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Which game first introduced the concept of rolling dice to determine a direction? I'm designing a board game and I know which game gave me this idea[1] but I doubt it was the first to use it. I'm ...
#1: Initial revision
by
trichoplax
·
2024-07-05T00:23:54Z (5 months ago)
First use of dice to determine direction
Which game first introduced the concept of rolling dice to determine a direction? I'm designing a board game and I know which game gave me this idea[^1] but I doubt it was the first to use it. I'm curious how long the idea has been around and in what form it first appeared. I'm aware of using 2 d6s to choose a square on a 6 by 6 grid (using coordinates), but I think of this as choosing a location rather than choosing a direction. I'm asking specifically about rolling a single dice to choose a direction. In the specific example it was a single d6 to choose a direction on a hexagonal grid, but the same idea would work on other types of grid (such as a square grid with a d4 for orthogonal directions or a d8 to include both orthogonal and diagonal directions). What is the earliest known example of this method of choosing direction, using any kind of dice on any kind of grid? [^1]: [SPIVs (1986)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2336/spiv-s "Description on Board Game Geek") used a d6 to determine random directions for both movement (such as the galactic amoeba or your ship going off course during a misjump) and the direction that the solar flare pointed from the sun.