Hello Everyone

...and welcome to BGDF, Dan!

There are lots of ways to change up a roll n' move type of game into something that still uses dice, but not necessarily for determining to where the players' pawns will move. Avoiding hazards, using skills, combat, etc. are all other ways players can use dice, regardless of how they move from place to place in the game world.

Best of success on Escape or Dice! Keep at it. Please share details here so others can have a clearer picture of your game, and so they can offer useful feedback and suggestions.

howdy.
obviously i know nothing of your game but i am guessing your players disliked the luck element of roll and move.
luck is used more for games aimed at younger players and non gamers as it evens out the skill levels (a toddler and a chess grand master have an equal chance of winning snakes and Ladders) which is great for those types of audience.
even games with older themes like zombie dice work fine with huge amounts of luck because its such a light game no one is expecting a game of skill and no one really cares who wins (its more about wasting half an hour).
is your game a light filler or a kids/family game? if it is then roll and move could be perfect.
if not, and its a heavy, thinky (and/or long) game it can be extremely frustrating to plan, plot and play perfectly for the whole game then lose because you roll a 3 instead of a 4.
in general its better to have the random at the start of a problem than the end. ie "here are some random resources, how do you best manage them" instead of " you put your resources in these places, roll this dice lets see if you win" (there are exceptions obviously)
a happy medium might be the way a lot of games deal with fighting. dice mitigation, still use roll and move but give a way to reroll and add or subtract pips. if the mitigation comes at a cost it can add some strategy to the luck.

One way to replace Roll & Move in a game is to give players X Action Points (APs). For example you get 6 APs per turn. To move costs 1 AP per space. To draw a card takes 2 AP, etc.

The point is everything you do costs a certain amount of APs... Each action can have its own cost as explained above.

Cheers and welcome to BGDF...

Hi Dan,

Thanks for posting your game. It's funny - I've just been spending the evening nostalgia tripping over Fighting Fantasy, so I like the idea of your very accessible dungeon-dice-battle game. I think the movement mechanism is interesting - 2 die, move forward if total's Even...it's original.

I wonder if that's enough dice play? You've got various encounters being resolved with dice too - but do they have to be? Could you collect cards and battle with those instead perhaps?

I'm just thinking that it might be cool if the experience of the game was: Movement = dice and your distinctive movement mechanism; Fighting = a different mechanism with a different component.

Maybe your play-testers would find that actually it wasn't the roll and move they objected to, but the double dice action of movement AND fighting?

Nice clear rules by the way!

(1) I'm not sure I really get the theming. Bottle tops?

(2) "If you have an attack card you can use this to battle the dice. To beat the dice, you Roll another dice and your attack card must be higher or the same as the dice"

You're really just asking for trouble with this naming (though saying "dice" when you mean "die" isn't helping).

A rule book should be giving clarity, not taking it away.

I mean, when you name the opponent "the dice", and you refer to them as "D.I.C.E.", "Dice", and "dice", and you fight them by rolling your dice against dice dice (or maybe there's a card involved), you have a big problem with the lack of clarity.

At the very least, you need to be absolutely consistent about that opponent name. I'd suggest "D.I.C.E.", or "Dice" if you prefer, but never ever "dice". Because "dice" are the cubes with spots.

Also, I'd say that "play until an hour is up" is an unusual mechanic. Consider having an end point, and if the game needs to end early, have that be driven by something other than the clock (like running out of cards, for example)