I’ve been working on a strange little game idea, and I’m genuinely not sure what genre it belongs in.
The easiest way I can describe it is D&D combat played on a chessboard.
You still have to think about positioning, movement, protecting important pieces and setting traps. But your pieces are fantasy classes with health, armour, attacks and abilities.
When one piece attacks another, the target doesn’t simply disappear.
You roll to hit.
Then you roll damage.
So you can spend several turns setting up what looks like the perfect attack, roll terribly and miss. Then your opponent can fight back, roll a natural 20 and completely ruin your carefully constructed plan.
Personally, that is the part I find exciting. A good strategy gives you an advantage, but it doesn’t guarantee that everything will go your way. You have to adapt when the dice betray you, which they inevitably will because dice are tiny plastic agents of chaos.
But I can also understand why some strategy players would hate it.
In chess, if you make the right move, you know exactly what will happen. Adding attack rolls and damage rolls means that a weaker plan can occasionally defeat a stronger one. That can create memorable moments, but it can also feel unfair.
So I’m curious how other people feel about it:
Would dice make a chess-style game more exciting because every battle is uncertain, or would they undermine the strategy?
And where would you expect to find a game like this?
Would you consider it an online board game, a turn-based strategy game, a tactical RPG, or something else entirely?
I’m especially interested in hearing from both tabletop players and chess or strategy players, because I suspect those two groups may have very different reactions to the same natural 1.