I’m sure we have all been in this situation – playing in a large group with people who think that it should take 20 minutes to roll two dice to attempt to hit something. In a larger group, combats can mean that you are waiting 15-20 minutes to have a turn and do anything fun (which is a natural side-effect of a big group). A while ago when this happened to me, I found myself rolling my polyhedral dice set and keeping pairs and sets – something which I’m sure a lot of people have done. As the games at the time persisted in taking a long time with combat, I started keeping scores. Eventually it turned into a fully fledged game of solitare. Here are my rules for The Waiting Game:
- Roll a seven die set of polyhedral dice (1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d100, 1d12 and 1d20).
- Keep any pairs or sets that might have been rolled.
- You have three rolls to make sets which is restarted every time that you add a die to a set.
- Once you are done, add up the points as such:
| Pair | 1 |
| 3-of-a-kind | 3 |
| 4-0f-a-kind | 9 |
| 5-of-a-kind | 18 |
| 6-of-a-kind | 54 |
| 7-of-a-kind | 162 |
The points are cumulative. If you get two pairs, you score 2 points for the hand.
An obvious point – collect low numbers – a d4 can’t ever contribute to a set of 10′s for example.
Variations
- Ignore the 10′s unit on d20
- Collect only highs or lows (for example, all 1′s and the max number on the die are part of the same set)
- Introduce runs (but you have to come up with your own points system then…)
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