Dice Hunter – A Game
In an article I read about game designers, one tip was to start with tabletop games: Design one dice game, one card game and one board game and show those off. The guy who gave that tip said that that is immediately impressive. And if the games are good, that’s a guaranteed instant hire.
So, right after finishing that paragraph the following game popped into my head.
Dice Hunter! (Revision 3)
This is a strategic guessing, press your luck dice game in which you try to get other player’s dice before they can get yours.
Requirements: 2-whatever players and enough six-sided dice to give 3 to each.
Setup: Give each player 3 dice and have every one roll them. Highest sum has first Turn. Reroll ties between those players. Game proceeds clockwise.
Turn: Everyone rolls their dice in secret. The current player picks a target from the other players and Attacks that target.
Attack: Current player selects one of his dice and shows it. If the target has a die with that number, they give it to the current player and game proceeds. If they don’t, the current player could give up and let the game proceed with no penalty (the target reveals their dice to deter cheating) or Press the Attack.
Press the Attack: The current player may sacrifice one of his dice to change the number of the first die by +1 or -1. Place it near the first die. The current player may continue doing this until he hit a number his target has or until he has no more dice. If he eventually hits a number, he gets the target’s die and the game proceeds. If he decides to give up or runs out of dice, his target gets all sacrificed dice — all revealed dice except the first one — and the game proceeds.
Elimination: A player with no more dice is eliminated from the game.
Game End: When people has had enough or when every player but one is eliminated from the game.
Variants:
Brutal – If an attack is successful and the target has more than one die with the same number as the attacking die, he must give away all of them. Credit: Yaron
Scatter – You can sacrifice a die to replace the attack die with a different die from your hand. The previous attack die does not return to the hand and can not be sacrificed to change a number or select a different one. Credit: Yaron.
Scorched Earth – The targeted player may sacrifice one of their own dice, removing it from the game completely, to nullify an attack made against them. This can only be done after the current player decided to Press the Attack but before deciding how. Credit: Maayan.
Have fun! Give me feedback!
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 7 comments.
The main problem I see with the game is how to handle discovery: basically the game doesn’t work if the target player isn’t honest, so you need some sort of discovery mechanism to have the attacking player verify that he failed. The only way I can see this working reliably, is that as soon as the attacker reveals his attacking die, the target player must reveal all of his dice. This make the “Press The Attack” move patently not interesting because then it becomes just plain math.
Try again :)
Ah ah ah… I’ve thought of that one too. :)
If the a attacking player gives up, the target reveals his dice to show that he wasn’t lying.
Have you played Coup?
Nope, what’s that?
Coup is a Resistance type game whose box consists if a small deck if cards and some tokens. Each player gets two cards (powers) and the tokens (money) and the goal is to make every other player Lise both of their cards. Coins can do that for a heavy price and a card can do that for cheap. The other cards have different powers. Each turn you perform one action. Each card has an action and the are a few general actions (stealing coins, exchanging cards…). But the biggest point is that your cards are hidden and no one can see what you have. So you can lie about which powers you have and people have to risk their on cards to call you out on lies.
A game takes 10-20 minutes and it’s thrillingly awesome.
Interesting. I generally don’t like games that encourage lying, where that is not the main mechanic (compare with the classic card game “cheat”).
Well, it’s the twist to this game.
Revision 4
End Game: First to six dice wins.