To completely explain what makes a game a roll-and-write, we'll walk you through the different elements of these games:
- Players have a sheet to write on. This is usually a page from a score pad, but can also be a reusable dry-erase board in more deluxe games. There are really no limits in the way the sheet can be used, but typically players have individual sheets with spaces to make their permanent decisions.
- Rolling dice is often used to create a 'randomization method', creating a challenge for the players or a system against which to push their luck. Some recent games have used components other than dice to help randomize; for example, MetroX and Welcome To... use cards and the Tempus series uses the current date and time instead of dice.
- What you get from the dice, or cards, or whatever randomization method the game uses, is what we call a 'value'. What a value actually is differs greatly per game; some games just use the numbers dice show, others combine numbers with the colour of the dice the numbers are on, others use icons, the possibilities are endless. Some games require players to write these values in spaces, others require players to cross off spaces depending on the value instead.
- One thing that sets modern roll-and-writes apart from the older games is 'participation': who gets to play each turn. Older games such as Yahtzee or the Catan Dice Game only allowed the 'active player', the player who rolls the dice, to write. The other players had to wait their turn. Now we see more forms of player participation and interaction: 'optional participation' where the active player needs to write, but other players may pass; or 'mandatory participation', where the active player goes first and then the other players have to write as well; or 'simultaneous play', often also jokingly called multiplayer solitaire, where all players write at the same time and there is no active player.
The history of these games is long and dates back to Yahtzee, but it has only been in the last few years that the genre took off. 2012 saw the release of Qwixx, which quickly became a classic. Since around 2015-2016, however, the number of games released annually has increased exponentially every year. In 2018, Ganz Schön Clever was nominated for a Spiel des Jahres prize, and over twenty other roll and write games have been released this year so far.
Roll-and-writes form a blend of push-your-luck mechanics, set collection, and a wide variety of other mechanics. One big element, which is hidden underneath all of the mechanics, is the idea of permanence: once you write down a value, you need to commit to that for the rest of the game. Game play in roll-and-writes should always move forward because of this, never back.
The end results of the above recipe are very different, from very simple abstract games, to thematic games with a lot of components, and everything in between! To find out more, or to gather some inspiration, the GenCan't 2017 Contest was all about these games. You may also want to have a look at some of the many, often free, roll-and-writes available to print and play. We can heartily recommend checking out 30 Rails as a good example of what a roll-and-write is all about. Other fun games include, Ada Lovelace: Consulting Mathematician, Utopia Engine, Raging Bulls and Pencils & Powers. You can also play Ganz Schön Clever online! If you feel like some games that break the mold, Chris Anderson's Tempus series, which consists of Tempus Imperium and Tempus Fumus, does not even use any dice!