There’s a dice game out there that I’ve heard referred to by various names; 5,000, 10,000, and simply Dice. The bunch of gamers I hang out with plays this more than any other game around.
I can even give you the rules right here…
Scoring:
Ones are worth 100, Fives are worth 50.
Three of a kind is worth (100xDiceNumber) i.e., three fours is worth four hundred, three sixes worth six hundred.
Except three ones, which are 1,000.
Game Play:
Someone rolls five dice.
Did you score? You can either choose to keep the score, and the turn passes to the player on your left, or roll whatever dice didn’t score and hope to score more.
Did you not score at all? Sorry. The person on your left gets to roll now.
Did you score on all five dice? You have to roll all five dice again, and hope to score.
Simple, huh? If you score, you can either stop rolling and add your score to your tally, or you can take a risk and keep rolling. If at any time you don’t score, you lose all points accumulated during that turn, and play moves on to the next player.
Whoever reaches 10,000 points, wins.
The Catch:
Oh, and one more thing… if you roll three 2’s, you get 200 points, and you get to make a rule.
The rule must pertain to the roll of the dice, and it must affect all players equally.
Some examples of rules that have come up in recent games:
Threes are wild.
Score on all 5 dice on your first roll, get 5000 points.
Pairs are worth (10xDice Value)
Pairs are worth 1 point, and you get to make a rule.
Etcetera. Played with imaginative players, the game tends to morph into a strategic nightmare, with rules, counter-rules and occasionally metarules.
And, I still love that game!