Tabletop Tuesday — Roll and Writes

Hey all! Tuesday, nerdery, gaming, etc.

Thanks to our gaming friends (we actually gather on Tuesdays, which is how this day got associated with games for me in the first place) over the years I’ve been introduced to the whole concept of “roll and writes”—games that come with pads where you roll communal dice, each player makes choices, and write down your choices on your own pad to various results.

It’s a little like communal Yahtzee, only usually with more complexity and theme and they’ve become a game style I’ve really started to enjoy, in part because while it’s often a competitive game—you’re trying to get the most points—you’re mostly doing your own thing.

As I’m sure you’ve realized by now, that’s my sweet-spot when it comes to competitive games. I don’t like being mean or snatching things away from other players, but a race to be the first to complete something on my own, using my own choices? That’s okay. Especially if I can’t even know what other people want.

Two Roll and Writes: Colours-and-Numbers; Suburbia

I thought I’d talk about two of the roll and writes I’ve played and enjoyed the most thus far, and begin with Encore! (I actually played the German version, Noch Mal!) The system around this one is pretty simple (which is often the case with roll and writes, I find), leaving the complexity to be something you’re handling yourself on your own page.

With four players, you roll six dice: three of them are colours (five colours and a wild), and three of them are numbers (one through five and a wild). For the first few rounds, everyone just picks the combination (one colour plus one number) and then, starting with the middle row and spreading contiguously (not diagonally) checks off that many boxes on their individual sheet, which has a kind of Tetris like pattern of colours of blocks in groups of one to six for each colour.

What’s important is you can only place an X beside where you just placed a previous X, and you have to place your first X in either the middle row, or beside somewhere you’ve already placed an X. You can only place Xs in the colour you’ve selected, and you have to be able to place the number you selected (meaning: you can’t use a 3 if you’ve only got two blocks of that colour to X out—you need a 2; if you choose a 1, that’s fine, but you’ll be leaving 1 block behind for another future roll). This means those blocks of six will require at least two rolls to complete, no matter what.

Scoring points is ongoing. You get points for filling in entire columns (with further-from-the-centre columns worth more than the centre ones) and the first person to fill in any given column gets more points than everyone else who accomplishes it. The first two players to complete any given colour also gain points (similarly, the first player getting more than the second), and as soon as a player has finished two colours, it’s time to tally things up.

There are more rules than that (using the wild-dice is a limited thing, you only get so many, and check them off, unused wilds are worth points, there are spaces that cost points if you haven’t managed to X them out, etc…) and after the first few turns, whoever rolled the dice starts to remove their choice from the options (ie: “I’m taking Blue and 3”) which means the other players have to make do with the four combinations left on the table (two numbers, two colours).

It’s quick, it’s fairly straightforward, and the dice blunt how far skill can take you given sometimes you just roll for garbage or amazingly well and that’s amusing in different ways.

The other roll and write I’ve really come to love is Welcome To… This one has a rather unusual theme, in that you’re basically building streets in suburbia, and trying to make them welcoming. The mechanic involves drawing cards from two decks, one giving you house numbers (1 to 15)—which, on a street, must go from lowest to highest, one of the first things you’re placing—the other giving you qualities of said houses (placing a fence, giving a house a pool or a park) or the ability to fudge some of the other rules (like duplicating a number to make a 9a and a 9b, or adjusting the house number up or down for a turn), and all the while there are three goal cards up for grabs as well (patterns of fences between houses, basically: like having a group of three fenced in houses beside another group of four fenced in houses).

You have three streets you’re working with, and there are a few other options on your sheet for fudging or adjusting things when you start to end up hemmed in, and the game ends when a certain number of the goals are snapped up (first place and second place there, so two players can claim each goal but no more). That’s the only real “competitive” part in this one.

Ultimately, though, you do your best with your own streets and it’s always amusing to hear your fellow players groan or grumble as you flip exactly the wrong combination of numbers. “Another [insert number here]? COME ON!” or “Where are the damned fences?” are not uncommon utterances in my experiences. But it remains fun, and I find myself not minding losing in the slightest because you basically have to set your own goals—you can’t accomplish everything in a single game, you have to focus on what you can.

Have you played any roll and writes? Do you have a favourite? Let me know.