"Worker Learning" revisited (a "duh" moment)

About a month ago I posted about a game mechanism that could have some potential... Worker Learning, a worker placement game where your workers get better as you use them, incorporating aspects of games like Solforge and Concordia.

In that post I brainstormed a mechanism by which your workers got better as you played them. It was a potentially fiddly idea wherein each worker had a name or reference (A-G for example), and then your player board would have a track for each worker to indicate its level.

Tonight, while listening to a podcast, I heard mention of Biblios, described as a game where you have dice but you don't roll them... and upon hearing that, I had an epiphany. One of those "duh" moments that you can't figure out why you didn't notice it before.

Why not have your workers be dice! Not dice that you roll, but dice that indicate the worker's level!

So you could place a die, resolve the action, then increment the die face. In addition to the resolution of spaces ramping up with worker level, larger value dice could potentially be allowed to go to an occupied space, so long as their current value is higher than the value of the die occupying the space. This would probably make the whole idea of tracking worker levels much less fiddly.

As I said, I can't believe I didn't think of it before. This isn't even the first time I've considered using dice as workers where the pip value indicates level... my comments on Euphoria generally include something about a missed opportunity -- I would have preferred if the dice in that game were not rolled, rather the pip values indicate the knowledge level of the workers, and stronger actions increase the worker's knowledge, so when a worker becomes too enlightened and goes away, it's because of your actions, not a die roll.

Anyway, I wanted to get that down before I forgot it. If I ever get around to building a game out of this Worker Learning mechanism, then I'm pretty sure using dice for the workers is the way to go!

But before I worry too much about that... Joan of Arc!