Dice management and strong actions
Exploring the use of dice, economy, and actions in Troyes
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Last week we explored game complexity and effort using the NASA-TLX assessment tool.
This week we are looking at Troyes, a game with a fairly standard theme but really interesting gameplay.
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Troyes
Ostensibly the goal of Troyes (Dujardin, Georges, et al., 2010) is to “defend the city and rise to power by influencing the merchants, knights and clergy” in the year 1200. The city, in this case, is the medieval city of Troyes.1
As the rulebook puts it:
Troyes is a strategy game in which you represent a rich family from the Champagne region of France, using your influence to recruit and supervise individuals from the 3 prominent domains: military (red), religious (white), and civil (yellow).
Pretty standard setting for a euro-style board game, but a game that is really challenging to explain. All of the mechanisms are intertwined in such a way that to understand any one part, you need to understand the whole thing.
It is ultimately a game of worker placement with dice workers, meaning it is mechanically similar in some ways to Sky Team (2023), Teotihuacan: City of Gods (2018), and The Voyages of Marco Polo (2015).
A quick explanation
What follows is not a full rule explanation, but rather just enough to understand what is going on:
1. Placing citizen meeples and rolling dice
During initial setup, players have citizen meeples that they can place in one of three areas: military (red), religious (white), or civil (yellow). Where they place these citizens will determine how many dice they get to roll.
Next each player rolls dice according to where their citizens are located. Each citizen provides 1 six-sided die of the corresponding color (e.g. 1 yellow die per citizen in City Hall). Then after everyone has rolled their dice and placed them in their section at the center of the board, players begin taking actions.
2. Activity cards
Activity cards are revealed throughout the game, providing actions that players can take using their dice. For example the Merchant allows the player to gain 2 coins, and the Goldsmith provides 1 VP and 2 coins. Other activity cards provide more complex actions, like the Templar that allows the player to use 1 white die as though it were 2 red dice of equal value on a future turn.
3. Spending dice on actions
Players spend their rolled dice on the available actions. Each action requires a group of one to three dice of the same color. For example, the Forgeron (Blacksmith) requires groups of three yellow dice to activate it. Doing this would allow the player to “Add 5 to the value of a group of any number of red dice.” on a future turn.
The number of times the card is activated is based on the pips on the dice. Using the Merchant card as an example, the sum of the dice is divided by 2 and rounded down. If you had three dice (5, 5, 6) totaling 16, you would divide by 2 to get 8. Each activation gives you 2 coins, so you’d get 2x8 = 16 coins.
4. Winning the game
The game ends after six rounds in a four-player game. The winner is determined by the most Victory Points (VP) at the end. VP come from defeating event cards, unlocking activity cards, placing cubes on the Cathedral tracks, and a secret bonus point card.
Nice red dice you got there…
This is where the game gets really interesting!
Instead of just relying on your own dice for everything explained above, you can use anyone’s dice… for a price.
If you only have civil (yellow) dice this round but want to take a military (red) action, you can take another player’s dice by paying them based on the number of dice you plan to use this turn:
Use 1 die: It costs 2 coins per die.
Use 2 dice: It costs 4 coins per die.
Use 3 dice: It costs 6 coins per die.
The cost of the dice has nothing to do with the dice value (pips) showing, but rather how many total dice the player plans to use for an action. One die is pretty cheap, but buying three dice is amazingly expensive (i.e. 18 coins).
It is important to understand that the other player doesn’t need to consent to this. You just decide to buy their dice and hand them some coins. The coins are always nice, allowing them to buy dice in future turns, but it also might wreck their plans for this turn.
The coin economy
This dice management also creates a really interesting economy in the game.
The flow of coins from the bank to players and back can be broken down as follows:
Income (bank to player): Players take a fixed 10-coin income at the start of each of the four to six rounds of the game.
Activity card actions (bank to player): Specific card actions such as the Artisan or Merchant provide coins based on the number of activations.
Citizen salaries (player to bank): Players pay coins for each of their citizens placed in the three areas of the board used to gain dice.
Unlocking activity cards (player to bank): Players pay coins on their first use of a new activity card, placing a meeple there. This costs the coins shown on the card.
Purchasing dice (player to player): Players can pay coins to another player to take and use their dice for actions. The player who owned the die cannot refuse the transaction.
A side effect of this, based on my experience with the game, is that higher player counts (e.g. 3-4) keep more coins in the economy versus lower player counts (e.g. 2-3). I think this is because (1) there is more money injected during the income phase, and (2) there’s more dice purchasing going on with more players.
Of the possible uses for coins, purchasing dice keeps them in the player economy rather than pulling them out to go in the bank.
Dice management as a core mechanism
I’ve skipped large amounts of Troye’s rules and mechanisms, including things like the event cards and end game bonus points.2 Both of those could probably support articles on their own.
It’s the dice management and dice placement of Troyes, however, that I find most interesting and satisfying. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another game do something similar, save for perhaps Black Angel (2019) by the same designers.
Troyes creates a really interesting decision space regarding dice management, not just dice placement:
You can place many citizens out to gain a lot of dice, but each citizen requires an income (coins) at the start of each round. It’s expensive to get dice.
You can buy the dice you need from other players, but this relies on the hope that they get the dice colors that you want and that you have the coin to pay for them.
You can hope that other players buy your dice, providing much needed coins, but what if everyone decides to ignore you?
In many dice placement games, the decisions are based on the dice you roll and how you use (i.e. place) the dice each turn. In Troyes, the acquisition of the dice and how you manage them is every bit as important as how each die is used.
Weak vs. strong actions
Activity cards indicate how to divide the total value of dice spent on them. This allows players to use an action with low value dice, but it will be a “weak” action… only activating once or maybe twice. That same card could provide an extremely “strong” action, activating many times.
Spend three dice on the Mercenary with a sum of 3 and you get three measly coins, hardly worth doing. I’d consider this a weak action.
That same card, however, when used with three sixes, activates it nine times, yielding 27 coins! In a game where every coin matters, this is a very strong action indeed!
It might be tricky to implement, but I think there is an opportunity to use this type of strong/weak mechanism in TTRPGs and other narrative games. Where some games provide access to strong or weak actions depending on your level, it would be interesting to always have access to all actions. You can cast that fireball spell, but it will be a weak action without the resources to spend on it. Conversely, even a simple attack action could be deadly if you get to activate it nine times in a row!
Conclusion
Some things to think about:
A tough teach: Games like Troyes (where the mechanisms are all tightly linked together) are fun games, but at a cost. It’s hard to find an “entry point” from which you can begin teaching the game. They end up being “it will make sense once we start playing” type games that can be frustrating for some players.
Open vs. closed economies: In an open economy, resources (e.g. coins) can be generated or introduced from an external source (e.g. bank). In a closed economy, the resources are fixed at the beginning of the game and the total never changes (i.e. a finite pool).3 Troyes has an open economy but it’s extremely tight, meaning each transaction is meaningful.
Strong vs. weak actions: While some activity cards do require high dice values (e.g. the Tax Collection needs at least 5+ to activate), most cards can be used even with average dice with modest effect. Those same activity cards can, however, be really powerful with high values. It’s an interesting concept to use in games.
— E.P. 💀
P.S. You are an Assistant Demon selling cursed items to unsuspecting customers in Caveat Emptor, a new solo journaling game from Exeunt Press. Try the free one-page version, or for just $5 get the 36-page Expanded Edition PDF! 😈
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Everyone gets an end game card with conditions to earn bonus VP, but you can only see your own. They remain hidden until the end of the game, and then everyone scores all the cards. Even if you didn’t have a particular card, you still get points from it.
Open vs. closed economies is probably a good topic for a future Skeleton Code Machine article. Jamey from Stonemaier Games talked about this Top 10 Favorite Closed Economy Games about five years ago, and might be a good intro.
There is a TTRPG that does just this... mostly. Check out Panic at the Dojo (https://liberigothica.itch.io/panic-at-the-dojo). The system does almost exactly what you describe, only, according to the reviews, it's focused mainly on combat, not so much on narrative.