Roll & move is a mechanic with a bad reputation. It’s widely seen as a simplistic rule that’s found only in old or rubbish games that aren’t for serious gamers. I’m here to suggest that roll & move isn’t bad, it’s just misunderstood and misused.

The classic roll & move games have you rolling a dice and then moving exactly that distance along a one-way track. On your arrival, you must execute whatever that space dictates. There’s definitely a problem here when it comes to engaging gameplay, but I’d argue that it’s not the mechanic, it’s the way it’s been terribly applied. And, just because a mechanic is traditionally executed poorly¹ doesn’t mean it can’t be executed well.

Agency. Agency is the key.

The traditional application of roll & move takes away all the player’s agency, and this is why it sucks. Not because you roll a dice and move, but because you have no choice about any of it. To illustrate this point, and show how roll & move as a mechanic can be better used, let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine a non-sucky roll & move game. 

Start with the roll bit. Let’s keep the restriction that we must move as many spaces as we roll, no more nor less. What can we do from there? How about we roll two dice instead of one, and let the player choose which one to use? This is a very simple change, and only one of many ways we could allow the player to mitigate their dice roll. However, even this tiny change gives the player something to think about. It starts to give them a little agency back. 

Now the value of being able to choose or modify your result rests on two things. The first is that the goal of the game is something other than a pure race (otherwise more is always better and it’s not really a choice). Actually, we could even keep the race idea as long as we tweak it a bit. Let’s say that you can only cross the finish line if you’ve collected 3 each of 4 different fruit from those scattered about the board. Now there’s a reason to go to space A and not space B on top of the general movement towards the end. 

Our second reason why the choice of roll matters is that each potential landing space does something different. In our example, let’s say each space allows you to collect a different fruit. This is easily done on our imaginary board.

Speaking of the board, we can do even better. Why not allow the player more than one route? An open grid with movement in any direction is an extreme option, but even if we stick to a more traditional path format we can add branches and junctions to allow the player more options for their movement. Maybe we even let them move in either direction along each path, picking one direction each turn. Now, instead of no choice at all when they roll their dice, they’ve got the choice of which dice to use, and each one could take them to multiple end spaces, each of which do something different as well as moving them nearer or further from the finish line. With a well-designed path system this could give them half a dozen options for each roll, which is already quite a bit of agency and choice. And, all these changes have been small, practical, and easily implemented. 

Of course, there’s a bunch more you could layer on, but I’m going to stop here. My point is that roll & move isn’t a bad mechanic per se, it’s just generally used with little imagination and skill. As I think even these simple changes show, a roll & move game could easily be developed into something interesting. 

Before I leave you to ponder this further, I’d like to recognise that there are a few good games that have roll & move at their heart; they’re just rare beasts. I think that’s a shame. 

Notes

¹ When I say “poorly”, that’s with regard to the narrow definition of “doing well” as being fun for gamers. There’s other ways in which the traditional approach is actually a good thing, but I’ll come back to that another time.