EP 8 Game Rules: Doubting Dice

WHAT IS THIS?

This post explains the rules of the game featured in Episode 8 of Gamebreaker.

These posts will be split into two sections:

Section 1 is the rules of the game as presented in the episode. This is for viewers who find reading rules helpful for game comprehension, or wanted to check a specific rule.

Section 2 is for people who want to try and play the game themselves with friends. It will include extra information on top of the rules explained in section 1, and suggestions to adapt the game outside of the competition format. Section 2 may contain spoilers for the episode.

SECTION 1: RULES FOR EPISODE

Game Structure:

In Doubting dice, players take turns to bid on rolls and try to avoid losing dice.

Each player starts with 5 dice. A round (usually) ends with one player losing a die.

There will be a 6 minute discussion break before the game starts and after every 10 rounds.

Players’ positions at the table are randomly drawn, and will be re-shuffled at the start of each break.

The first three players to lose all their dice receive a strike. If a strike eliminates a player from the competition, they do not participate in subsequent rounds, but spectate. If they aren’t eliminated, they will be reset back to 5 dice.

The last player with remaining dice wins the game and will earn two complete Gamebreaker tokens.

2^nd place will earn two half-tokens.

Round gameplay:

1. All players “roll” simultaneously by shaking their cups and overturning them on the table. Players then peek at their own hand. If any dice land on top of each other, that player must roll again. If dice fall out of the cup, they remain exposed.

2. The Gamemaster will then take a photo of each player’s roll (for editing purposes) and the total sum of all dice at the table will be publicly announced.

Eg. if there were ten dice in play at the table: 5 ones, 4 fives and 1 six, then the announced sum would be 31.

3. The first player makes a “bid” – declaring a face value and the minimum number of dice under all the cups on the table showing that value.

Eg. A bid of “6 fours” means that if all cups were lifted, there would be at least 6 fours at the table.

Players cannot bid on ones, as they are wild. This means their face value always matches the current bid.

Eg. with the bid of 6 fours, any ones on the table count as fours instead.

4. Play continues clockwise around the table. On their turn a player must either raise the bid (see bidding), or challenge the previous bid (see challenging)

5. After a challenge is called, the round ends. The result of the call is resolved, and the player who lost a die is the starting player for the next round.

BIDDING

To raise the bid, you can:

• Keep the quantity the same, but increase the face value

• Increase the quantity and use any face value

Eg. “6 sixes” or “8 fours” are legitimate raises after a bid of “6 fours”. 5 sixes is not legitimate, as the quantity cannot decrease.

After a raise the next player has the same choice – raise the bid or challenge the previous player’s bid.

CHALLENGING

When “challenge” is declared by a player, all players lift their cups to reveal their dice. Only the player immediately after the previous bidder can challenge a bid.

If the challenged bid was in fact valid, the challenger loses one die.

Eg. After a bid of 6 fours, the next player challenges. There are 7 fours at the table (eg. 4 fours and 3 ones), so the challenger loses one die.

If the challenged bid was an invalid bid, the bidder loses one die.

Eg. After a bid of 6 fours, the next player challenges. There are only 5 fours at the table, so the bidder loses one die.

Lost dice are placed off to the side of the table for all to see.

EXACT VALUE

If a player thinks the bid is exactly right, they can declare “exact value” instead of "challenge". If they are correct, they gain 1 die back (unless they already have the maximum of 5).

However, if they are wrong, they lose 2 dice! If a player calls exact value correctly, they start the bidding for the next round.

GAMEBREAKER ADVANTAGE: pay half a token to remove a player’s cup of your choice. That players dice are exposed to the table for the rest of that round.

MID-GAME RULE CHANGES:

After 3 strikes have been given out, the rules of the game change:

• The sum of the dice at the table will no longer be revealed at the start of each round, and;

• Players are no longer permitted to use the gamebreaker advantage.

SECTION 2: FOR PLAYING YOURSELF

This game is an adaption of a game known by many names: Liar's dice/ Perudo/ Pirate's dice to mention a few. And there is no set player count! So long as each player has 5 dice and something to cover them, you can play this game! You can always ask participants to bring their own dice rather than buying loads yourself.

I would like to make some disclaimers that how the game played out in the competition is not representative of a normal game at all, and it's actually very fun!

For one, normal playtime is between 10 minutes to an hour max, the competition stakes heavily distorted players thinking time and forced me to enact a turn timer, while taking photos of the dice and calculating the sum every round also slowed things down significantly.

Also, I added the Gamebreaker advantage and revealed the sum to add more logic to a game that is usually more about reading people, but I'll admit this backfired a bit and made it too easy to gang up, and as such I would not recommend playing with them at home. Believe it or not, this is usually more of an individual game when not played in competition format!

Finally, this game often has a special variant rule for when a player is down to one dice that acts as a rubber band to help them survive longer. I excluded this from the competition for a few reasons, but I would recommend playing with it in your home games (Palifico rule in Perudo)

I would, however, recommend playing with the Gamebreaker addition of the "exact value" rule, as it adds a bit more strategy to the games, and saves players ending up in no win scenarios when there are no valid bids left.

You can google the rules for the various versions of this game listed above, they are easy enough to find. You can also buy boxed versions of this game!

A final disclaimer for those who watched the episode. This game was originally supposed to be played with only four players with only one strike being given out for the first player out, but behind the scenes circumstances of a player moving country meant I was forced to accelerate the competition and this was the best game to guarantee that result. I also had not watched TDP2 when I filmed this, if you know you know...