Dungeon Dice Monsters

Dungeon Dice Monsters, or DDM for short, is a board game in the anime and manga series Yu-Gi-Oh!. It is seen in the manga and in the second series anime (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters).

Game Stats
In Dungeon Dice monsters, there is a tiled board of 13X19 tiles (13 tiles wide) on which play is conducted. On either end of the board sits a "Die Master" (on the 7th tile from each side on the row closest to the players) representing either player. Each Die Master has 3 Heart Points. As with Life Points, the first player to lose all their Heart Points loses.

Terminology
Dungeon Master- Also called the Die Master, this is a representation of the player. Dungeon Masters cannot attack or defend. It cannot move and has 3 Heart points. The Dungeon Master is not affected by items or abilities that effect monsters in the Dungeon. The only way to destroy the Dungeon Master is by attacking it. Each attack removes one Heart Point.

Dice Pool- The 15 Dice a player uses. Players are allowed to roll 3 dice per turn and can collect Crests or Summon. Once a die is used for a Summon, it cannot be used again. Players are only allowed 10 Summons in a game, leaving 5 dice to collect crests with. The dice can be used to summon monsters or items.

Crest Pool- The place where a player's Crests (Except Summon Crests) are stored. The Crests rolled are stored in the Crest Pool until a player uses them. A player cannot use Crests from the opponent's Pool.

Dungeon Path- Created when monsters are Summoned, it is needed so players can attack each other and move about the board.

Obstacles- Squares placed on a board, neither player can Summon a monster in such a way that their Dungeon Path would lie adjacent to the Obstacle. Strategic placing of Obstacles can cut off a player's main route of Summoning and make the game much more difficult. In the Game Boy game Dungeon Dice Monsters, later levels have Obstacles placed in such a way to only hinder the human player, giving them a large handicap.

History
In the manga and anime, Dungeon Dice Monsters is created by Ryuji Otogi (Duke Devlin in the English anime).

In the manga, Otogi creates the game under pressure from his father, Mr. Crown. Mr. Crown lost to a Shadow Game against Sugoroku Mutou (Solomon Muto in the English anime). Mr. Crown wants Otogi to avenge the defeat and harm Yugi Mutou, Sugoroku's grandson.

In the anime, he idolizes Maximillion Pegasus (Pegasus J. Crawford in the Japanese versions) and strives to create a game just as great as Duel Monsters. To that end, Duke started to develop Dungeon Dice Monsters, spending all his free time perfecting the game's statistics, strategies, rules, etc. He emails the specifications to Pegasus, who challenged him to a match of the game at Duelist Kingdom. Using the Millennium Eye to read his mind and thus, easily master the game, Pegasus defeats the creator. However, he was impressed with the game and agreed to market it after the Duellist Kingdom tournament he was hosting. This is shortly before Yugi Mutou arrives at Duelist Kingdom.

Upon being defeated, Pegasus goes into hiding, and the contract to market Dungeon Dice Monsters is never signed. Thus, the game does very poorly, and the only shop selling it is the one the creator himself owns. The creator blames his failure on Yugi. In the English anime, he believes that he cheated to beat Pegasus, crushing his spirit. In the Japanese versions, Otogi does not accuse Yugi of cheating to win.

In both the anime and the manga, Otogi cons Yugi into a match by dueling his friend Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler in the English anime) and forcing him to wear a dog costume in the anime (while in the manga, Otogi just calls Jonouchi a dog). Yugi challenges Otogi for Jonouchi's freedom, and thus the game begins.

Yugi does poorly early on, obviously having little clue on how to play the game. However, he makes a comeback and defeats Otogi. Otogi admits defeat. In the manga, his father's game shop burns down to the ground.

In the anime, shortly after the match, he receives another email from Industrial Illusions, telling him they will sign the contract to market Dungeon Dice Monsters worldwide. It is later mentioned that he travels briefly to the U.S. to market the product, but later returns to Japan.

Sets
Although they are not featured in any real life sets, two cards featured in the Yu-Gi-Oh! second series anime 'Dice Dungeon' and 'Dimension Dice' modify the normal Yu-Gi-Oh! card game to be similar to Dungeon Dice Monsters. The two cards combined use dice rolls and a board-like playing field to change the style of play to resemble Dungeon Dice Monsters. The two cards are played by Devlin himself.

Gameplay
The central part of Dungeon Dice monsters is obviously, the dice. Each player has 12 6-sided dice. There are 6 symbols on each die, called Crests. A player rolls 3 dice each turn, and from the Crests rolled, makes their move. Players alternate turns rolling dice until a player's Dungeon Master loses all its Heart Points. What makes the game a true challenge is that a monster cannot move except along Dungeon Path, which is created when a monster is summoned. So, careful placement of pathway can mean an easy path behind opposing lines. But sloppy dimensioning could spell defeat for a player.

The monsters in Dungeon Dice Monsters have 3 main stats: Attack, Defense, and Health. The Attack and Defense are in multiples of 10. All monsters have at least 1 Health point. When a monster loses all of its Health points, it is destroyed. Damage to health points is determined by attacking and defending. (see Attack Crest and Defense Crest for more details). Some monsters are Tunnelers, meaning they can move past other monsters (normally, monsters cannot move over each other.). There are also Flyers, who can not only move over other monsters, but can only be attacked by other Flyers or by monsters with Special Abilities saying they can attack Flyers. Also, there are many monsters with Special Abilities, although many require Trap or Magic Crests to use. (See Trap Crest and Movement Crest for more details)

Summon Crest
These crests allow a player to summon monsters. There are 4 Levels of summoning, based on how many Summon Crests are on a die. A Level 1 Summon die has 4 Crests, and a Level 4 has only 1. So a Level 4 monster, while hard to summon, is very strong. By contrast, the easy to summon Level 1 monsters are pitifully weak. A player must roll 2 Summon Crests of the same Level to summon a monster. If a player rolls a Level 2 Crest and a Level 4 Crest, they do not summon because the Crests are different Levels.

Most Summon Crests are rolled for monsters, but there are also items that can be summoned using Summon Crests. Items cannot move, and are usually activated when a monster lands on the item, although some items, like the Warp Vortex, activate upon being played. In the Game Boy game Dungeon Dice Monsters, the opposing player cannot see an item played by the player. So they must be careful, because some items destroy Crests in the Crest Pool, some damage monsters, and some even destroy all monsters in play!

Attack Crests
Attack Crests let monsters attack. An attack by a monster requires 1 Attack Crest, and a monster can only attack once per turn. Attacking does damage based on the attacked monster's Defense, and the attacking monsters' Attack. For example, if a monster with an Attack of 30 attacks a monster with 2 Health points, and the monster does not defend, the monster loses 3 Health points and is destroyed. Attacking the Dungeon Master only does one Heart Point's worth of damage, regardless of Attack power.

Defense Crests
When a monster is attacked, its controller may use a Defense Crest. Take the recent example above under Attack Crests. Say the monster has a Defense of 20. When it is attacked, its owner can use a Defense Crest. The Defense stat is subtracted from the Attack stat to determine the damage done. Therefore, 30 Attack minus 20 Defense does only 10 points of damage, and the monster will survive with 1 Health point intact. It is very easy to destroy monsters without Defense Crests, and they should be considered as important as Attack Crests, if not more so.

Trap Crests
Some monster abilities can only be used when attacked. Thus, Trap Crests are often used for these powers, much like Trap cards can be played during an opponent's turn in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.

Magic Crests
Magic Crests are used to activate monsters abilities, just like Trap Crests.

Movement Crests
Monsters are able to move about the board. Movement Crests allow monsters to move. A monster can move any number of times in a turn, so a monster can move, attack, and move again. For each square passed, 1 Movement Crest is used. A Flying monster uses 2 Crests for each square.

Real Life
Dungeon Dice Monsters was originally released as a collectible dice game in Japan, using almost entirely the same rules from the TV Show and video game for play. Seven booster packs of 20+ monsters were released for Japanese play, and 3 booster packs and a number of Toys R Us demo monsters were released for the English game.

Dungeon Dice monsters was converted in early 2002 as Yu-Gi-Oh!: Dungeondice Monsters, with 137 figures and cards scheduled for release. However, it never really caught on and was cancelled within a few months. The rules are slightly different, and many of the monsters from the card game were used to expand on the barely-touched game. The game was produced by Mattel. There was also a video game based on the 'Dungeon Dice Monsters' series which was released on the Game Boy Advance video game system on Feb 12, 2003.

Game Play
Similar to the anime and manga game, two players sit at either end of the field, which is 13x19 squares. Each player has a dice pool of 12 dice, 1 for each of the 4 levels of monsters and items available in the game. The Dungeon Master/Die Master in this game is called the Monster Lord. ( 3 LP/10 ATK/0 DEF). In the Japanese version you used a pool of 15 dice, and the dice were made of hard plastic/cardboard, and had hinges and clips, and unfolded to 'dimension' the dice.

Summoning
Summoning monsters works like in the show, where three dice are rolled and if any two have Summoning Crests, a monster of the lowest level crest can be summoned. When a monster is summoned, the player picks a path piece to place on the board, leading from their Monster Lord to the game field. If a monster is destroyed, it is removed from play. In the Japanese version of Dungeon Dice Monsters, when you roll a summon, you unfold one of the die that you roll to make the path; the English version had 10 'dungeon path' tiles that you could lay on the play field.

Battle
When monsters battle on the field, they can attack once, defend, or use a special ability. Normal Attacks require one Attack Crest, while a Normal Defend uses one Defense crest. When a monster attacks another monster, the attacking monster's ATK is subtracted from the defending monster's HP. If a Defense Crest is used, the monster's DEF is subtracted from the attacking monster's ATK. If a monster is destroyed, it is removed from play. This is the same in both versions.

An interesting note is the Die Master. Unlike on the show where the Die Master could not defend himself, the Die Master now has 10 ATK and can strike back at an attacking monster. Regardless of the attacking monster's ATK, the Monster Lord only loses 1 LP for each attack. Since a Monster Lord can't move, this can save a duelist whose monsters are on the other end of the field.

Crests
The board game allows up to ten of each crest to be stored in the Crest Pool at any time. Most crests can only be used on the active player's turn, except when defending with Defense Crests or activating a Trap ability with Trap Crests.
 * Attack Crest - Used to attack opposing monsters. Only one Normal attack can be executed per round, but some Special Attacks can be used, usually at a greater cost.
 * Defense Crest - Used to defend in battle. Usually, a monster can only defend once per attack, but some Monster Effects let them use multiple crests to negate damage.
 * Progress Crest - Used to move the monster figurines one space per crest. Monsters can move in any of 4 directions: forward, backward, left, and right, but NOT diagonal. As a rule, a player may only move until they attack or are blocked by a dead end.  If a player attacks first, they can move, but not attack again.  Additionally, a player cannot move through items, monsters, or Monster Lords unless they have the Tunneling ability.
 * Summon Crest - If two are rolled in a single turn, a monster of the lowest available level can be summoned. When a monster is summoned, a pathway piece is placed on the board and the monster on the Summon Space (a star printed on one square of the pathway piece).  Summon Crests cannot be pooled.
 * Spell Crest - Used to activate specific abilities on some cards. When a Spell is activated, it usually lasts for the rest of the game, or until the monster is destroyed.  Like most crests, they can only be spent on the active player's turn.
 * Trap Crest - As the name suggests, this is something that you can spring on your opponent if he or she attacks a monster. For example, Gearfried the Iron Knight can defend the Monster Lord by sacrificing himself at the cost of 3 Trap Crests.

Special Abilities
Some monsters have Effects not unlike their Duel Monsters counterparts. Some special abilities require the use of crests while others don't. For example, a monster may spend a number of crests (regardless of this kind of crest) to attack or defend without using an attack crest. Others have effects specific to the type of crest that is used; Knight of Twin Swords can attack twice for every 2 attack crests used, but cannot perform a single normal attack if the effect is used. Others still have additional unique powers, like taking 0 damage from certain monster types.

Many also have the ability to "Tunnel" or "Fly" on the game board. Tunneling monsters can pass through enemy monsters at the cost of one Progression Crest per space. Flying monsters can only be attacked by other Flying monsters or regular monsters with special abilities, but normal enemy monsters cannot pass under them. Flying monsters require two Movement Crests per space and so are quite costly to move. However one tactic is placing a flying monster at the end of your board protecting your heart points. However, neither of these types can occupy the same space as another monster, balancing out their advantages.

Game Progress
Each player picks their monsters and sets a Monster Lord figurine (or token, if a figurine is unavailable) on a white space for Basic Gameplay, or a blue space for Advanced Gameplay. (Advanced Gameplay; see below.) Players decide on who goes first, and that person then picks three dice from his or her dice pool and rolls. While it is suggested they all be the same level, they can be mixed if desired. The player then takes any crests available and uses them or puts them in the crest pool. As more monsters are summoned, the players will begin to form a bridge between themselves and their opponent. Once the two paths meet, the players must attempt to get at the Monster Lord to attack. If two monsters meet on adjacent squares, they can battle. Once all of one player destroys all of his or her opponent's monsters or is able to defeat the Monster Lord, that player wins.

Public Reaction
While quite a bit of hype surrounded the game before its release, sales were low and few expansions were released. A Starter Pack containing 7 figures, 7 cards, two Crest Pools (an abacus), 12 dice, a number of hit counters, several pathway pieces, 4 Monster Lord Tokens, and a set of instructions (the booklet modelled after the one used for the card game) was marketed, as well as a limited number of Booster Pack sets, but before the full set was released, the line was cancelled due to lack of support.

Trivia

 * In the TV show, the only Monster cards from Duel Monsters that were used in Dungeon Dice Monsters were Kaiba's Battle Ox, Yugi's Dark Magician, Yaranzo, and Winged Dragon Guardian of the Fortress.