In my day job, I design casino games, so I spend a lot of time around cards, dice, and other instruments of randomness. Rolling a die is a classic example of picking with replacement, meaning the pool of possible outcomes remains the same from pick to pick. Drawing a card is a classic example of picking without replacement, meaning the pool of outcomes dwindles with each pick. This difference alone leads to many benefits and drawbacks for dice and cards. The next time you are trying to choose the right mechanic for your game, here are some things to consider:

Cards just don’t have that same level of physical appeal. It feels like you have a better chance at controlling your destiny by rolling a die than simply drawing the next card from the top of your deck.

Want to know what outcomes you can get on a die? Just pick it up and look at every side. If a symbol appears on multiple sides, you can easily understand the better odds for that outcome.

Cards have to be shuffled to be random, but a die is instantly ready. There are no questions about whether the die was “shuffled enough”. Try this test. If someone offered you a 50/50 chance to win $100, would you rather roll a 1, 2, or 3 on a die, or draw a red card from a shuffled standard deck? Probably, you would choose to roll the die. Who knows how the cards were shuffled? How well do you trust the person who shuffled the cards? Are there any cards missing? The die just comes with less baggage.

Yes, you could keep rolling double sixes! Ever play craps? It can be crazy fun if the current shooter is on a hot streak. It’s hard to get that “hot streak” feeling from cards.

A die can never be in a “juiced” state where better outcomes are more likely. That’s because a die has no concept of previous history while a deck of cards does.

Want to change the odds of certain outcomes happening mid-game? That’s hard to do with dice given their fixed nature. You would need the help of other components.

The standard die obviously only has six sides, so there are only so many outcomes you can get from a die. You could certainly change the die you are using to a D10 or a D20, but the sides will get smaller and smaller, so custom dice with so many sides would likely be impractical.

Ever had a night when the dice just didn’t go your way? While it’s fun to roll double sixes six times in a row, it’s equally frustrating to roll snake eyes consistently. Dice can frustrate gamers to no end if they played perfect strategy but the dice consistently went against them.

Rerolls Yahtzee is the most famous dice game where you get up to 3 rerolls on your dice before your dice are locked. That mechanic has been used far and wide, most notable in games like King of Tokyo.

Earn More Dice Games such as Roll through the Ages and To Court the King let you earn more dice over the course of the game. Obviously, the more dice you roll, the better chance you will get what you want.

Adjusting a result Don’t like the way dice rolled? There are lots of games that allow players to modify the die result, usually be +1 / -1. A game like Eldritch Horror allows players to gain equipment and allies which automatically improve dice rolls. A game like Castles of Burgundy let players spend a worker to change a die roll by 1.

Drafting dice In some games, a pool of dice are rolled and players take turns drafting from that pool, such as Yspahan. In other games, you can choose which custom dice to add to your pool of dice such as Quarriors. In Formula D, you can choose which type of die to roll (D6, D10, D20, etc.) and that affects how fast you go, but also how likely you are to crash your race car.