Rollie

• Designer: Joel Gagnon
• Publisher: Randolph
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 10 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Roll for the Cash… or the Crash!  Step right up, step right up, everyone can play! Roll the dice, take your chances, collect your money, and don’t forget about those Bonus tokens! Do it all the right way, and you’ll end up the richest  player. Push it too far, and you’ll Crash! 

Will you be able to make the right choices? Will you be too keen to protect your earnings, or will you stray into reckless risk to try to win it all? One thing’s sure: Rollie will keep you on the edge of your seat right to the final roll!

The components are pretty simple, a pair of dice, each showing the five denominations in the game and the wild “R” side (the Randolph logo).  There are money bills in the aforementioned five denominations as well as some bonus tokens in colors matching some of the denominations. Finally, there are some tiebreak tokens, numbered 1-7, these are shuffled face down and one is revealed.

All of the money and bonus tokens start in the bank on the table.  Players make room in front of them for their stake (money active this turn) as well as their wallet (saved money).  The bills are double sided, showing whether they are active this turn or if they have been safely banked into the wallet.

The turns are simple: The active player rolls the two dice, and everyone makes their choice. 

If the values are different, players can either take a Bill from the bank, corresponding to one of the numbers on the dice, to add to their Stake, or they can secure their Stake by placing all their previously claimed money from this turn into their Wallet.   If they secure their stake, they can no longer take bills this round.  When you secure your Stake, you also get to take the face up Tiebreak token.

If the values on the dice are the same, all players with Bills of that value in their Stake immediately Crash! Those players lose ALL the money in their stake, and unaffected players have those bills stay in play to start the next round.  If two “R”s are rolled, everyone still in the round Crashes!

The round continues until either everyone has secured their Stake or doubles have been rolled.  To start the next round, flip up a new Tiebreak token, everyone becomes active again, and the next player rolls the dice.

The game continues until two stacks of bills are depleted or the end of the 7th round (you’ll know this as there will be no more tiebreak tokens left). At that point, the bonus tokens are distributed.  The player with the most bills in a color gets the most valuable bonus token of that color.  Continue down the line for 2nd most and 3rd most.  If there is a tie, it is broken in favor of the player with the higher Tiebreak token between them.  If neither has a Tiebreak token, they both are eliminated for the token and the next most bills gets it.

Add up all the bills and tokens, and the player with the most value wins.  The player with the most wins.  The rules actually do not specify a tiebreaker) but it seems logical to give it to the player with the higher tiebreaker token?!)

My thoughts on the game

Rollie is a light hearted push your luck game with a fairly simple decision tree – take money or bank what you have and duck out of the round.  It is very reminiscent of Incan Gold in that sense.  That being said, there is a bit more of a tactical feel here as decisions are made in turn order as opposed to secret and simultaneous. Also, here in Rollie, you’re not trying to grab a share of a pool of treasure but rather trying to keep your own pile of loot which you have chosen yourself.

The decision of what to choose is not as simple as it appears due to the bonus tokens.  The high payoff for first and second of the lowest denominations often makes it a worthwhile gamble to collect those -5 and 0 bills.  Of course, if you lose the gamble, the results will be painful indeed.

As players make their decisions in turn order (which rotates around the board with each roll) – players will be able to make somewhat informed decisions.  For instance, those earlier in turn order will have a better chance to decide to bail – knowing that they will get the tiebreaker token for the round.  Those later in turn order can decide to bank OR decide to choose a particular denomination after getting to see what earlier players had chosen prior.

There ia a possible rules incongruity? The rulebook is different than the website game page as far as rules for crashing. The rulebook has rules as mentioned above – that is, if you do not crash on doubles, your existing stake simply stays in play for the next round.  The webpage for the game intimates that players who do not crash take their stake into their wallet.

The rulebook method works just fine, and that’s how we played the first time.  It is a little unintuitive, but it works fine, and everyone plays by the same rules.  After a few games as written in the rulebook, we tried a game with the rules suggested by the game synopsis on the publisher page, and some of my group preferred that method.  In the end, I’ll likely play by the rules in the rulebook (because I’m that sort of rules follower).

The length of the game, as with many of these push your luck dice/card flip games, is quite variable.  We had one game where four of the seven rounds ended on the first or second roll – which meant that over half of the game happened without anything really happening at all.  As the chance of doubles is only 1 out of 6 on any roll, it seems unlikely that this would happen so frequently – but that’s what happens when you leave things up to the luck of John’s dice rolling skills!

The game is super simple and can be taught in just a minute or two.  I find it easiest just to mock up a round of the game, setting the dice to particular faces and showing what the options are.  The game itself never outstays its welcome as it almost always finishes in the 10-15 minute range.

Rollie is a fun dice-rolling risk-taking game which we have enjoyed here this summer.  Every game is filled with moments of indicision as players try to decide what to do and also punctuated by bursts of cheering and laughter at the unexpected dice roll results.  

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Justin B (2 plays): the trickiest thing about Rollie is that there’s a very rare but potential chance that the game’s seven rounds end with no one taking any actions. I’m sort of shocked that this was missed during the game’s development because of the rule surrounding identical-value rolls. In my second play, three of our seven rounds started with a doubles roll, meaning the round was immediately over. During the remaining four rounds, one of our players didn’t score. As in, he finished the game with a score of zero dollars. He did go big to try and make a lot of money in one of the four rounds where players made some cash, but in the other three, he was simply unlucky. When Rollie works, it’s a good laugh…but the downside is that a play can really feel empty, depending on the player.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. Justin B, John P
• Not for me…

As of August 2025, the game is not yet available through retail channels, but you can pre-order it from the publisher webpage: