unicornempire:

baskinglizard: Appropriate event was appropriate. Ah! I wish I had seen this earlier in the day, hah! Thanks for posting!

Salt and Burn - a modern boardgames (kickstartered) that uses roll and move.



Renaissance or Anachronism?

I just ran a quick search on BoardGameGeek - 65 roll and move games released so far this year. 140 released in 2013. I stopped searching at that point.



They never went away.



In nearly all the games I found though, it is not the sole mechanism, and normally not the mechanism that decides victory. It’s a plot driver.



Why is roll and move popular?

It’s beginner friendly, since it’s a mechanic most people have come across, even just in childhood games.

it’s intuitive. “Roll this much, move this much.”. That’s much clearer then chess (another familiar game). “The castle moves as far as it wants in a straight line"

People like elements of gambling and chance.

Design wise, from the flat probability distribution of 1 die to the normal approximation of two or more, there’s quite a lot of options.

By introducing a controlled amount of random variation, it allows subtly changing tactical situations, albeit at the cost of strategic depth. (since the randomness makes it riskier to plan far ahead)

(Source: avvbeans, via unicornempire)