Three great new roll-and-write games

Cascadia: Rolling, Rolling Realms Redux and French Quarter provide a broad look at the direction the roll-and-write genre is heading.

Roll-and-write games were once generally lightweight games. They weren’t packed with much complexity or variety. Yahtzee, for better or worse, remained the quintessential game in the genre for years.

That’s changed over the years, in no small part owing to the 2019–2020 roll-and-write boom, which I wrote about back in May. That boom shaped the genre, and while we’ve seen signs of that boom having slowed, I’d argue we’ve also seen signs of life. There’s something interesting afoot in roll-and-write games, and these three great games from 2024 highlight the shifts.

Cascadia: Rolling takes the trappings of Cascadia and shapes a small series of games around a common structure. Ramping complexity makes this game accessible, and the common structure makes each new step interesting and engaging.

Rolling Realms Redux takes the almost self-promotional core and turns it into a celebration of the board game hobby. It’s a joyful, engaging game.

French Quarter transforms the themeless bonus-action-track roll-and-write into a theme-focused experience, and you’ll be forced to make trade-offs along the way.

Each of today’s three games approaches the genre in a different way, but there’s a clear family resemblance here, too. No longer are roll-and-writes just about getting a nice die roll or at least mitigating your luck — these three demonstrate the progress the genre’s made.

Cascadia: Rolling Rivers | Photo by Matt Montgomery

Cascadia: Rolling Rivers and Rolling Hills

The roll-and-write as a sequel to an existing game is a fascinating thing. I wrote about the concept back in May (with some accompanying data about the genre more broadly), which I’ll link below. Cascadia: Rolling is a take on the hit game Cascadia, offering four distinct experiences that range from fairly simple to fairly complex, as far as roll-and-write games go.

Cascadia is a Spiel des Jahres-winning title in which you’re collecting animal tokens and terrain tiles, then placing them in your personal map. You earn points for each type of animal according to a goal card drawn for each, so no two games ever feel exactly the same.

Cascadia: Rolling is really two games, each of which can be played independently but are more or less the same game: Rolling Rivers and Rolling Hills. Each box has four types of player sheets, and three of the four are the same across the two games. The fourth — the most complex of them all in each box — is unique to the box. 

The roll-and-write structure ranges from pretty straightforward to on the more complex side for a roll-and-write. One element is shared across each of the maps, and that’s the most basic part of the game. Each round, four dice are rolled for the table and two personal dice, and each presents the usual Cascadia animals: salmon, hawks, foxes, elk, and bears. You’ll select one type of animal and track them on your sheet, crossing off the old number for that type of animal and writing your new total. Those animals comprise your supply, which will grow and shrink as you play the game.

With your supply of animals, you’ll have the opportunity to complete a single goal from a maximum of four available by spending animals from your sheet. Those goals are on habitat cards that progress along a four-card track. Each spot in the track provides some advantage, like having the cost of the goal reduced by one animal or gaining two animals after you fulfill the goal. Those advantages are in place throughout the game, so the advantage for the card in, say, the second position is always the advantage for any card in that position.

When you complete a habitat card, you’ll get to mark something on your map corresponding to the terrain type of the goal, but what exactly you get to map will vary based on the type of game you’re playing. If you’re playing along the Columbia River (Sheet A), you’ll be marking a points total in the corresponding terrain on your sheet, and you’ll earn extra points for completing sets of each terrain type or all of one terrain type. (In the Rolling Hills version of this game, you’re playing on the Zumwalt Prairie.)

The Elwha River (Sheet B) is focused on completing habitats on a grid, with each terrain type occupying a single row on the grid. You gain points for completing many tiles of one terrain type, but you’ll also get bonuses for completing certain areas of the grid. (In Rolling Hills: Okanagan.)

The Tatshenshini-Alsek Rivers (Sheet C) is a more spatial experience, and you’ll be marking locations on your sheet in a bit of a hex grid map. You’ll earn bonuses for surrounding or completing some tiles, and you’ll earn points for each tile you complete without a bonus. (In Rolling Hills: Palouse.)

Finally, Sheet D is where the game crescendos into exactly what you might have wanted from a Cascadia roll-and-write game. The Fraser (Sto꞉lo) River has you filling out your map with animals, and you’ll earn points much like you would playing Cascadia. Your bears are worth points in isolated pairs, your salmon are worth points on runs, your foxes are worth points for having varying types of animals around them, your hawks score points for being away from their kind, and elk score points for being connected in a line.

In Rolling Hills, Sheet D is actually a completely different map with different marking rules and ideas. It’s Craters of the Moon, and your goal is to fill out different regions on the map, and each region you complete provides you a bonus. I’ve yet to play this one, but I’m excited to give it a whirl before too long.

Cascadia: Rolling is such a clever game. Each of the four player sheets play completely changes the way you think about play, providing more than just a unique challenge. Each player sheet feels like a different game built on the same model; each game could have been packaged and sold as an expansion or a completely separate game.

I’m so glad they didn’t; this is a game that succeeds because it’s all packaged together, and it would be a shame if those had been split in some way. Sure, we’re still split across two different boxes here, and Sheet D provides a different experience in each box, but you’re also able to play with more players with both boxes, as they’re fully cross-compatible with each other.

The player sheets ramp in complexity as you go from A to D, and that serves the game so well. You’re always discovering something new, but the bones of the game. Cascadia: Rolling is an endlessly clever roll-and-write game, and it grows with you as you play. You could easily introduce Sheet A to a younger or more broadly inexperienced player, and over the course of a dozen plays, they could be ready for Sheet B or beyond. That’s such a cool feat.

Designed by Randy Flynn, illustrated by Beth Sobel, and published by Flatout Games in collaboration with AEG. Cascadia: Rolling plays 1–4 players with a single box, and it can easily combine with either edition to support additional players. Read more about Cascadia: Rolling on Board Game Geek.

Rolling Realms Redux | Photo by Matt Montgomery

Rolling Realms Redux

So, confession time. I’ve never played Rolling Realms. I’ve had the game for years, and I somehow didn’t pull it off the shelf. It purports to be a great single-player game. I love single-player roll-and-write games. Adore them. Rolling Realms, by all accounts, should be right up my alley. But no, it sat unplayed for far too long.

Until last Saturday and the game’s sequel, Rolling Realms Redux, that is. Rolling Realms Redux is Rolling Realms, but with different realms. But what’s a realm, you might be asking? It’s a good question, given it’s in the name. That gets at the very premise of the game.

Rolling Realms is a roll-and-write game in which you’re playing three rounds, each of which has a set of three realm cards, each reflecting mechanics and ideas from a different board game. The first game came with 11 realms, each representing a different game by the publisher, Stonemaier Games. Designed as an “infinitely scalable” roll-and-write for the early days of the pandemic, Rolling Realms is the sort of weird game that only a designer and publisher with a real following could produce. See, it’s weird enough to play a game based on a bunch of other games, and it just gets really tough to do something with other publishers, I’d imagine.

Except, well, here’s Rolling Realms Redux, trotting out after four years of consistent promo card releases based on games from other publishers; it follows, then, that Redux is packed with games from other publishers. It’s a cool story, and designer Jamey Stegmaier’s joy for the hobby shows through the coordination he’s done with fans of Rolling Realms and the publishers of these beloved games. Many of these additional realms are designed by fans, and they receive credit in the game.

I love roll-and-write games, and this one fits squarely in the mix. It’s a fun experience, playing a roll-and-write game that sort of approximates mechanics in other games. Each realm features areas you can mark off depending on your dice rolls, and those areas will work toward gaining you points in some way. Each turn, you can mark off a realm just once, unless some power gives you the ability to do more.

By means of example, in Redux, one of those realms is Rock Paper Scissors. In that realm, you’re allocating dice at various values to the eponymous rock, paper and scissors, marking the value on your card in one of several spaces in a column. You’ll earn points for the number of completed, valid pairs of matches — so, rock must beat scissors, paper must beat rock, and so on. Of course, the games generally are cooler than Rock Paper Scissors — we’ve got Flamecraft, Dog Park, Tidal Blades, Planet Unknown, Wonderland’s War, and more. It’s a cool idea, but, uh, I haven’t played most of those games. But there are so many more.

Anyway, cool game with giant dice. Oh — did I forget to mention that? The dice are big. It’s neat.

Designed by Jamey Stegmaier, published by Stonemaier Games. Rolling Realms Redux supports 1–6 players out of the box. Read more about Rolling Realms Redux on Board Game Geek.

French Quarter | Photo by Matt Montgomery

French Quarter

I love roll-and-write games that exist entirely without theme. That’s Pretty Clever! is one of my very favorite roll-and-writes, as are games like Encore and Qwixx. I especially love chaining my dice placement together to gain additional actions — that feeling that I’m actually clever and not just playing a board game. I love making piece-by-piece progress on a more expansive task that could grant me considerable points, even if there’s a little bit of risk that I won’t finish.

French Quarter is not a themeless roll-and-write, but it embodies the feeling of those chaining-action games. In this game from the designers of roll-and-writes Three Sisters (which I’ve played and love) and Motor City (which I’d love to play), you’re exploring the French Quarter of New Orleans (which I’ve never visited and would probably enjoy — my wife assures me that’s true). You’ll get caught up partying, dancing through the streets; you’ll visit gift shops, restaurants, psychics, and historic markets.

There are two player sheets in French Quarter; the first features a street map of the city with buildings, and the second features a series of bonus tracks for which you’ll score points and earn bonuses that benefit you through the game — unless, of course, you party too hard. Each round, one player will roll the dice; each player around the table will select one of those dice on a matching action card. Those cards give you symbols to mark on your bonus sheet, and they’ll tell you what you can do on your turn. You might be walking from building to building, hopping on a riverboat or streetcar, hitching a ride on a taxi or carriage, or spending your time (gasp!) socializing.

As you move around the board, you’ll be writing the number of the die you selected on the buildings you visit. You can never mark a building more than once, though you can potentially visit more times. Each building you mark must have at least a difference of one from the adjacent buildings’ numbers — so, no 6 next to a 6, only next to a 5 or lower, that sort of thing. That becomes the game’s primary puzzle, and you’ll want to figure out how you’ll move around the map most effectively.

Perhaps you’ll be spending most of your time partying. It’s right on theme, that partying in New Orleans gimmick. Again, I’ve never been, but I’ve heard stories. Or urban legends. I dunno. (I asked my wife what she did in New Orleans, and she told me about how she had the best biscuits of her life there, and that she did a cemetery tour.)

The bonus track for partying can potentially earn you a ton of points — but the ‘bonuses’ reducing your walking speed, send you to the police station, and block you from seeing performers. If you do make it all the way to the end, you’ll earn a lot of points. If you don’t — well,  you’ll really hamstring your play, and to what end? That balance really makes the game, especially because you might end up picking up partying bonuses without considering the consequence. That’s thematic.

Like That’s Pretty Clever! and other bonus-focused roll-and-writes, you’ll want to focus your efforts in French Quarter in such a way that you earn points and bonuses along the way, optimizing your play around high-scoring opportunities. Will you focus on the mysticism track, allowing you to earn more when somebody on the board parties? Will you focus instead on shopping, earning chances to get extra points as you collect umbrellas? (Is there something about New Orleans and umbrellas? Hmm!) Or maybe you’ll focus on culture, giving you an opportunity to explore more of the city. Or food — glorious food — giving you chances to explore the city more easily.

French Quarter is the sort of roll-and-write you can break out at a game night full of experienced Euro-game players. It’s also the sort of game you can introduce to newer entrants to the hobby. This trio is out there designing really approachable, interesting games, and they deserve a lot of credit for that.

Designed by Adam Hill, Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle, published by 25th Century Games and Motor City Gameworks. French Quarter plays 1–4 players. Read more about French Quarter on Board Game Geek.

Thank you, as ever, for reading Don’t Eat the Meeples! If you’re new here, I’d love to know what games you’re playing — roll-and-write or not! If you’d like me to send you some Don’t Eat the Meeples stickers, drop me a DM on Substack or respond to this email. I’d love to ship some out to you.

Next week: Great new card games