Frank Branham: In defense of the Roll and Move

One statement I've heard in reviews of lighter and more mainstream games is to simply apply the dismissive term Roll and Move.

Most of the time, the game pretty much deserves the derision heaped upon it.

But not always. And there are some quite clever things that have been done with it, and could still be done within the framework.

The above statement assumes that I actually know what the term Roll and Move actually means. I don't really. I can generally say that it means a game where you roll a die and move a pawn or pawns up to the number rolled. That statement applies to the entire history of boardgames, and covers perhaps 80% of the games ever made.
Sadly, to look at the Roll and Move, we have to tear into the history of board games.

Stage I: Race Games
The earliest forms of board game are very simple roll dice, move single pawn on single track race games. These developed into multiple pawn and multiple track variants, for people that preferred a whiff of strategy in their games.

Even for the basic idea, you can bolt on a theme, add a few special spaces, and create the modern board game market. The Victorian period was crammed with basic race games with exciting "go ahead 4 spaces" games with gorgeous lithography, and classic names like "Professor Langford's Improved Instructional Game."

We still see variants of these games today, and some really haven't drifted that far afield of their predecessors.

Stage 2: Payouts and Monopoly
At some point during that wave of Victorian games a few of the variants of the classic race games began to include extra coins. Landing on some spaces would gain or lose coins. Reaching the end first gave you bonus coins. The winner was the person with the most money when someone reached the end.

It doesn't sound exciting at all. But once you loop the race path into a circle and concentrate more on the money side of things, you lead into Monopoly. If anything, the track around the outside of the board is probably the game most people think about when they hear the term Roll and Move. That type of game dominates adult game design in the US still.

Stage 3: The great stalemate
And the next big development? There wasn't one. We got lots of Monopoly clones, some themed race games with wacky bits for the kids (Mouse Trap, Which Witch).

That does seem to be where the Roll and Move's image stems from. The plastic kiddie games mostly only work because of the toy factor.

The only real development in the roll and move that has been widely picked up is the concept of massively branching networks. You get games like the London Taxi game which is a pick-up and deliver. We also got the Talisman concept of being able to choose which direction you move. These games concentrate more on the payout aspect of the game.

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The Problem: The big issue with the Roll and Move is that it defines the entirety of your turn. Even in Talisman, if you don't land on something in either direction, you do NOTHING on your turn. More modern designs have moved towards fixing this:

Fast Food Franchise takes the Monopoly-ish idea of gaining $200 when passing Go to a new level by adding two additional corners that give you actions as you pass them. An old UK game called Business that I have uses 3 dice that allow you to scream around the board. On each pass, you can choose to operate the company or try to raise more money as you pass the decision section of the board.

Dragonland gives you 3 pawns, makes the paths really short, and uses multiple dice to average out the randomness. It also adds power tokens to allow you to fix the luck in a few cases.

Careers has experience cards. You may simply avoid throwing the die and choose to land on or skip a particular space. This can give you a few choices on your turn, and adds some strategic planning to the game.

The newer designs move even further away from a race game and make the payout part more complex. No one has taken the next logical step and integrated a roll and move into a more traditional resource game. The track around the outside has always been the star of the game, but the idea can still fit in a modern design as a nifty supporting player.

Think about it, the spaces in Monopoly are basically event cards. A track give you a nice pool of event cards, with several added possibilities.

1. You can easily incorporate recurring events as in Fast Food Franchise.
2. A player can see possible upcoming events. If multiple dice are used, they can even see the most likely ones and plan ahead.
3. The entire back catalog of Roll and Move tricks can affect events (experience cards, multiple tracks, multiple pawns. )

© 2007 Frank Branham

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Comments:

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The most interesting roll and move game is surely Backgammon! I would like to remember in past years two games that use a similar mechanism. One is my Fantasy Pub (now published by Tilsit edition) and the other is Tuchulcha (published by Da Vinci games / Mayfair). Cheers, ema Posted by Emanuele Ornella on Apr 12, 2007 at 02:19 AM | #

How about Avalon Hill’s Merchant of Venus or especially Gangsters? Those are pretty clear and very clever extensions of the basic roll-and-move games. I especially recommend Gangsters, just play it with 4. Couldn’t one successfully argue that Settlers of Catan is a really a roll-and-move game? I mean, it has many of the same features: roll the dice, do what they say, then make your move. That seems like a pretty mainstream extension of the concept. If you wanted to go to an extreme, the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series of wargames from Avalon Hill and MMP are games where you roll a die and move a piece or pieces according to the die roll, and they’re pretty good. A little far from Monopoly, however. I’ve often wondered how you could bring the concepts from GCACW into a German-style game. Posted by Chris Farrell on Apr 12, 2007 at 10:26 AM | #

Chris: I thought about Merchant of Venus, but while it is a really good game, the only really clever bit is the nebula movement, and it would be hard to explain. I forgot about Supergang/Gangsters. The idea of rolling multiple dice and dividing the dice among multiple pieces is not really new at all. That one dates back to Backgammon and its forbears. Supergang gets a lot of mileage out of it. As to the other games, the core idea is to roll dice and move pieces according to the number rolled on the dice. The real (intended) point of the article is to try and keep people from IMMEDIATELY shying away when they see a board with tracks, a die and a handful of pawns. They don’t HAVE to be bad games. There are some signs that a designer didn’t do much with it. One warning sign that I’ve never seen in any good game is the very important space that you have to land on by exact count. Spaces labeled miss a turn are another danger sign. Posted by Frank Branham on Apr 12, 2007 at 11:26 AM | #

In Gangsters you have to land on spaces by exact count, and it’s pretty good :) I agree though that “miss a turn” spaces are a huge red flag. I wonder how much of the aversion to roll-and-move games is tied up with most gamers’ traumatic relationship with Monopoly. Monopoly isn’t a bad game, it’s just a game that was originally designed and intended for groups of adults that is now made and marketed for kids really too young to grok the subtleties of it; if Monopoly were published today by a German publisher, I very much doubt they would label it as the 8 & up Hasbro gives it. Monopoly is especially not good for mixed groups of kids and adults. But that’s how it’s been positioned for quite some time, and so you get a lot of traumatized kids scarred by the experience (the marketing on Scrabble is equally unrealistic; it’s billed on the box as an 8 & up game you can play on a family game night, which is ludicrous). If most of us had a more reasonable exposure to Monopoly, maybe the whole roll-and-move thing wouldn’t have such a bad rap. Posted by Chris Farrell on Apr 12, 2007 at 02:43 PM | #

I think the key to roll-and-move games is that you have to move exactly the number rolled, not just up to the number as you say here.  Otherwise it would probably just boil down to whoever rolled the higher numbers. My favorite is GOOTMU, where you’re moving around a 2D maze (which, of course, changes during the game).  It’s not exactly a deep game but I find it more fun than typical beer & pretzels games. Does Can’t Stop count as a roll-and-move game? Posted by Doug Orleans on Apr 12, 2007 at 02:49 PM | #

In Gangsters, however, you don’t have to land on a specific space to advance yourself in the game. The cases I’m referring to for exact count are: Must land on Finish by exact count. That silly CSI game only allows you to get a clue if you land on the clue space by exact count. The clues are spaced far enough apart that you can only try for one at a time. And the game completely centers around getting the clues. Posted by Frank Branham on Apr 12, 2007 at 04:36 PM | #

The best example of a roll and move game that makes clever use of the mechanic is, imo, Formula Dé, which turns it more into a tactical and push your luck game. Posted by Surya Van Lierde on Apr 13, 2007 at 04:39 AM | #

Great reporting, Frank.  It is always nice to see an opposing viewpoint from the mainstream opinion… as it gives us all additional thoughts to ponder and consider and keeps minds open.  A creative and useful topic too. You definitely hit the “sweet spot” with the article. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Apr 13, 2007 at 09:16 AM | #

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