Written January 1, 2025 in 1 minute as part of the Gentle Games Habit
A 2 player game.
Collect a bunch of dice - more than you can count on sight. It doesn’t matter how many sides they have, they can all be different.
Put one to the side. Throw all of the others.
When a player thinks they know which there are more of - even or odds - they take the set aside die, give it to the other player, and call even or odds. The player who called even or odds takes those dice. The other player takes the remainder.
Whoever has more dice wins.
2025-01-03 Playtest
Played with a friend as written. I started by throwing 143 d6. It was simply too many to make any sense. In conceiving the game, I thought that would be a fun “this is crazy!” moment. Well, it was crazy. A crazy, overwhelming task. Maybe we should have stuck with it as an experiment. I liked the sort of psychological confrontation with the task. But we moved on without attempting to play like that.
We then started with fewer dice and increased. It took a few plays for eyes to adjust to the task. I was surprised at how cognitively demanding the task was at first. 18 seemed to be a sweet spot - a number you could actually count, but could also get an edge by making the call before evaluating all the dice.
We also adjusted to an odd number: 17 or 19. Naturally, the odds are that there will be a close to 50-50 split on evens and odds. An odd number of dice makes it so that there won’t be a 50-50 split.
We also did away with the grabbing and passing of the die. It was intended to break splits, but just doesn’t do it. It actually disincentivized making the call if the split is 50-50. You lose on a 50-50 split when you pass the die - if both players are playing perfectly, the game locks because there is no winning move. An odd number of dice takes care of the problem: it prevents a 50-50 split and you’re incentivized to make the call (and make it right).