© This material is not included in my open license.

This is a game invented by Stone Librande as part of his game design workshop. He created it as a way to demonstrate how rewards affect games (by stepping up the type of rewards he offered), but he found it was just really fun to play.

I’ve added a little bit of strategy to it by letting players pay to freeze one die.

Setup

Each player gets 2d6. The bank has numerous poker chips or coins as counters. It may help if one person acts as the bank (and referee) and does not roll dice.

Play

All players roll at the same time, as fast as they want. If you roll double sixes:

• You call “freeze!” Everyone must freeze with a dice roll displayed on the table. (If a player just picked up the dice, they roll then freeze.)
• You (the one who rolled double sizes) get 1 counter.
• You take 1 counter from each player showing a sum of 7.

If players showing a 7 during a freeze have no counters to forfeit, they pay nothing.

For example, say Jill calls freeze, and Jack and Jane show 7s, but Jerry doesn’t. Jack is broke, so he pays nothing. Jane pays 1. Jill gets 1 counter for rolling double sixes, plus 1 from Jane.

At any time, a player can freeze one of their dice on a 6 by putting a counter on top of it. They then just roll one die until someone rolls double sixes–including themselves, by rolling a 6 on their remaining die (giving them double 6s). All counters on dice frozen this way are paid to the bank before any rewards are paid out. Note that this means you can freeze one of your dice and lose the counter when someone else rolls double sixes (either the natural way or with one frozen die).

Winning

At the end of a set time (or when the counters run out), the player with the most counters is the winner. In the case of a tie, those players have a sudden death roll-off, and the first to roll double sixes is the winner.

Variations

You may say that, if at least one player showing a 7 is broke, everyone at the table gets 1 counter, so all broke players showing a 7 can pay.

You may say that rolling doubles of any number wins 1 counter only (shout “doubles!” instead of “freeze!”), while rolling double sixes wins 1 counter plus 1 from each player showing a 7. However, the player can’t touch the dice before getting the roll confirmed and paid by the bank. This makes the game something of a dexterity challenge, since players try to roll and re-roll as fast as they can, but they have to also try to avoid touching the dice when they roll doubles. This is harder than you’d imagine.

You might use the above variation only for a final “lightning round”.