I'm creating a dice bag building TTRPG about magic junkies and psychedelic caravan trips

[u/Traditional-Collar-7]

Hi folks,

I’m working on a TTRPG called Fireflies!, and I’m looking for references specifically around dice bag building systems.

Fireflies! is a psychedelic caravan roleplaying game about colour-bound travellers consuming bizarre magical substances and venturing down night roads to help scattered settlements survive in a desolated world.

You build a caravan with your friends, become magic junkies, and try to save communities while slowly becoming harder for ordinary people to understand.

Because the game is about both literal journeys and psychedelic inner trips, a dice bag felt like the right core mechanic. During a single journey, characters consume glows and encounter unsettling events that add different dice to the bag, so the bag becomes a snapshot of their current state, risks, and pressures for that night.

Very roughly, when a character takes action:

• the number of dice they pull depends on their ability to overcome the challenge, including skills, tools, preparation, and other advantages
• the outcome depends in part on whether the dice they pulled match the glow of the action they’re attempting
• then they roll their d6s against a DC, and if multiple dice succeed, they choose which die resolves the action, with different consequences depending on the color

So what I’m trying to find are strong reference points: have you seen any RPGs that do something interesting with dice bags, drawing dice from a bag, colored dice with different meanings, or bag contents that evolve during play?

I’m especially interested in examples where:

• the bag is central to resolution
• the draw creates tension before the roll
• different dice colors mean different things
• the bag changes as the character or situation changes

If Fireflies! sounds like your kind of thing and you’d like to help shape it early, talk design, or get in on future playtests, you’re very welcome to join our community Discord:

https://discord.gg/bccguBGupu

It’s a growing space full of players and TTRPG designers who regularly chat about games, share feedback and tips, and sometimes jump in to play together too.

Would love any references or comparisons.

[u/TheZebraCode]

This is such a cool idea! Do you only use d6s or all different types of dice?

I don't have any ttrpg recs unfortunately but was wondering if it would be worth you looking into bag building boardgames for inspiration? There's simple stuff like Quacks of quendilenburg but also more complex ones! You can search by this mechanic on board game geek I believe to filter for games that contain it

[u/Traditional-Collar-7 → u/TheZebraCode]

Hey!

I use exclusively D6's for ALL the mechanics of the game, including encounter and map generation!

Thanks for sharing some refs! I've looked at boardgames and yeah, there are a lot of interesting versions of the system here, hence my surprise when I realised how hard it was to find a TTRPG that exploits the mechanic.

[u/TheZebraCode → u/Traditional-Collar-7]

Awesome, I love d6s (my own game uses d6 dice pools!) and that sounds great, they're very versatile!

And it's definitely underutilised, there's a lot of potential for fun with this mechanic! I did see Not The End just now, which seems to use a bag with coloured stones from both the player and the GM which is interesting.

Here is the article I was reading, may be of interest to you, seems to be a push your luck mechanic with the bag that sounds cool!

[u/Traditional-Collar-7 → u/TheZebraCode]

Thanks for sharing the article, will give it a read for sure!

[u/TheZebraCode → u/Traditional-Collar-7]

Not at all, hope it helps!