ROLL CALL

ABOUT

Roll Call was created as part of a PlaySide Studios design club challenge to design a solo game using only a deck of cards, D6 dice, or both.

The goal of the game is to roll dice successfully onto cards in a specific order within a limited number of rolls.

Required materials

Cards: Ace, King, Queen, Jack

Dice: 3xD6 (If you don’t have 3xD6 you can play with 1xD6, but the difficulty becomes easier)

SET UP

1. Arrange the Jack, Queen, King, and Ace cards in a line, with each of them touching like so:

2. Sit around 30cm from the bottom Jack card with your dice.

HOW TO PLAY

  • Start by rolling the dice for the Jack, aiming to land a dice on the card

    • You get three rolls

    • Dice must remain where they landed until moving on to the next card (if you only have one die, you can ignore this rule)

    • If you land a die on the Jack, you can take the number on the die as your score for the Jack

      • Or you can attempt to get a better score for the Jack with your remaining rolls

      • You can also choose to use any remaining rolls for that round to get a head start on the next card (queen)

      • Beware that if you knock any scoring dice off the cards, you will lose that score

    • If you miss the Jack all three times, you have lost the game and need to start again

      • If you land on a different face card on your last roll, you can re-attempt that roll. You can keep re-rolling until you land on the Jack (allowing you to move on to the next card), or miss all face cards (resulting in losing the game)

    • Make a note of your highest scoring die that landed on the Jack, then move on to trying to land a die on the Queen

  • Recollect all your dice, and now attempt to land one on the queen card with the same rules applying

  • If you successfully get a score for the queen, continue to the King with the same rules applying

  • If you successfully get a score for the King, continue to the Ace with the same rules applying

WIN STATE

The player has successfully rolled a dice onto each card within the number of acceptable rolls.

LOSS STATE

On any card, the player has failed to roll a dice onto the card within the acceptable number of rolls.

Scoring

Add together your best dice rolls for each card, that is your final score.

For example, this player’s best rolls add up to a total score of 14:

ADDITIONAL NOTES

  • Weight of the dice will affect difficulty. For example, light plastic dice will bounce more than metal dice.

  • Surface will affect difficulty. For example, hard tiles will increase dice bounce, and the gaps between tiles will make the dice bounce in unexpected ways.

  • The game has replayability because the player can try to beat their best score. The max score isn’t high (24 if the player rolls all sixes), but the probability of rolling all sixes is not high.

    • Additional cards could be added to the row to make the max score higher and increase difficulty

  • The game difficulty can be decreased by increasing the number of rolls the player gets per card

  • The game was designed as a single player game, but can easily be played competitively