Roll Player: Who Can Roll the Best Character?

By Christopher Guyton | October 22nd, 2018 | Categories: Board Game Reviews, Board Games, Product Review

Roll the dice on a character of your own dumb luck, and then race your pals to build the best backstory!

Roll Player is a character building game which uses card drafting and dice rolling mechanics. Roll Player is designed by Keith Matejka published by Thunderworks games. Art is contributed by John Ariosa and Luis Francisco. Retail for Roll Player is 59.99 and playtime is roughly 60-90 minutes.

Roll Player $59.99

Get yours for less from Miniature Market

Mighty heroes don’t just appear out of thin air – they must be created! Race, class, alignment, skills, traits, and equipment are all elements of the perfect hero, ready to take on the opposition in the quest for glory and riches.

In Roll Player, you compete to create the greatest fantasy adventurer who has ever lived, preparing your character to embark on an epic quest.

Contents:
1 Dice Bag
60 Gold
6 Character Sheets
6 Charisma Tokens
73 Dice
101 Cards
12 Tracking Tokens
1 Rulebook

Ages: 10+
Players: 1-4
Game Length: 60-90 minutes

In Roll Player, each player is trying to roll a character similar to rolling for a role-playing game adventure. Each player in turn order will choose a race among several choices which are double sided for male and female. Then each player will draw a colored die out of the bag to determine their class choices.

Players are then randomly dealt a backstory card and alignment card to create the structure of their character. Players draw their starting stat dice which can be placed into any of their attribute grid slots.

Roll Player is played in several rounds until everyone completely fills up all their attribute slots. Each row represents a stat such as strength or wisdom for example. The aim is to make the dice add up to specific amounts or ranges in order to score the most points. Another way to earn points is the location of the dice. If the color dice is in the matching spot of the backstory card then you earn more points. You also earn points for having your alignment marker in the space that matches your character’s alignment. There are also gold dice which earn you gold when drafted. Each attribute row also grants a power when a dice is placed into it. Some of these allow you to flip dice or switch two dice positions or even re=roll one.

Roll Player utilizes drafting to take dice which has an interesting balancing mechanism. The higher, better dice will have give you a later initiative number while lower, weaker dice give you an earlier initiative number. The importance of initiative is the order in which you can purchase cards from the market. These cards are skills, traits, weapons, and armor. Market cards can be a great tool in earning points or even ways to manipulate your dice in the effort to get your stats to where you want to be.

Roll Player is one of those games that popped up on my radar due to all the buzz it has gotten. I decided to take a chance on it due to the popularity and that fact that the theme really appealed to me. The result is, I now have a fantastic and fun game added to my collection. I was blown away by the gameplay which almost feels like a roll and write style game which I’m a new fan of as well.

My game group also liked it very much. The only thing most people didn’t like was the fact that you don’t actually use your character for any adventures. Well they have a solution for that.

The Monsters and Minions expansion for Roll Player adds the one thing sorely missed from the base game. Not only are we building a character we are also hunting a deadly monster.

The major gameplay chance is an option presented during the market phase. Instead of buying a card, you can fight a minion which, if killed, earns you a trophy and intel on the boss monster. This intel gives you knowledge of the monster’s location, obstacles, and attack. Players who have the corresponding intel may earn bonus xp or more battle dice to help take down the monster.

The expansion seems to add quite a bit of variety to the base game. More options is definitely not a bad thing and this game with the expansion provides it.