Design Diary #1: Poker Without Betting

Here's my first foray into documenting a design I have been working on. I want this to be an exercise in exploring all parts of a game, starting with the raw idea, which will never be the final version and often will be immensely unfun. Ideas are always the easy part; execution is where the real challenge lies.

Let me set the stage for how this idea came about. At my day job, every Wednesday at noon, I often have to close a conference room door to shut out my coworkers playing Texas Hold 'Em poker loudly. I don't particularly enjoy poker. I will play it for the social experience, but I get impatient and find myself going all in after only 20 minutes, losing all my chips and wishing everyone else well.

The other game I had been playing recently was the lovably funny Spots. This clever and super simple game has you rolling dice to try and place them onto six dogs. The first person to cover six dogs with the matching dice values wins. The fun of it comes from pushing your luck, trying to roll just the right number you need to catch up and beat your opponents. My favorite card, as you can see here, has you place a die with a 1 value to represent Burt's charming little butthole—a true masterclass in design.

In fact, at the very moment of writing this post, I stumbled upon Jon Perry's own design dairy about Spots, which is a wonderful read and very much what I would like to mimic with this blog.

So, for some reason, I had poker and Spots on my brain, and I had a sudden idea to mix poker with push-your-luck dice rolling. In regular poker—or at least in Texas Hold 'Em—you have no influence on the cards you get. What if you could roll dice to add cards into your hand? Really need a king? Roll dice in hopes of getting it!

I did my initial design as I normally do—by thinking it through in the shower.

Initial Design and Why it Doesn't Work

Several cards would be laid out on the table. Players would roll some dice, and if the total dice value matched a card, they would take the card in an attempt to build the best poker hand. You could roll as many times as you liked, unless your roll did not match a card, in which case your turn would end.

I assigned number values to each card, with 2-10 matching their face value, and Jack, Queen, King, and Ace getting values of 11, 12, 13, and 14, respectively. Rolling a 2-12 required two dice, and rolling up to 14 required three dice, so I decided the player could choose how many dice to roll.

Playtest #1

Sitting at my dining room table by myself, I dealt out several cards and started rolling dice. I immediately found a problem—the dice I was rolling were not matching any cards. I had literally just lost the first turn of my new game, and it was the opposite of fun. I was immediately discouraged. I would need to do some more designing from the warmth of my shower.

Reinventing the Wheel

Luckily, I had already experienced this problem—and its solution—within other existing games.

Machi Koro is a relatively popular dice-rolling game where you roll one or two dice and match the result to the cards in your city, then collect income. It’s a very simple game that’s easy to teach new players. At the start of Machi Koro, you only get rewards on your turn for rolling 1, 2, or 3. This means your turn has a 50% chance of getting nothing. This doesn’t feel great and can leave players feeling frustrated and lacking control.

Space Base, which is very clearly inspired by Machi Koro, sought to solve this problem by giving every player a starting set of cards with values from 1 through 12. Players may roll one or two dice, and no matter what, they will get some reward. It might only be a single credit, but it provides a feeling of small progress—a tiny drip of dopamine—which is far better than an unsatisfying turn without action.

A New Goal

I knew I wanted to mimic Space Base's design, ensuring that the player can always receive or do something on their turn. So, I dealt 12 cards onto the table and put a label above each one, numbering them from 1 to 12. Rolling a 1 was only possible if a player rolled a single die. My idea still retained this concept of being able to choose how many dice to roll—certainly inspired by Machi Koro and Space Base. The cards in a standard deck are not organized in any way where lower-probability cards are more valuable. In my concept, cards were dealt randomly into each slot. So, I removed slot 1 and required players to always roll two dice, cutting out the complexity of choosing dice.

Here’s an example of my playmat in its earliest form. Cards are dealt into each slot.

Players roll two dice, mark the card/slot they rolled, and can choose to keep rolling. When they end their turn, they take all the cards they rolled. However, if they roll the same number twice in one turn, they don’t get any cards. With this design, if a player decides to roll once and end their turn, they are guaranteed to keep one card. Initial problem solved!

This system allowed for a push-your-luck style of gameplay, where players can potentially take extreme risks to try and get low-probability rolls like 2 and 12 if those slots contain highly valuable cards.

Satisfied with the core action, I needed to define other important parts of the game—like how to win. I'll talk more about that and iterative design in my next Designer Diary.

Prototype Files:

I include protype files relevant to this blog post so you can see the inner workings of ongoing designs. I often use the Affinity tool suite for digital workflows.