Roll Player

22nd September 2019

Sunday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. Unfortunately 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus. Instead we shall play some board games.

The first board game of the day was 'Roll Player'.

Have you ever enjoyed creating characters for an RPG more than playing them? Then maybe, just maybe, Roll Player is the game for you.

Roll Player is sort of a set collecting, dice rolling, worker placement game that's all about creating what is ostensibly a D&D character.
The main of the game is that players use dice to generate their stats, but it's not a case of just rolling the dice.

What's in a game
The components for Roll Player are of a good quality. 

• ​Dice: There's a lot of dice in Roll Player. 73 in fact, in 7 different colours.
• Dice bag: To go with the Dice!
• Character sheet boards: These are the equivalent of a character sheet. One for each of the classic D&D PC races such as human, elf, dwarf etc. Like a D&D character sheet, the player boards contain a lot of information. Such as racial stat modifiers for all 6 D&D stats (And space for 3 six sided dice for each stat!). Spaces for character class info, alignment and backstory too.
• Character class tile: This tile goes on the relevant space on the character sheet board. These represent the classic D&D character classes. One will be randomly given out to each player. They are double sided and have 2 classes on each. Character class dictates what values your stats you need to have to score points. They will be different for each character class. Each class also has a unique special ability.
• Alignment tile: This goes on the space for alignment and is randomly determined. Players earn points for getting their alignment to match the target on the tile. The alignment tile is a 3x3 grid that depicts all 9 alignments. A marker is used to show what the character's current alignment is.
• Backstory tile: This is also randomly determined. It gives players an additional target to match, which in turns a player more points. This is based on the colour of dice.
• Initiative cards: These are used to determine the order in which players buy cards from the market. They are numbered from 1 to 5.
• Market cards: Every round, players will have the opportunity to purchase cards drawn from the market deck. Market cards include weapons, armour, skills and traits.

Dwarven character sheet board.

Character sheet board with character class, backstory and alignment tiles.

How's it play
Firstly there's set up: This is fairly straightforward.

• In turn order, players choose a character sheet board and collect gold. Then randomly the players are dealt a character class, alignment and backstory tile.
• Initiative cards are set out. The numbers used are equal to the number of players participating plus one. Thus if playing with 3 players, initiative cards 1-4 would be used.
• Market cards are dealt from the deck. The number of cards dealt are equal to the number initiative cards used.
• The dice are put into the dice bag and thoroughly shaken.

Then we can begin.

• The active player draws a number of dice from the dice bag equal to the number of initiative cards and rolls them.
• The active player places them on top of the initiative cards in ascending order. Thus the die with the lowest value goes on the '1' initiative card and so forth until the die with the highest value is placed on the '5' card. If 2 or more dice share the same value, the active player chooses the order in which they are placed on the initiative cards.
• Once all the dice have been placed, in turn order. Each player takes an available die and the initiative card it was placed.
• Then players can buy a card from the available market cards. This is not done in turn order, but in the order of the initiative cards. Thus a player who takes the highest value die will go last in the market phase.
• Once the market phase is completed. Play moves to the next round, the initiative cards are put back in a row and new market cards are drawn. The next player clockwise becomes first player and draws dice and a new round begins.

That's the basic actions covered, but somethings need some more explanation.

Taking dice
After a player takes a die, they must place it on to their character sheet board. When doing this, there are 3 things they need to bear in mind in order to maximise their scores.

• Stats: At the end of the game, points are scored for every stat that meets a certain criteria. This will be different for each character class, a warrior needs high strength and a magic-user needs high intelligence. Stats may have target values such as 14+, 18, 15-17 etc. These are modified by racial bonuses and penalties.
• Colour: So each of the 6 stats has a row of 3 dice. One of the 3 dice for each stat row needs to be of a specific colour, this may be in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd spot in the row. This will use one each of 6 different colours. The final colour is yellow, yellow represents gold. Every time a yellow die is put into a stat row, the player earns 2 gold coins. At the end of the game, the more correctly placed dice there are, the more the player scores. All of this is determined by the backstory tile.
• Special ability. Each stat row has a special ability which is triggered when a die is placed into the row. These allow the player to flip a die to it's opposite side, swap to dice round, move your alignment counter etc. These abilities are identical for all players.

When a die is placed into a row, it is always placed into the leftmost available space.

Market cards
There are several different types of card available to but from the market. When a player takes a market card, it is placed alongside the character sheet board in it's specified spot.

• Weapons: These usually confer some sort of extra ability to whoever owns it. A character is limited to using 1 or 2 weapons at a time.
• Armour: These cards earns the owner bonus points. Armour cards exist in sets, the more cards collected in a set, the more points scored. Like D&D, only certain character classes can use certain types of armour.
• Skills: When a player acquires a skill card, they can use its special ability, this also moves the characters alignment marker. A player may use multiple skill cards at a time and even in another player's turn. When a skill is used it is turned sideways. One card may be returned to the upright position per round.
• Traits. When a trait is acquired, it moves the character's alignment marker. Each trait card also gives its owner an extra objective to complete. Each objective completed successfully earns points.

If a player does not or cannot purchase a market card, they must discard one market can and receives 2 gold coins.
A new row of market cards is dealt every round.

Endgame
Play continues for 18 rounds until all 6 stats have 3 dice. Points can earned from several sources, these include:

• Stat values.
• Backstory.
• Alignment.
• Armour set.
• Traits.
• Class colour dice: Each character class is associated with a certain colour. Each die in a character's stats of that colour earns the player an extra point.

Then points are tallied. highest score wins.

Overall
Roll Player is a game with an intriguing theme. Because placing a die has so many consequences, play slows down quite a lot when both choosing and placing a die, so there feels like there is a lot of downtime between turns.

Apart from this, the game fine to play and when you complete Roll Player you will have an interesting character.

Completed character sheet.

My first Roll Player character was: 'A concentrating, knowledgeable, intimidating, dedicated, honest, famous, chain-armour-wearing, blessed-mace-wielding, druidic, elven chosen one who's good at sleight of hand. His name is Derek!'