X-Men joins the Dice Throne as a virtual version of the tabletop game

Dice Throne is a tabletop game that uses dice and cards to fight against each other in a fast-paced turn battle, against each other and fight in a team, or bring everyone together in a cooperative adventure. It's a very fast (funny!) game to set up and play, which is ideal for those who have hours and hours a week, Pathfinder, or anyone similarly bringing themselves into a system that takes themselves into a long-term adventure.

The Dice Throne team will soon release its long-awaited X-Men expansion and inject more Marvel heroes with Dice Throne being largely the original character gig. This is the second extension to add licensed characters in the game – in previous add-ons, a bunch of non-obsessed miracle characters like Thor and Black Panther were added. I asked in a speech at Nate Chatellier and leading game designer Casey Sershon, how this “Magic: Party and Yahtzee” game is approaching, adding held characters to the game and whether more IPS is considered.

“When we started the dice throne, I created this five-year plan,” Chatel told me. “I like long-term plans, and the plan was Season 1, Season 2, a solo and collaborative mode – ultimately the Dice Throne Adventure – and then the Marvel Edition. I think it was a five-year plan and it took six years to do that, but we checked all the boxes and we were still very proud. When we were going to be here, the way we worked is, we were all on the way. Using IP?'”

“Long-term, we will continue to pursue both,” Selshen said. “We will continue to pursue original IP and licensed IP… The original IP is very cool. It's an open sandbox, but it's also one of the interesting things about using licensed IPs, which leads your horizons (and) to form some limitations on it. It narrows our scope for this character, which makes our idea right and can make all developers so that our idea becomes so, and our idea is that we (fige) can make it in turn constitute the fantasy of this character.”

“We don't want to be an IP company, like we do, but we don't want to be a company that evades the IP we like, and we're passionate about the system,” Chatellier added. “We're not a company that's trying to snap up. We have to feel like we like this, we can be just, and it can be part of it. The more we talk about it, then it feels as meaningful as adding the X-Men to this world.”

In the Dice Throne, you play the role of your choice, trying to get a specific mode when it's the turn of six-sided rolling dice, allowing you to use the hero's various abilities. You can also play cards to increase odds, improve certain skills, or make the opponent's players worse. Naruto, for example, is a rather approachable hero who deals with opponents with explosive fireballs and high damage flames, while the somewhat complicated hunter woman directs a Sabretooth Tiger named Nyra to attack and defend for her, forcing a player to find Bond to maintain Bond’s abilities to enhance the hero’s abilities.

“We joke (and) says, 'Dice Throne is the game that you'll actually play,' (but it's only) sort of a joke. (Jordan, you) talked about having 20 games that are coming out (that look interesting), and Dice Throne (stays competitive by) only taking 30 seconds to set up and 30 minutes to play a game, and once you read the short core rules of the game, you don't have to read another 20-page rule book. You already know how to play the game, you just learn new heroes.”

Although originally designed as a duel game, the dice throne can still be played with a more story-driven structure, with a single-tone mission and longer adventures. “If you like these long campaign-style games, adventure is great and it falls into the audience. The mission is very similar to adventure, but it's not a long, multi-week campaign-style. It's a game in one night,” Sershon said.

“With the adventure, I made a game for myself,” Chahui said. “I love long (story). I do a lot of legacy games. I love long and long things. My wife and I have regular double dates where we play legacy games. I want that. I want that. The problem I realize is that not everyone has long-term game groups, and if they do that, maybe not everyone wants that game like they do, and that person is like classic. (It's a too complicated thing, an option for me, but a weakness for others.

The new hero is the new hero. The X-Men expansion adds eight playable characters: Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke, iCeman and Jean Gray. “We have a lot of spreadsheets of all Marvel heroes (and) all X-Men heroes, and we evaluated them with a lot of different metrics to decide which heroes we choose in the game,” Chatelier said. “Frankly, it's not an easy decision. There are a lot of metrics: how much we love heroes, how popular heroes are generally, and then the appeal of heroes.”

Chatellier describes the hero’s conspiracy as how different the hero’s abilities may be when translated into the Dice Throne mechanic. With nearly 40 characters released or announced, the Dice Throne team needs to make sure they aren't adding X-Men, who will clash with established heroes' playstyle or any other X-Men. That's why only Miles Morales were added in previous Marvel extensions, not Miles and Peter Parker, why Wolverine of Logan was included, but not X-23, and why Jean Gray's addition means characters like Xavior and Emma Frost and Emma Frost were omitted. Emma Frost, however, made layoffs as an NPC, but players can encounter them during the mission.

“We also have a lot of (women in the community), including my daughter, so I do want some strong (women) in the game, which is important to us,” Chatel said. “We know we're going to perform dice throne missions, so we separate the villains so that they can be kept as villains as quests rather than playable heroes. A lot of people ask, 'Why can't we (we can't play some villains?' That's why, we want the mission to be a thing.”

“Nate is just a conversation about character selection and mechanical design,” Sershon added. “There is also the entire visual design, and the art team has to go through the era of clothing they use – we made originals (designs) instead of sticking to them on a classic look. There was a lot of involvement from Marvel, and a lot of collaboration between all the teams. Ultimately, we were very satisfied.

With the expansion of the X-Men and the recently launched Ranger expansion, Dice Throwe's roster of playable heroes has reached nearly 40. Obviously, that's not enough. “If we get to that, it's because we've come up with new, refreshed content, and frankly, we're about the same,” Chatel said. “I don't know, now there's more than 30 heroes in the hoppers at all stages of development. We have a great community in Facebook and Discord and other places where we're creating our own heroes, and it's clear that our fan base is far from enough heroes. They want more and more. They want more and more.

Chatellier was formerly CEO, and earlier this year, Chatellier moved the role to Sershon to focus on developing various digital projects and even explored the possibilities of the digital version of Dice Throond for players who want to actually play together. The conclusion about whether they will accept the project is still not a foregone conclusion (because I want to play most tabletop games with friends, but I want to play most tabletop games with discord), but at the same time, Chatellier is still the protagonist of the game design for physical tabletop games.

“We felt much closer in eight years (and our 10th anniversary) than you think,” Sershon said. “We’re already talking about what it means and what it’s planned – with the timeline of desktop development, two years aren’t that far away.”

You can catch it Dice Throne Season 1 or Dice Throne Season 2 $99 per person, Dice throne adventure For $80 Miracle of the Dice Throne $109. Booking Dice Throne Miracle X-Men and Dice Throne Miracle Adventure All are open – the former is $109, while the latter is $70. You need to grab Season 1, Season 2, Marvel or Marvel X-Men. You don't need to have Season 1 to play the subsequent collection.