Happy World Dice Day! (Once upon a time, “National Dice Day”, but it has expanded a bit.)
The Tinker Plastic Dice are now available for purchase online (at this convenient link), and I’ve been doing a little new design experimentation to celebrate.
Maybe someday I’ll get to make these happen as physical dice, but for now, they are just concepts. These are three different themes for “Fudge” or “Fate” dice, each with two “+” faces, two “-” faces and two null or “0” faces. I have been mostly building around the Fates dice, named for the Greek Fates, demigoddesses of, well, fate. I’ve also designed a quick game around that set (rules below).
Fates Dice
Tinker Fudge Dice
Rock Paper Scissors Dice
Tinkering With Fate Rules:
Goal: Be the first player to collect ten points. (Or some other number agreed upon by the players.)
Setup: May be played with 4 Fudge/Fate dice, even if you need to make your own out of standard dotted/pipped 6-sided dice. If each player has their own set of four dice, the game might go faster, but it is not necessary. Paper and pencil/pen are handy for keeping score, and it’s useful to have a nice hard surface to roll the dice on.
Play: A player’s turn consists of the following steps: Cast Lots, Fudge Fate (optional) and Take Toll.
Cast Lots: Roll all four dice. You may Take Toll (count your score) at this point, or you may choose to Fudge Fate, rolling up to two more times to try for better results.
Fudge Fate: Choose at least one die to “bind to fate”, and set it aside, ready to score at the end of your turn. Roll the remaining dice. Each time you choose to roll again, you must bind at least one more die. You may Fudge Fate twice.
Take Toll: You score one point by cutting one mortal’s coil of string. This requires one pair of scissors and one string. (One “+” side and one “null/string” side.) You gain a bonus point for each measuring rod (a “-” side) you have in addition to the scissors and string, as this makes that mortal’s life longer.
Scoring examples:
[+,+,-,0] would be two scissors, one measuring rod and one string. This scores two points; one for the scissors-string combination, one bonus for the rod. The other scissors are ignored.
[+,+,0,0] would be two scissors, two strings. This also scores two points; one for each scissors-string combination.
[+,-,-,0] would be one scissors, two measuring rods and one string. This scores three points; one for the scissors-string combination, two bonus for the rods. This is the highest possible scoring combination.
[-,-,0,0] would be two measuring rods and two strings. This scores no points, since there are no scissors to cut the strings.
[-,-,+,+] would be two measuring rods and two scissors. This also scores no points, since there are no strings to cut.
Proceed to take turns, Casting Lots, Fudging Fate and Taking Toll, until one player reaches ten points. Each other player then gets one final roll of all four dice to try to catch up or get ahead. They do not get a full turn, so there will be no more Fudge Fate operations. This is just a last chance to invoke the blessing of the Fates.
The player with the most points after this final casting of lots is the winner. If there is a tie, and a clear, single winner is desired, those were tied for the lead continue to Cast Lots (without Fudging Fate). Each rolls once, scoring if possible. Repeat as necessary until one player scores more than the other(s).
Tish Tosh Tesh 