Game Jargon Definition: “Dice Festival”

Dice Festival (noun) - dice fes · ti · val / dīs ˈfestəv(ə)l /

A board game may be referred to as a “dice festival” when it is heavy on dice rolling as a mechanic and features many different types of dice rolling and dice placement—or iterations of dice rolling and dice placement—in a given round. Furthermore, dice festival games typically also use dice as multiple types of abstract components.

For example, a dice festival game might have players roll one set of dice to determine certain outcomes, use another set of dice to act as tokens that are moved around on the board, and perhaps a third set of dice to indicate scores or to track some other type of stats during gameplay.

Dice festival games typically feature many different colors of dice to differentiate between the various dice functions. They may include “custom dice” with game-specific iconography. Furthermore, while some dice festival games may use six-sided dice, others will use four-sided (d4), eight-sided (d8), ten-sided (d10), twelve-sided (d12), twenty-sided (d20), fifty-sided (d50), and/or one hundred-sided (d100) dice.

Though the rules and mechanics of some dice festival games are quite cleverly constructed, the majority of them still depend on input and output randomness for a significant portion of gameplay. This is not to say that tactical and strategic decision making does not factor in or that players who are better at the game will not win more often.

Dice festival games are distinct from dice chucker games in that the former (as already stated) typically use different sets of dice for different types of board game components, while the latter typically depend on fewer sets of dice to determine “random” outcomes through rolling.

Examples of dice festival games include: Marvel Dice Masters (2014); Panamax (2014); Roll for the Galaxy (2014); Roll Player (2016); Too Many Bones (2017); Cubitos (2021); and of course, The Cones of Dunshire.