Roll Player

Roll Player, designed by Keith Matejka, is a dice-drafting and card-drafting game for one to four players. Rather than playing a fantasy adventurer, you build one: over the game you assemble a character with six attributes, a class, a race, an alignment and a backstory, then score points for how well-rounded and thematically consistent your creation turns out. The best-built hero wins.

The dice & how you draft

The engine is a pool of standard six-sided dice in six colours. At the start of each round, dice equal to the number of players are drawn from a bag, rolled, and lined up in an initiative row. Turn order that round follows the value of the die each player took — a neat tension, because the die you want and the turn order you want often pull in opposite directions.

Your character board has six attribute rows — the classic Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Each row has a preferred colour and a set of slots, and the value of a die placed in a slot maps to an attribute modifier. Line up the right colours and values and your attributes climb; place carelessly and you leave points on the table.

How to play

Each round has two main beats. First, in initiative order, every player drafts a die from the row and places it into one of their attribute slots, immediately resolving any coloured-slot bonus that triggers. Then, still in order, each player may visit the Market.

The Market is a shared row of cards you buy with gold: weapons, armour, skills and traits that grant one-off effects, ongoing abilities, or end-game scoring. Class and race cards you started with set target attribute goals; your alignment card charts your deeds on a good-evil / lawful-chaotic grid; and backstory cards reward particular arrangements of dice. Over the game you also gain and spend gold, and use card powers to move, flip or re-roll placed dice — the only ways to fix a bad early placement.

When every attribute slot is filled the game ends, and you total your score: attribute totals matched against your class target, alignment position, backstory patterns, and the cards you collected. Highest score is the finest adventurer.

Strategy

• Serve your class goal. Your class rewards high scores in specific attributes — steer dice toward those rows rather than spreading evenly.
• Weigh the die against the turn. Sometimes a lower die you don’t need is worth taking just to grab first pick of the Market next.
• Bank re-roll and move effects. Cards that reposition or flip dice are gold-dust for correcting a forced bad placement — save them for when they rescue the most points.
• Watch your alignment drift. Card actions nudge your alignment marker; a few careless moves can miss your target zone and its bonus.
• Don’t ignore backstory patterns. They score for specific die arrangements — plan placements early so the pattern is achievable, not a lucky accident.

Common mistakes

• Placing dice without a plan. Slots fill fast; a die dropped in the wrong row early can cost you the class bonus you needed.
• Chasing every Market card. Gold is limited — buying breadth over the few cards that fit your build wastes it.
• Forgetting the colour bonuses. Matching a die’s colour to its row can trigger extra effects; ignore them and you leave value unused.
• Neglecting alignment and backstory. These quiet goals swing final scores; players fixated on raw attributes often miss them.
• Taking high dice for their number alone. A big die going last in initiative can hand rivals the Market card or dice you were counting on.

Want a feel for how a colourful pool of dice lands before you draft? Roll a mixed set in your browser and read the spread of colours and values.

Keep reading: the dice-crafting favourite Dice Forge.