Hello there, everyone!

With a kernel of an idea and the generous donation of 30
by
it's print-and play contest time again.


This contest is about dice.

You are to design and post an original dice game. But wait! Not just any dice -- you must make the dice, or provide stickers to cover the faces of dice that people have on hand.

What players are required do with your dice is up to you. You can have players juggle them, stack them, throw them, place them, or even roll them.

Here's some useful links for making dice shapes, if that's the route you want to go:

4, 6, 8, 12, and 20-sided shapes

10-sider

Here's some weirder shapes that could be used for dice

Feel free to add links about paper dice plans to help your fellow contestants.

Please read all the rules before asking questions or submitting suggestions/corrections!!



Rules:

1. Make a new and original print-and-play game that only uses dice that you either construct out of paper, or make labels to be stuck on the faces of dice people have, covering the pips.

2. No other components are permissible. The game cannot use a special board. Players of your game should be able to take up your dice and play your game on any table, or the floor, on the grass, on a tree stump, or on the fold down tray of an airplane (if there's room). Some way of keeping score may be required, but you cannot insist that players provide certain items. Players can keep score (if your dice game keeps score) however they want.

3. Your dice must be different from regular dice somehow. Normal dice, showing the usual numbers or pips, like this,
cannot be used in your design. Of course, you can cover up these dice with your stickers.

4. You must submit a completed game, including rules. You must post plans to make your dice or diagrams of the labels. You may submit pictures of your constructed game. Please put all information for your game into one post.

5. Your entry may use any mechanics and may be themed or abstract. It may be for any number of players.

6. The dice may be all the same size, or all different sizes. Size can mean both phyiscal largeness and increasing number of sides.

7. Post your game to this thread via a picture or link and explain how the game works or post the rules.

8. You can submit up to 3 entries. The games must be different either in theme or mechanics. They must use totally different dice.

9. The deadline for entries will be June 14, 9am. That's over a month's creation time. I'll ask people to wait until Monday May 11 before they post an entry just to make sure all the rules make sense to everyone.

10. The winner will be determined 1 week later exactly by voting in a poll that I will set up June 14 and have run until June 21, like this:



Games will be identified by links to their original posts only.

11. Each vote in each category for each game counts as one point. Most points win.

12. Prizes: 1st prize: 30 2nd prize: 10 If there's a tie, either for first or second, it will be broken by thumbs to the original entry. Thumbs from the original post will only count in this way.

13. Any tips given this thread will be evenly divided between the first and second place winners.

14. If I've muddled any rules so that they make no sense or if you want something clarified, please post a polite observation and I'll consider a correction to the rules.

15. If you have opinions or suggestions for the voting system, please post a polite observation and I'll consider adding to or adjusting the poll.

To that end I won't accept entries for a day or two while people consider the rules.

Again, this contest is open for entries starting May 11. Deadline for entries is June 14, 9am.

Hi Reprint.

As rule 10 is already as it is, I don`t think I can contribute to this contest!
EDIT: I think the idea of having as poll after the entry deadline is a brilliant idea!

Hopefully you get as much interest as you did with the four tiles only contest.

Best of luck to all the entrants!

Strangely enough I was just thinking about a dice game when I read the thread.

Now there is just the matter of writing the rules and getting the dice all dolled up.

Thanks Mike.

Great idea for a contest . I've been thinking about converting my 4-tile contest entry into a dice game just for a fun design challenge. Although it probably wouldn't work for this contest, the challenge has made me think more about the idea and I got around to making up a prototype and trying it out.

A quick question I had about the rules:
If we use regular dice that are covered up, do all the sides have to be covered? So, for example, would a die that just has one side replaced with a symbol or other number be allowed?

is there a maximum or minimum number of dice required?

Do all the dice need to be re-stickered? Or can we use a few regular dice if the rules require it? (your rules seem to imply we cant use any dice to roll a number 1-6, which might imply a number of damage points, etc)

Yay...Have to get the cogs in my head rolling...

Helpful hint to all those participating: While we need to cover up the dice or use our own creations, you can use normal dice to prototype, and it's faster! Just create a simple chart that associates a die face with a code, symbol, or description. For example, for a six-sided die, I might use:

d6 Magic Dice
1-2: Red Magic Result!
3-4: Blue Magic Result!
5: Gold Magic Result!
6: Doom Magic! OH NOES!!!!

Then, if in the prototyping of the game, you want to make changes, it's much easier to change the chart then it is to recreate the dice.

THIS IS NOT A COMPETITION ENTRY! The reasons are many.

Firstly I've been thinking about this idea for quite a while, although I did all of the actual developing and creation today.

Secondly as I put up GG for the prize I want to avoid crys of "Cheat!".

Thirdly, I'm using a board, although I suppose you could just use a pad and pencil to track progress which is kind of like scoring.

So what I'm doing here is posting a game that will hopefully inspire you guys to come up with some great dice games.

So without further caveats I present "DUNE express".



Download the PDF from here

Edit : The game now has a page here at BGG

Hi Mike,
Excellent idea for a competition.
I have a question. Does 'keeping score' mean purely keeping track of a single numerical value for total score or could it include, say, keeping track of a number of different resources owned?
Cheers,
Tom

EDIT: Here's a link to a page with a list of links to other paper dice templates:
http://bluwiki.com/go/Paper_Dice

Nope. No limits on number of dice. Go conservative or go nuts!


Yes.

Using regular dice is just a handy short-cut over actually constructing paper dice. All faces would have to be covered up. I suggest if you want to have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling something that the other 5 faces be blank.

Yes.
No regular dice. Mind you, you could re-sticker dice to some unusual numbers if you want, like 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or something like that. People should have to make your dice to play your game. People shouldn't have to provide anything else to play your game.


Doesn't matter! Do what you want.

My only point was that your game can't include a scorecard, special tokens, or such that people have to print out. Players of your game just have to print out the dice to play.

Ok, so I'm still a little unsure. Does this mean we could require the players to make their own board on scratch paper (Like Dune Express or Pocket Civ), since they wouldn't be required to download and print it?

Nope. I'm going for pure dice. Nothing else required.

Can you verify these published games as examples (of both legality and what has already come before)?

The following games would NOT be eligible for this contest for the reasons listed:
Catan Dice Game (scoresheet)
Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (board to record goods/food and scoresheet)
Set Cubed (special board)
Button Men (buttons) {ironic actually}

Whereas the following games WOULD be eligible for this contest:
Qwirkle Cubes (only dice)
Cosmic Wimpout (only need to record a linear score on each turn)
Diceland - Space (big ol' paper dice)

i guess i have a slight problem with this, in that a simply D20 from magic could be used to keep score with no modification needed...
so you arent looking for a dice game, you are looking for a dice game with no actual standard dice.

annoyingly this also eliminates my idea for a game which could be played with 40 standard 6 sided dice...

Same here. Having to make dice (which is a fiddly prospect) in order to play a PnP game pretty much just means most people will just pass over it and not even bother. I am going to just hold onto my game idea instead of trying to shoe-horn it into these rather strict requirements.

I am interested to see what folks come up with though.

Here's a relevant response...



Ah ha, so you can track a number of things on the score pad, but shouldn't need to print a special scorepad.

A game where you don't actually have to print out dice wouldn't fit this contest at all. Please feel free to make your game and submit it to the BGG database. We'd love to see it.

And, yes, rule 3, above, clearly states that there's no standard dice to be used.

The example was more intended to be a die that has sides 1,2,3,4,5,X. So that kind of die would be okay as long as I make stickers for all six sides (or a paper die)? Or do all six sides have to be different from a regular die? (The examples seem to indicate that some sides can be the same as a regular die.)

Actually, some of us Like to make things out of paper. (Although 40 might be a bit much, could you use less dice with more sides?) I am very interested in seeing what you all come up with. Can you beat these lovely dice from the last challenge? Zen Flower Showdown
Give it a whirl. This is a wonderful contest idea.

It would be really nice to allow a set of household items to use as player markers, such as pennies or nickels. I've thought of several really good ideas that are prohibited by not allowing a basic ownership marker.

Just use dice! You can use dice with multiple sides that indicate different "ownerships" or values.

The rules don't mention dice having to be used as dice (i.e. being rolled). Just using dice as the only component. The rules even state: "Your entry may use any mechanics and may be themed or abstract."

You could have a game that is 100% based on dice and not roll a single die. =)

Just stick a line in your rules stating that players will have to keep track of widgets and wobbles in some fashion of their choosing.

Again, all Rule 2 in the Rules above states is that you cannot insist on your players printing out a special board or scoring track or tokens and the game itself cannot require them.

If something must be keep track of, then your players could use pocket change or scratch lines in the dirt, or keep score in their heads; it's up to your players to decide.

Hey Guys,

How do I post a game to enter the contest (assuming I don't have a site ready to host my PDF). Do I post the text here? Start another Forum with the rules? Sorry I have never done anything like this before.


Thanks,


Bruce H. Voge III

You could create a hotmail email account, when you do that you also get their SkyDrive feature which allows you to publicly host a few Gigabytes of data.

You dont need a PDF, if you can present the game as images then you upload the images here in your personal BGG gallery and link them in your entry post, the rules you could put straight into the entry post itself.