Most of us can remember days at school when teachers would treat us to a game of Bingo. We may also wind up playing quite a bit of Bingo at the opposite end of life too. But why Bingo? As games go, Bingo is one of the worst. The “player,” if we can even call them that, simply marks off squares on their card that the Bingo caller has read out. If Bingo rewards any skills at all, it’s the basic ability to pay attention and scan a grid of numbers.
So why does Bingo persist in spite of the fact that it’s debatable that the card holders even meet the definition of players? One advantage of Bingo is that it allows for huge numbers of people to play at one time. Given those larger player counts, the cost advantage for Bingo is also a major factor for its place as a popular choice for big group activities. If only there was a type of game that offered the potential for large player counts at a low price point that also lets players have some sense of agency! Fortunately, such a type of game already exists.
The Roll & Write genre of games allows big groups of players with player sheets that can usually just be run off on a copier. The game Welcome To… boasts a player count of 1-100 on BoardGameGeek.com. Like Bingo, Roll & Write games have players using their own player boards while random inputs are introduced from a common source. The genre is called “Roll & Write” because the most common form of random input is a dice roll, but revealing cards from a deck.
Often producers of Roll & Write games only limit the potential player counts by the components they choose to ship with the game. Originally designed in spring for 2020 for people sheltering in place during lockdown, Jamey Stegmaier’s printable version of Rolling Realms could theoretically accommodate 100 players, but the commercially-available version with its dry erase boards replacing printable player sheets plays just 6. Board game manufacturers have no motivation to create games intended for dozens of people because the market for such games is much smaller than the general board game market.
It will probably fall upon educators and others looking to create experiences for large groups to create printable roll & writes for their own purposes. Fortunately, there are a number of games that offer a great basis of mechanics to build off of. The defining mechanic of Bingo-style games is that the random element is broadcasted out to all of the players. Usually players will either get several random elements at once such as choosing a die or combination of dice from a roll or picking a card from several cards flipped at a time. Players usually have the ability to write down their choice on different spots on their player board. One common mechanic is to constrain players to filling in spaces sequentially. If a player chooses to put a 4 in a space to move down a track, they are limiting themselves because they can’t put a 1-3 on future spaces. This might be a safer choice though than pushing one’s luck and holding out for a lower number in the future to start the track. These choices very rapidly create different player strategies even with a shared set of random inputs. The challenge for players is to plan ahead to mitigate the luck factor.
One final issue that can arise in groups of large players is cheating. The more players you have, the more likely it is that someone in the group will be willing to retroactively change their decisions to improve their fortunes, and they will be harder to detect too. If you think this might be a problem, you can always tell participants that they can use pencil to work out their decision during the turn, but they’d have to commit to that choice in pen before the start of the next turn. It would then fall upon their fellow nearby players to keep them honest. This becomes a problem if teachers choose to laminate the sheets to make them erasable with markers. Ultimately, organizers of these types of games will have to decide for themselves how to deal with the potential for cheating.
Most current Roll & Write games won’t necessarily translate well for classrooms or nursing homes. Even if they could be modified to accommodate larger player counts, there are other factors. Most students will stop playing Bingo during free time by the end of primary school. Bingo is popular in nursing homes and senior centers in part because the cognitive ability of players can vary quite significantly. In my approach to game design, context comes first. The time, place, and players always come first. Mechanics must flow from context in order to create the desired experience. There is an opportunity to create these experiences for big groups at a low cost, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.