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REVIEW
Roll Player
Speed Dating
Wealthy, wise, or insane, there are many possibilities. Whatever their fate is, heroes are at the center of a role-playing game in the tradition of Gary Gygax. Carefully developing your character has its charm. Seeing the game’s name in print, though, it doesn’t refer to “role” at all. It’s more about, rolling dice. Even if you actually pick dice as often as you roll them, the wordplay works anyway, mainly because designer Keith Matejka satirizes character generation. In this regard, Roll Player is to Dungeons & Dragons as speed dating is to romance.
Each player sets out to fill out a character tableau with 18 six-sided dice. You start with six to eight at
hand, the rest will be added, one per
round. A game of Roll Player consists of nothing more than choosing one die from the offer when it is your turn, placing it on your character sheet.
A number of dice equal to the number of players,
bag and make up the offer. After being drawn and rolled, the dice are placed on initiative cards according to the number of pips. That the lowest is placed on the
lowest card, and so on, implies that higher numbers are more valuable. In fact, it doesn’t hurt to snatch all sixes, even if you might expect such a result would come with disadvantages. Being late in turn order means choosing a die later in the following round. Worse still, this comes with later access to the equip- ment cards available in the offer. The cards aren’t free, but their purchase price is rarely that difficult a hurdle to over-
come. The question is, what is left when it is your turn.
The cards offer typical fantasy genre gear, as well as abilities and character traits. They are usually
associated with the opportunity either to modify certain rules in your favor or to add to your victory point total, more often than not victory-relevant dimensions.
I Character class determines the quota
Let’s get back to the dice. When you
choose one, you have to put it in one of the empty holes of your character sheet. Each of the six rows represents one attri- bute and offers space for three dice. The attribute modifications vary depending on the race you’re playing (human, orc, dwarf, elf, etc.). While humans always go unmodified, elves, for example, add two to their Dexterity total, while Halflings deduct two of their strength total. The actual target value and the number of achievable victory points depends upon the character class. Thus, the sum of the
three strength dice for a barbar- ian has to be 16 or 17 to score two victory points. His charisma
only needs to be 14, but is merely worth one point.
plus drawn
one, are from a
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