Ancient GamesStone AgeXP 0

Ancient Original Wheels & Draws

Fortuna’s Wheel: build the wheel, then push your luck

You start with a plain wheel and add the segments yourself: gains, curses and the odd trick that changes its neighbours. Spin, bank your favour or spin again, and carry the wheel through four eras, from Roman Fortuna to the gaming rooms of Paris.

  • 28segments to build with
  • 4eras, one rule each
  • 3hopes before the run ends

Ancient Original

Fortuna’s Wheel

Free in your browser · no money involved · full screen

How to play Fortuna’s Wheel

  1. Spin

    Each station gives you a set number of spins. Every spin lands on one segment and adds or takes favour.

  2. Bank or push

    Bank your favour whenever you like. Spin again and a curse can take what you have not banked.

  3. Build the wheel

    Between stations the workshop sells new segments. Some only pay next to the right neighbour, so where you place them matters.

  4. Four eras

    Rome, the medieval Rota Fortunae, Biribi and the Palais-Royal each add one rule. Miss a target and you lose one of three hopes.

Finished runs count towards your Arena skill XP. Nothing in the game can be bought, and the coins you win only exist inside the run. More Ancient Originals

Fortune’s wheel, from Cicero to roulette

The Romans worshipped Fortuna, goddess of luck, and Cicero already speaks of the wheel of Fortune in 55 BC. Medieval artists drew her wheel with four kings: one rising, one reigning, one falling, one without a kingdom.

No ancient wheel game is known; the wheel was an image, not a game board. The games came later: Biribi, a draw on numbers 1 to 70 that France outlawed in 1837, and the roulette wheel described at the Palais-Royal in 1796.

Continue the lineage

The real games behind Fortuna’s Wheel.

Rota FortunaeThe medieval wheelReadBiribi and HocaThe numbers gameReadRouletteWhere the wheel ended upRead