Liar's Dice
Requires
- 5 six-sided dice per person
- At least 2 people (5-10 is optimal, but I've played it with up to 20)
Getting Started
Give everyone 5 dice, and find a comfortable playing area. The only requirement here is that each player will be able to keep their dice hidden from the other players. If you roll onto a hardish surface, you can just use your hands to hide the dice. Some players prefer covering their dice with a cup.
To start the game, have everyone roll and hide their dice.
Object of the Game
Be the last one left with dice!
Gameplay
Chose someone randomly to begin the first round. That player must bid how many of a given die value they think are present between all the players. For example, the player might say "three fives" indicating that she believes that between all players playing, there are at least three fives. Ones are wild, and count toward anything (ones themselves cannot be bid on - "two ones" is not a valid bid).
Play proceeds clockwise (unless you're playing it with a bunch of weirdos), and each consecutive player must either raise the bid or challenge the previous bid. Raising the bid can be either raising the die value, or raising the number of dice and picking a new value. If the person before you bids "three fours", you may bid "three fives", or "four twos", but not "two fives" or "three twos".
Eventually, the bid will be so high that you find it improbable that there are that many of the given value. At that point, instead of making a higher bid, you should challenge the last player's bid ("I don't think so", "call", "bullshit!", and "yeah right" are all acceptable challenges). When someone is challenged, all players reveal their dice and the number of dice with the given value are totaled - remember ones count toward anything. If the bid challenged was "five threes" and among all the players there were 2 threes and 4 ones rolled, the bid was good (there were at least five threes, or things that counted as three).
If the bid was good, the challenger loses a die; if the challenge was good, the player that was challenged loses a die. Either way, all players re-roll their dice, and the player that lost a die begins the new round.
If a player loses all of their dice, they are out of the game. The last player with dice is the winner.
Strategy
This game involves a fair amount of bluffing and some rough calculating. As a rule of thumb, about 1/3 of the dice will be any given value (ones count toward anything). The actual number varies however, so you have to pay attention to what other players are bidding. If almost every player is bidding threes, there are probably a lot of threes in play. This is where your job comes in - any time you aren't being squeezed by a tough bid, you should bid something that you don't have. The safest thing to bid is the same thing other players are bidding on - you're less likely to get called on it, and other people will be in for a surprise if they start relying on the majority bid.
You should also get a feel for which people's bids you can "trust". Do they usually bid with what they have, or just make stuff up? This will help you throughout the game, but especially at the end. I have seen more than one game where a player with a single die knocks off a player with three or four dice at the very end to win the game.
For beginning a round, you have a couple of options. If you are feeling lazy, you can always bid "one two" and let the other players do the work. With people relatively new to the game, this can give you a fair amount of information about what people rolled before the bid gets back to you. On the other hand, if you bid something substantial (close to the average) you have the chance that the bid won't even get back to you.