fun game it’s
completely random so you could uh like
you could
plan to okay i figured out who the guy
is that i need to get
i know it’s him i have to get him and
you roll your dice and you just don’t
roll what you need to get
and i have no choice but to wait till
your next turn and hope you survive
or worse still you roll a load of arrows
and you just get shot by the indians
or you roll a load of dynamite and it
blows up in your face there’s no uh
there’s no strategy to it you need an
element of strategy for randomness games
if it’s just
all chaos and random it doesn’t really
work
yeah i it’s called bang the card game
and bang the dice game
yes it’s very close games okay i get
confused all the time with it
but i think i agree with you in the fact
that sometimes when they create diced
versions of games
they forget the concept of variety and
skill like you’re saying
and with the bang the dice game they
could have
kept the skill and variety they had in
the card game
because when you look at roll for the
galaxy they didn’t get rid of the cards
or the planets or all this kind of cool
stuff they added in the dice
and contained the randomness to the dice
and they
just got rid of all the randomness of
the cards and you still have the
obviously you have the randomness of the
cards when you’re trying to pick your
new planet to
you know you pick up a new one it’s
still random whatever you pick up
but they’ve kind of limited it a lot
more and it’s i think that’s the best
way of creating dice
alternative to games is you create one
concept whatever the main concept
of randomness is in your game change
that the dice but keep
the variety of the cards of the actions
of the skill
of the you know predicting things so
yeah bang with dice they could just
tweaked it a little bit more
so it wasn’t just rolling dice and
seeing what happens i do still think
it’s a fun game but it just
adds so much chaos to a game that
is at least a little bit strategy
previous to us
yeah i think you can get the same
problem with decks though of just being
at the
mercy of decks of cards and there’s no
skill involved
yeah so i on that question and Brian do
you think the
size of the deck makes much of a
difference in the randomness
and so terraforming mars and lords water
deep have very
big decks and in those games there
a lot of questions around whether the
card combinations that work together are
going to come up
do they happen to come up in such a big
deck
and this makes the the deck part of the
game really unpredictable
so what do you think about games like
that i think on the whole
that it actually works quite well if you
have a huge deck of cards and the game
you play only gets you through about a
third of the deck
it allows for a big replayability in the
game so you know
maybe maybe when you play it this time
you get one assortment of
creatures monsters spells abilities
whatever it is the next time you play
you get a whole different one it’s like
it’s like playing a whole new game all
over again you’re not just
having the same repetition over and over
and over and over again
like you’ve never played a dice game and
gone oh we should play that again
and i hope i see the sixth side of the
dice this time you know you’re always
just
you know what’s on the dice and it comes
down a little bit to look
but big decks do add an element of
randomness and
i think we’re terraforming mars lets
down the decks a little bit
is that a lot of the cards are dependent
on when they come up
because you can have car you can like
you can pick up six or seven cards that
can only be played
earlier in the game and are now
completely useless mid-game or late game
and you find yourself stuck because you
have no you’ve nothing you can do and
you’re just
it’s bad luck with the order the cards
came up in i don’t know could that have
been split up
into you know different decks like for
the first until the temperature reaches
this
play with these cards or until the
oxygen reaches display with these cards
i don’t know i generally think that the
larger the deck makes for a more fun
game
because it gives you that randomness to
the whole game rather than just
individual randomness but as you said it
can work against you
it doesn’t it’s not always your friend
especially if uh
if cards become useless or like you said
you need combos
and you just can’t combo the cards yeah
i think uh
terraforming wires and large water deep
are great examples of why random decks
don’t work
well walk myself into that one i love
those games
i like playing them but the biggest
downsides to them is the random deck
which is just a if you’re talking a
massive pile of cards
and you don’t know what’s going to come
up next and it’s that the variety is
great
and i love games with that with the fact
that as i haven’t seen all the cards
that are going to come up yet
let’s play again and it really does add
a new kind of layer to it
but when it comes to the dice i think
you can have your cake and eat it too
you can have the randomness be you know
you roll a bunch of dice and that says
oh i want to pick a
it tells me i can pick a bio card you
know or like you roll like i said
maybe you have all your cards in the
deck set into separate decks
you roll a bunch of dice and it tells
you you can pick two bio and then one
manufacturing or whatever and then you
get the pick from those decks and that
gives you the variety of the cards
but the randomness is then contained in
within the dice and the best thing about
dice
is that you can alter the probabilities
of things
that you can’t do in decks so if you
wanted to say
alter the probability of bio you want
more oxygen related cards in your deck
you have to create more oxygen cards and
put it into your deck whereas with dice
you don’t need to just flesh out your
deck you can have a really small
contained variety of cool cards
and then your variety your randomness is
in your cards and say i want bio to be
really important you pop it into your
dice and becomes manufacturing prototype
you say you don’t want that you get rid
of one side you put in a different one
and it’s a great way i like that your
argument is if you want more randomness
you have to put in more cards but you
just go i’ll just change the side of a
dice
just change the whole face of a dice
yeah that changed the probability of
that of those
adding more cards yeah but what i’m
saying is that the cards you have to
come up with new cards and if you don’t
if you just some some people will just
copy cards and have
duplicates of cards in a deck and then
that becomes stale after a while you
know
but the advantage cards have there is
that say i want to increase the amount
of
utility cards i have by two percent i
can just add in one or two more cards
if you want to increase anything on the
dice faces you’re doing it by 17
each time true true boom
[Music]
yeah usually you’re not you’re not that
specific usually you don’t care too much
about the
very minutiae of it how big is your deck
getting that you’re
having 17 or something yeah i suppose if
you’re not if you’re not playing with
the deck that’s at least 200 cards
what’s the point
so this is a question for both of you in
um something as simple as
ticket ride which is a card game that
doesn’t have
a lot of like the the cards are the main
focus of the game do you think having
players roll dice from a bag rather than
drawing cards
would make much of a difference i know
the cost of the game itself might change
but
do you think when it’s simple situations
like just picking a color that it would
have much impact on gameplay that’s
tricky because
uh in the ticket to right game they have
a deck of cards
and they’ve ensured that they have
things like the wild train
comes up a certain amount of time and
then you have the specific colors coming
up at a specific time
and there is some strategy in taking the
right of
when to take cards when to take from the
deck
versus when thick outside if you know no
one wants pink cards
you see a pink card you’re not going to
jump at it because you know
no one wants it so you know it’s kind of
low value you can see the value based on
other players
if you translate that to dice kind of
like how sushi roll works
you end up almost playing single-player
solitaire
and you don’t have to worry about this
kind of mechanism of other people’s
cards and
and gaining so it has pros and cons and
it really depends on what you want
so in ticket ride it’s tricky
when people like you have two people so
if it’s me if it’s just tree playing
me and Brian want blue cards and you
don’t mind
you’ve probably got a better chance of
winning because me and Brian are
constantly going to be
attacking each other over blue cards
whereas it was dice you don’t have that
problem
now whether that’s a design choice as to
whether you want that or not yeah you
see
i feel though where dice would let you
down and again like take a dried is that
you know you pick up cards and you
either someone’s remembering 40 cards in
your hand or
they’re just a straight-up genius you
have an element of surprise people don’t
know what you have in your hand
especially if you’re taking cards from
face down off the deck whereas with dice
you have to have the dice out in front
of you
so people can go well there’s clearly
four black dice there so they’re
obviously going for at least the four or
five black route over there
so i’m just gonna build something beyond
that that blocks them getting through
it takes away the kind of secrecy and
strategy to the game so
the dice there tilted to too random
rather than and i know i know games like
roll for the galaxy you hide your
you hide your dice but i mean you’re
playing an
honesty game there where someone isn’t
just gonna you know knock their dice
over and go oh that’s a better face
that’s what it actually was did you know
people who play ticket to the right are
very competitive
and did she cheat a lot yeah
of all the games the least likely
i would agree that there’s the hidden
dice thing is
it’s you can have you can cheat easier
than hidden dice however
having playing having seen people play
poker and stuff like cheating
without text stills happen and they’re a
lot better than i’ll ever be
achieving with there you go it’s easier
to hide cards up your sleeve than it is
nice
plain sushi roll in a roll for the
galaxy
out of your sleeve i’d like to export
please
but you can you can keep the the variety
and stuff and thick through it so like
you know you could
one one solution to that is you roll out
the open
and you gain uh say you know two blue
and a pretty pink
you get the trains the two blue and pink
trains and you put that behind
your d your ting and everyone saw that
then you can’t cheat
and then people don’t really know what
your totals are so did you keep five
blues i haven’t really been counting
your blues do you have enough blues to
block me
so all you’re doing is adding random to
which cards you’re taking
yeah that’s that’s adding an unnecessary
extra element on top of now you’re
removing the deck randomness and you’re
putting in a much better
because dice are better than this
you know yeah so but what happens if the
three of us are playing ticket to ride
we all roll five dice and they all come
up as blue
just by sheer statistical coincidence
there’s only 10 say 10 blue cards there
who gets them why do you
you know there’s no strategy to it
there’s no blue roots left on the board
but you’re stuck
picking up things you don’t want because
look has dictated us
you’re not going i’m taking those cards
to block other people you’re going
i’m taking those cards because i’m stuck
and i now have to waste a turn doing
nothing with them yeah in that case
uh because you have the the variety in
ticket to ride of
choosing your cards or picking two
random dice
you could have a thing where you can
either roll two dice
or pick a card pick when you want or
roll two they kind of
take it to right works where you can
pick the one you want or you pick i
can’t remember water rules to take a
right you can
you can pick up two that you want or one
random card or one like any card
but yeah but you can also pick from the
deck right you can pick two from the
deck or you can pick two from that thing
yeah
so yeah then you would have like a
global dice you’d have like
uh you can roll a bunch of dice that are
for everybody
and you can get your pick from that or
you can roll your own or re-rolling like
in
king of tokyo what’s the difference
between rolling global dice and having
five
dice out there with colors that you
choose from versus five cards
of colors face up in front of you like
take a drive currently has
yeah ticket to ride suffers from all the
cards being pink at some point
yeah then everyone draws up the deck
yeah yeah so you have that re-roll
possibilities
you also have this like you’re saying
that you could you constantly pick blue
all the time and dice
that doesn’t happen though in reality in
reality it just it uniformly
probably just means everyone gets
everything at some point
oh that’s a hole and if we’re going down
the season statistics
there’s a goat behind that door outside
and i say it’s a car
i can’t remember the name of that game
show probability
yeah if you if you change your guess
then it becomes it makes me think casino
royale but i know that’s not what it’s
called i’m making a very clever point
and i’ve dumped it down by not
remembering the name of a stamis
anyway but yes no i defied to argue
against this one ticket to ride
how satisfying is this when you’re just
like you’re just picking up cards for
like six or seven turns in a row
and everyone’s like oh he’s clearly not
getting what he wants and then boom
you just have five turns of building
massive trains and you go from last
place to first place
and it’s just so satisfying to see the
look on everyone’s faces
yeah but that has nothing to do with the
deck or dice but you can’t hoard with
dice
you’ve already already argued that you
can’t hoard or dice no but you roll the
dice and you get the resources
so so you’re right in the fact that the
the decks your cards you pick up
are the resources so there is two they
have the ability to be two different
things
that’s the great thing about decks and
cards i know
is that they can be multiple things all
right they can be the randomness
and they can have the functionality and
the actions and also
real resources they’re really multi-use
and multi-use cards are awesome
but also the fact is that there’s
duplicates there’s massive amounts of
duplicates of cards so there’s a whole
bunch of pink cards
and whereas that could just be one side
of a dice
so you know yes but that one side of the
dice is just as likely to come up each
time
yeah but you can change the probability
with this so you can determine
take the pink off the dice then no one
gets pink and wouldn’t that be better
for everyone
so you can you can kind of change the
probability and but once you roll the
dice then you have to replace
all of the versatility of that card with
resources or with other things
so you end up with more components in a
in a ticket to ride one
but the components are better so you
have a little pink train
or you can have a little pink token and
then the dice instead of just a you know
an ugly deck of cards
so if you’re prepared to spend double
the amount of money on a game
dice are for you i would say card
artwork is beautiful but i don’t know
sometimes when i’m playing a board game
i do i want the artwork to be really
nice
but i just don’t want it just to be
artwork and cards sometimes i want a big
handful of dice or some cool tokens to
hold in my hand
you know feel involved tactile feedback
so what are both of your opinions on
sushi go and sushi roll
so on had brought up that and
he enjoys sushi roll a bit more that’s
quite a bigger box than sushi go
and i think that we probably pay sushi
go more overall i think so um what do
you think
of the benefits of each of those well i
think you’ve nicely made a lot of points
and my favorite there so uh thank you
moderator
yeah sushi i like i like sushi roll i i
um that’s why they’re two very very good
games they’re strong
in their own they’re like they both have
really good
points i agree sushi roll is good fun i
guess i think but i think the
card one works better because so the
card drafting as you’re passing the
cards around you can kind of see
what cards are left over so you kind of
get a feel for what everyone is
collecting what everyone is hoarding
what’s available what’s not available
and it allows you the opportunity to
switch up kind of mid-stream that you
can go oh look no one’s collected any
wasabi i’m just gonna grab a couple of
them and
they’ll work in my favor whereas when
you’re playing with the dice
like everything’s out in front of you
you know everyone’s looking at the same
dice everyone’s making the same strategy
at the same time
everyone’s going i’m going to grab the
wasabi first and then i’m going to grab
some
sushi i forgot the name for all the
things nigiri thank you
i was thinking negroni but it’s like no
that’s a drink
but yeah so you like when you have the
hidden decks again it gives you the
opportunity to kind of strategize
separately and
if you can even vaguely card count you
can kind of
plan differently you can adjust your
plan midstream but like
you can see straight away what
everyone’s doing when all the dice are
face up in front of you and obviously
you can’t hide the dice because
you know people could just change them
yeah i’d i’d agree with that
you’re wrong though but um
is fantastic it has cards allow you to
card count
which is really fun so in ticket to ride
doesn’t really come up because you don’t
get through the deck really enough to be
able to pay attention as soon as you go
you have to get through the entire deck
so you have that ability to carry counts
so you know
you know like obviously how to play the
game a couple of times before you know
what the kind of
areas are and you never pick the little
cake thing because the cake thing is
always bad money
unless you get all the cake things yes
yeah i’m very lucky it has to be all or
nothing that’s yeah but even if
one person goes on and during one cake
yeah he gets half the points yeah
it’s it’s just not good but
which is great but the thing is it gets
a little bit predictable when you
play sushi go for the tenth time and you
know
what your tactics are going to be
because you can count it so many times
you know the first round you’re gonna
get that
you’re not really looking at the cards
you look at your own cards you go well i
kind of know what other people have
so i know what i’m gonna do sushi roll
has the same card counting ability
however it’s not done
on over the entire game it’s done per
round
everyone rolls their dice everyone card
counts what’s currently out and then
they have to figure out on their head
what the best opportunity is so you get
the same
card counting fun but you’re dice
counting and counting dice is more fun
counting cubes versus countings flat
rectangles because you can keep playing
a sushi roll over and over again and
they’ll always be different they’ll
always be well most of the time they’ll
be different
because you could roll the same thing
twice
i do think though with kind of card
drafting games
it it forces you to switch up your
strategy it forces you to be adaptable
to adjust
like if you pick up sushi go and your
ice you know this time i’m gonna go for
cakes
i’m just gonna go for cakes i’m gonna
try and get all the points for cakes and
the first
two or three hands you get don’t have
cakes you now have to switch up your
strategy
you now have to go okay well i need to
pick something better i need to change
it up i need to do something different
whereas with dice because it’s random
each time
people tend to go i’ve got a strategy
i’m just going to keep rolling dice
until i get it
and then it either doesn’t work in your
favor at all or it works ludicrously in
your favor
but it’s all down to look it’s there’s
very little strategy to it
you know yeah but you couldn’t you say
that the the cake strategy
you’re if you don’t think the cake
strategy is going to work in the cards
then it odds are it’s probably never
going to work because
you’re never gonna have enough cakes or
the cake strategy at the end doesn’t
work like you’re talking about wasabi
and nagiri
that’s a pretty strong strategy but if
you play sushi roll
and then wasabi is kind of low or nigiri
is kind of low that strategy starts not
work
this guy over here has taken all the
cakes his strategy is starting to work
because
of the role of the dice have changed the
probability of all these
cards yeah but because you can see it
because you can see it as well you can
see he’s now
thrown three cakes in front of me like
well there’s no point catching him i’m
not gonna get
him on cakes can i make a comment here i
believe for our listeners
cakes are pudding oh yeah pudding
pudding that’s true just in case anyone
is wondering what the hell we’ve been
talking about for the last
little while pudding makes more sense
with sushi maybe
yeah for new for new players sushi go is
kind of fun
because uh i love the artwork i love the
fact that it’s
more predictable but the thing is the
replayability with dice
is kind of fun like you don’t get the
the big deck of cards
but in sushi go so there’s the variety
of cards there’s not that many
and i think sushi goes a really good
example of where if you don’t have that
much variety it’s not like terraforming
mirrors
where every card is different every card
does something completely different
you can get a very strong alternative
with dice
i don’t know okay i think that was
pretty much
50 50 on what was working better there
soEoin a common concern we had when we
were making dice summoners was that the
dice can be too random
and we did a few things to address this
in the game
and in the design phase so that while
there is a randomness that
the dice bring to the game it doesn’t
destroy the gameplay
can you discuss some of the things that
we did here to balance that
yeah so i think that’s a very common
complaint when it comes to dice
is that they’re too random is that you
roll the dice you’re not really sure
what you’re going to get
and it’s just kind of chaos whereas
decks it’s much more kind of controlled
and stuff like that
but i would just say that they’re two
different forms of randomness
and it’s up to the game designers to
kind of control that randomness
and make sure that it works within the
game’s
confines you know obviously in dice
summoners when we’re thinking of the
randomness and stuff
we have symbols on our dice and it was
the
the probabilities of those symbols
allowed us to
make sure that certain things are more
valuable than other things and it gave
us this kind of
way of the sides of the dice are
resources that people can use
inside the game and it’s kind of like
having a deck of cards where you have a
deck of cards where it’s like
you know 30 cards or 40 cards and you’re
picking from that
deck except for you know we don’t
there’s not that many resources that we
wanted to be random
so we wanted to have a kind of a very
small set of random
resources and then we wanted to have the
variety
in the cards that are laid out on the
table yeah so we made sure that
there isn’t actually that much
randomness in die summers when you roll
the dice
but the more dice you get it’s still
going to affect how yourself to deal
with that problem
you know but it’s not going to be like
you know
like from not to 100 you know it
depending on what dice you have and
how you’ve picked them you’re still
going to get a control you can still
kind of control what
results you’re going to get from those
dice you know i
know we developed the game together i
kind of saw it differently i kind of saw
that we you know
yes there was an element of make sure no
symbol on the dice is too overwhelming
right like that but
that we used the the dexa cards the
creatures that we had
to offset the randomness of the day so
even if you rolled and you didn’t get
any of the symbols you want
that you still had the deck there to
fall back on
that you know you could go okay well
that wasn’t what i intended to do but
now look
thanks to the cards i have a different
strategy something else i can do
something that works even better perhaps
but it was it was the deck of cards in
it that
allowed you to because i mean if you’re
playing an exclusive
lee dice game and you roll and you don’t
get what you want
great thanks my turns over whereas with
the deck of cards to balance us
you know you’ve got the option you’ve
got different options available to you
and i’ll grant you that
you know with just a deck it probably
wouldn’t have been as fun
but the good combination of balance of
the dice in the deck
but i don’t think he could have done it
with just the dice yeah i think the
uh how the dice and the decks interact
in die summers is really what makes the
game
and where you have the ability to have a
very high risk strategy
uh where you’re not really sure what’s
you’re gonna roll and then make sure the
cards
kind of match that style and you can
also have ones which are much more
reliable
and that can only be done with the deck
because the deck has a variety of the
cards
all different types of monsters which
are different abilities whereas the dice
are very much the resources
that kind of are given out so yeah we’ve
taken in dice owners we’ve taken the
resource management
of like how do you activate these
creatures how do you activate spells
and just made sure that the dice are
responsible for that
and then the variety in the game of what
you do and your actions and all sorts of
things in your strategy
is all done through the deck of cards
yeah so it’s good symphony
Brian there’s one type of game that
highly dice orientated which is the roll
and right games
and and those sort of types of games do
you think that they could be done
through decks
i do yeah thank you good question
for time while he thinks we’re good yes
um yeah no i do think you do think um
take a game like castles of burgundy or
you’re trying to build
a little town in front of you so you
could have a game where say players play
cards face down in front of them
on what areas they want to take over or
what they want to do in those areas
and you could play you can play the
randomness where you know
players playing against each other if
everyone goes for kind of high profile
or high value areas
that you know you all can see each other
out no one gets any rewards
whereas maybe the strategy to playing
going for some smaller areas
so you play a card no one else is
seeking that area so now you can
put out your tokens you can write out on
the board you can take control of that
area
you can color it in your color you can
gradually get more and more of the board
if people keep going for the high value
ones it doesn’t necessarily work out for
them
but that would be done with decks
playing out whereas if you’re just
rolling dice
you know we’ve all played castles of
burgundy where we just can’t roll the
right number
to place out a castle or a town or a
city or whatever little settlement
developments we’re trying to do you know
you’ve got you’ve got your
three little pigs sitting there that are
worth a load of points to you and you
just cannot roll a four
and it is driving you mental whereas if
you have the strategy of it you can go
okay well maybe i’ll try and focus on
other areas
everyone seems to be focused on getting
towards the center there getting the
high value ones ones that are worth the
most points
but while they’re distracted there and
there’s no competition maybe i’ll take a
lot of the outside areas
that’s in off the top of the head deck
and draw
deck and dice whether you got a dyson
draw nice and rice tyson rolling rice
roll and rice oh my god you created a
whole new role in writing i did yeah
we have smaller games okay deck of deck
and draw
painting it now i would i would say that
yeah when you’re rolling dice in roll
and write games
there isn’t really a hand management
aspect to it
which is kind of what you’re talking
about and there is you know you can
always kind of mess around with the dice
a little bit in roll and right games
to make sure you get like a little bit
different there’s always like resources
and stuff you can
modify your dice with but it’s never
that it doesn’t
usually only affect one round and it’s
it’s not something you can predict later
on
which is which is a weakness of role and
right games but i think that’s the kind
of point
of those kind of games so yes tricky
it’s tricky it depends on what you’re
kind of building
and what you want to do but what you’re
kind of describing is a different kind
of game
but you can definitely do it with dice
with resources
instead so like like what you’re saying
is you know if you can’t roll a four
you can maybe use the dice to generate a
multi-colored train
where you have to use for different
games
those are a train in this castle where
you have to use like additional
features of the game to offset the
randomness of the dice like the little
workers in
castles of burgundy where you can’t roll
four so now you have to
spend a turn investing and getting the
little workers so that you can adjust
the six-year-old next time
down to a fourth just so you can place
out three pigs you’re now spending three
turns
trying to do what you could achieve in
one potentially i think that
role mode games don’t usually have that
adjustment feature
just for the oh okay i’ve only played
one or two of them so um
yeah i think usually it’s about adapting
to whatever the dice rolls
and being just being very flexible with
your design
of your gameplay it’s all about adapting
to what happens in that round and having
to
guess the probability of device in the
future in summary
decks are better i’m not sure
that either dice or death wouldn’t that
one
own so dice have a limited number of
sides
and really um the limitation is
that they’re they’re designed for games
with a lot of repetition
do you think that hinders what sort of
games dice can be involved in well decks
have a limited amount of cards
with that attitude there is a limit to
dice but i have never seen it come close
to that limit and i need the games i’ve
seen
dice in so yeah i think the problem
people have is they try and make
dice into multi-use things where the
dice can be used for future
goes and i think that’s a big problem
but if if you
focus on just a randomness in a game
and you try and if you so what i like to
think is how what would happen if your
game was very
like chess it was very scripted it and
there was no randomness
so take roll for the galaxy if you got
rid of roll for the galaxy
and you just made sure that each person
could just do so six things you know
what would that game look like and then
put in your randomness as your dice
then you can you can easily maintain
your game now the problem
obviously with that is cards are just
very handy to put a lot of information
on
you can just put and make it make make
them multi-use you can have them but
games like ticket to ride and stuff like
that they don’t
use that a pink train is the same as any
other pink train and it’s very little on
it
really having to go with the pink trains
here it’s
i think that mostly pink is the least
root
that we take whatever way the pink
trains are maybe
toxic masculinity
probably is a tick to ride with dice
which i’m sure we should play at some
point that would be pretty cool that’d
be pretty cool i don’t know that there
is
yeah i don’t i don’t know where i heard
about it that’s all to google afterwards
yeah but i think the
dice are limited but also i think decks
are limited as well and i think
you know decks have this issue of just
of people liking the fact that you can
have loads and loads of them but people
get caught up in it too much that
it kind of ruins the game i don’t know i
think i don’t like the idea of just a
massive deck of cards
for ones like there’s games like seven
wonders where there is
a whole bunch of cards and they’re all
like about you know creating these roman
civilizations and it’s like all these
wonders of the world and they’re really
nice
and similar cards are really good but
then you have a whole bunch of them like
that are just like a chicken farm and a
blacksmith’s house and stuff like that
and it’s like
i don’t need that and i i think you just
you want to get rid of the boring
aspects
of deck randomness and you want to
replace it with dice randomness because
dice are just
you get the components you roll the dice
it’s quick it’s easy
you don’t have to set up anything and
you just it’s not it’s
kind of like getting it out of the way
like roll for the galaxy the reason it’s
so good is because you don’t have this
hand management you don’t have these
cards
you’re not trying to read these cards
all the time you just pick up a bunch of
dice you throw them at someone
shower roll for the galaxy is very
aggressive
i don’t know i i think i think decks
offer you the option i mean
it’s what you’re saying you don’t like
about the game so but
the variety that you can you can you
know build up to it if you want to have
12 different ways to get to a wonder and
seven wonders
the options are there you know you can
build your chicken farms and maybe 50
chicken farms equals a wonder
the giant chicken farm of babylon
there’s too many chickens no no there’s
just one chicken one the giant chicken
but with dice you know and maybe there
are games out there with you know custom
dice on
eight-sided 12-sided dice but the more
sides you put on us
the smaller the images get and the
harder it is to do custom stuff with
this you will end up defaulting back to
numbers that everyone can follow
without having to flick back to a rule
book to find out what the symbol means
but even with six sided you’re very
limited
then even if you’re rolling five or six
of them you still have to
get combinations you still have to work
out what you can possibly do and
again just too much comes down to look
at least you know if you’re building
towards chicken farms you can
focus on chicken farms and you can hoard
the resources to get them
whereas if you’re not rolling well
you’re not rolling well
you know you’re losing the game and you
know even a couple of good roles
might not get you back into it but a
good long-term strategy
might have you losing throughout the
game but pay dividends in the last
couple of rounds
i’ll tell you a great example of why
dice are better than dex
and this is it comes to combat so
there’s loads of games out there where
there’s combat where one person’s
attacking the person so the
obvious example is risk where you roll
dice
to attack each other and then there are
games with like
there’s gloomhaven where it’s scripted
and then you have a deck of cards so
it’s like dice versus deck
and then you have games like bloodrage
which are in the middle somewhere where
you roll a dice
and then you also can modify that with
cards and i think
that it depends on what you want out of
your game of which one is better
but if obviously i think blood rage is
really good
i think if you if you got rid of the
dice element out of that the random
element out of it it’s too scripted it’s
too much like chess
yes you might get into this issue of the
dice never being on your side
but it’s better than not having a chance
because you’re the players just better
at the game than you
so or they’ve already picked up better
cards because blu-ray has both
has the randomness of the dice and the
deck and that’s i think that’s what
makes risk
really interesting as well is that you
know you got us
you got six people the other guy’s got
two you’re going to try and take
australia you’re going to win the game
and the guy with two just wins just
because the dice are just on his side
and you just wasted everything and then
you can’t hold russia it’s just
it adds these kind of aspects that the
decks
like in gloomhaven you wouldn’t get it’s
a little bit more predictable
it’s a little bit more carrot counting
and you don’t get that just
two guys in australia just holding down
i will grant you this dice are a great
leveler that
you know you could you could have played
the game a hundred times and you come up
against someone playing their very first
game
and they’re just crushing you because
they keep rolling better
so it lets them get involved it lets
them feel involved
and they’re like oh man i totally
crushed you you know i thought you were
good at this
and you cry that’s the flip side of it
is that you think yeah i’m finally
getting good at this game i’ve got my
strategy down and then you’re crying
because you’re just rolling badly
yeah that’s what there is there’s that
balance i don’t think risk is bounced
it’s it’s it’s way too chaotic but it’s
fun it’s it’s really fun you can play it
once every like every now and then
and have a great time doing it but it’s
not a strategy game whereas blood rage i
think
has that strategy you can keep come back
over and over and over again because the
dice are balanced
because of the modifications to the
cards and you need that you need that
when it comes to balance when it comes
to dice and decks
balance is key yeah okay one final
question
on all of this so i’m going to expect a
very quick answer from both of you
a sentence hopefully prudent poker have
are kind of the same
idea games or same concepts but they’re
one is dice and one is
card but the the dynamics leads to quite
a different
gameplay i think these are gameplays or
games a lot of people would have played
so what do you think makes them
completely different
um or what do you think dice and cards
add to the
to the difference for anyone who hasn’t
come across bruno it’s that that dice
cup game from
pirates of the caribbean yeah completely
forgot the movie was going to say lord
of the rings no
caribbean i think in this case
the with the dice it’s just
anarchy it’s just chaos because you
can’t like
if if everyone flips their cups and
you’re playing with six people there’s
30 dice on the table
30 dice could be a six you know and
then it’s just madness you’re looking at
your five six going well everyone can’t
have sixes
and while it adds that fun crazy element
it’s
completely unpredictable it takes all
the strategy out of it
like your entirely guessing
i haven’t heard a single con yeah
and
well they were cons but okay
but we’re like will poker you know you
can go okay well i have these cards
those are the cards everyone else is
using
say let’s just say hold them you’ve got
the cards in the middle you know what
people might be playing to you can work
out what people might be going for
and how people are playing based on what
cards come up and when they bid and
there’s strategy and this bluff and
there’s there’s tactics to it
whereas with perudo it’s just like i
don’t know 37s
yeah that’s i think well it depends on
where you get to enjoy without a poker
right
because my i think the most enjoyments
you get at poker is bluffing
or reading people and then then seeing
what people are are good at
so but the only problem i have with
poker is that i can have like a seven
and a king
and then i can see the flop of cards in
texas hold them and
i can calculate to an exact percentage
of my chance of winning here
we’re looking at anybody else’s face or
cards whereas in prudo
i get a whole bunch of numbers and it
doesn’t really matter
you know until someone starts bidding
this could be anything you know it’s
like a black box
everyone has a shirt on your cat who
knows what’s underneath their pruda cup
but there’s no such thing as a good hand
in peru like you can have
three sixes and two fives like okay
great well if anyone goes for either of
those numbers
and then some lunatic down the end of
the table comes in with ten twos but
where do you go from there
yeah i think there’s a bluffing right
it’s not like you in poker you can have
two aces and then it gets really fun
because you can bluff all right
but when you don’t have a good hand you
can’t really bluff doesn’t
matter you have to kind of back out at
some point but you have no chance of
winning like bluffing is just much more
difficult i find in poker when
everything is so predictable
there’s a percentage chance of winning
whereas in peru there’s no percentage
chance of winning
because you just don’t there’s no like
possibility okay
thank you very much for your comments
there i can keep talking about this
i can keep going so okay Brian
do you have any closing comments you
want to make yes thank you for awarding
me the victory on this debate
very pleasant to be here sorry dice are
good fun i can’t argue with that with
that base point that
they are brilliant it’s great to just
throw a handful of dice out on the table
you have been arguing with me
i can’t argue at that point i’m gonna
argue with a lot more
but they are just too random there’s no
strategy to it there’s no
balancing to it without adding in a deck
of cards
it’s just chaos on anarchy you can
tailor dice you can add in different
shades and colors and
different faces but you’re always just
relying on the look of the role whereas
with decks you can at least strategize
you can plan
you still have the randomness of the
deck of cards but there’s at least a bit
of planning thinking
doing working to it you can combo
and stuff like that but you know with
dice it’s just
too random the end okay
andEoin any last words so i wouldn’t say
that they’re too random
i think the points i’ve been making is
that
you can tailor the randomness of dice so
when you’re thinking about randomness i
believe when you want randomness in your
game
you want to make it short and sweet you
want to make it really tactile
you want dice oh that was punchy
and just it has a really kind of
satisfying feel to them and
you need it in combination with other
parts now i will say that the decks
are really fun to look at artwork and
the components and
like you know you get a good linen card
it’s very satisfying but when it comes
to
drones and bones which i think is what
people say
that’s very satisfying you’re gonna get
a whole i’m just and dice come in all
sorts of shapes and sizes
not necessarily made out of bone yeah
you don’t you don’t you don’t
have a deck of cards in d you want to
roll a dice i think i think
some in some cases it’s a natural fit
and in other cases
you should just squeeze it in there
definitely okay so that pretty much
wraps it up for
dice versus deck randomness did your
opinion change
and who do you think won the debate
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thanks for listening and bye