thirtysix is an abstract two player dice placement game. If you've seen the game, then you're probably tired of me repeating this brief by now. However, the question still remains, how did I come up with the game?
It was one of those out of the haze moments. I had been thinking about how I could use six-sided dice to create a game, since I had just purchased a pack of 36 dice on a whim, wanting to see how roleplaying systems with dice pools worked. I was also thinking about the Yu-Gi-Oh spin-off Dungeon Dice Monsters and the traditional Chinese game Go.
The Yu-Gi-Oh spinoff used dice to summon monsters to fight with, rather than the cards. When a monster was summoned, the six faces of the die would be unfolded and could be used as a path to traverse the field. The objective of the game was to defeat the opponent's Monster Lord, which sat on the opposite of the field from your starting position. | Go is a game about territory. Players take turns placing stones onto the board aiming to surround a larger total area of the board than their opponent. Stone can also be captured, if they are completely surrounded by stones of a different colour. The game ends when no more stones can be played or by resignation of one player. |
So, here were these ideas about placing dice onto a board, trying to capture territory, but also trying to incorporate some interaction between the dice. So how about we make it so that the dice advance to the next number! And so the main mechanic in the game was born.
When one dice is place adjacent to two or more dice with the same number, they advance to the next number.
If the two numbers are a six, then they advance to one.
The objective of the game is to have the highest score, so this mechanic works pretty well. It forces you to places numbers other than sixes down, because there exists the threat that your opponent could drop all of your sixes to ones. What happens if you flip a die and its new value is the same as the dice next to it? Do they flip? Why not? Let's make a rule for that!
If a flipped die has the same value as an unflipped die next to it, then all adjacent dice with the same number advance to the next number.
It was called cascading, one flip could result in a cascade of additional flips. This brought in an additional level of complexity with the ability to chain flips. You can organise a set of flips that you can activate during endgame, as well as traps if your opponent tries to flip their dice. That's awesome, right!?
This is were playtesting is crucial. I played a game by myself after I had written out the rules. It was all great until I was down to about three dice a side. The whole board was giant trap waiting to be triggered and I set it off.
Welp! It's doing something I don't want it to do... It took me five minutes to resolve that single play and the board was a sea of three by the end of it. The final couple of turns were then just spent trying to differentiate scores by playing more fives and sixes. So I got rid of that mechanic. No cascades. Then, I went back to playtesting, but there are only so many playtests you can do by yourself. After that you have take the game to your friends.
Welp! It's doing something I don't want it to do... It took me five minutes to resolve that single play and the board was a sea of three by the end of it. The final couple of turns were then just spent trying to differentiate scores by playing more fives and sixes. So I got rid of that mechanic. No cascades. Then, I went back to playtesting, but there are only so many playtests you can do by yourself. After that you have take the game to your friends.
And honestly (I'll stop now), it helped a lot. They found a looping bug in the game. One of them even suggested some solutions to problems with the game: why not actually flip the dice to their opposite face instead of the next number and make it so that once a die has been flipped it remains that way until another die is placed? Their own perspective helped me make a stronger game. The rules were adjusted to the following.
When one dice is place adjacent to two or more dice with the same number, they are flipped to the opposite side.
If a die has already been flipped once this turn, it cannot be flipped until another die is placed on the board.
More playtests ensued, but there was an issue I kept coming across. Players would pretty much just stick to fives and sixes, even with the risk of flipping dice to ones and twos. So I changed the mechanic where you could place any dice value down into one where only certain dice could be placed at certain times.
During the first turn, players may only places ones; in the second turn, only twos and so on. Once both players have played sixes, the turn order repeats, starting at one.
This opened up the game far more, making the players think more about where they played their dice, especially when they might not be able to flip it for another two or three turns. Now, I did talk about territory before, didn't I?
Well, the mechanic that I implemented from the start for that was simple, place any three dice adjacent to each other and they form territory. Territory gives you double points when scoring. The incentive of double points pulls players to make territory. At the same time, there is also the tradeoff of placing dice wherever you want on the board and placing it next to dice already there. While all territories of three dice would provide the bonus, it is safer to place dice with a territory that already exists, than create a new one, which might be cut off by your opponent. But, playing that separated territory can make it harder for your opponent to add additional dice to their territory and help in reducing their score. What choice will you make then? The territory mechanic is noted below.
When three or more dice are adjacent to each other (faces touching), then they form territory and provide double points. Dice that only have corners touching are not part of territory.
And that's how I got to the game I call thirtysix. I hope this post has given you an insight into how I made decisions about the rules of the game. It uses Go-esque placement of the dice, the territory holding mechanic I wanted, but not anything from the Yu-Gi-Oh spinoff. I'm still thinking about how I could use that in a future game.
I'll post here whenever I have an idea, either one I am pursuing or one that I just think is interesting. If you want to play thirtysix, or its smaller, faster version sixteen, visit the thirtysix website. There you can find pdf copies of the rules and print and play boards.
I'll post here whenever I have an idea, either one I am pursuing or one that I just think is interesting. If you want to play thirtysix, or its smaller, faster version sixteen, visit the thirtysix website. There you can find pdf copies of the rules and print and play boards.