A Musikalisches Würfelspiel (German for "musical dice game") was a system for using dice to randomly generate music from precomposed options. These games were quite popular throughout Western Europe in the 18th century. Several different games were devised, some that did not require dice, but merely choosing a random number. In the early 20th century the Kaleidacousticon System, using arbitrarily combinable playing cards, was unsuccessfully marketed in the Boston area as a parlour game.