For my push your luck game, I have two scoring options I am contemplating. I am not sure if I should go one way or the other or use both. Here are the options:
1) knowing that each die has one face that can add to a bust situation, provide points based on the number of dice rolled, with the understanding that as difficulty increases, you will inevitably want/need to roll more dice.
2) knowing that the main point of the game is to press your luck and push things through certain spaces to an end space (i.e., a goal), score points based on the spaces you move through to the endpoint.
My original concept was to increase the difficulty of the things you push, and therefore increase the point value of those things based in their difficulty. I have shied away from that for the moment because I am not sure that risk-reward relationship drives the fun. I could be wrong, as this is not yet tested. So, you may want to consider this a third option.
There is a simpler fourth option—just use the number of things your pushed through as the scoring. The scores would be expected to be low without any other point scoring in the game.
Any thoughts on these options? How do you determine the best ways to score in a press your luck?
Thanks!
Mark
So, basically the PYL is for a chase (but not a race). The initial dice pool has a minimum number of dice based on the thing you are chasing, and each time you meet or beat the required values, you push the thing one step further towards the finish. For each of those dice (d6s), 1s are “the bust value.” At this time, roll three 1s and you bust. Once you choose the number of dice to roll for that first roll, you cannot change the number of “regular” dice you roll. The PYL is that with each new “push” roll, you must add another die. Each new die however only has 1s, and each subsequent die has one additional “1” (the first die added has one 1; the second has two 1s; etc, just like questccg suggested). While the path for which you push out the thing is not necessarily the same each time, the last space before crossing the finish is. That said, it could take 1-5 pushes before the thing is across the finish. Each successful push earns you points which can be secured by stopping at any point prior to busting. Not meeting the requirements is not busting…it just won’t push. I envision that busting, instead, gives you an end of game penalty (tbd based on the scoring).
So, when it comes to incentivizing the dice rolling, do I aim the scoring at the number of dice (from the initial decision), or the spaces traversed (either with set points or possibly random point values). If I work an increasing scoring (such as pyramidal) for each successful push, does that matter?
Does this help?
Thanks for all the suggestions and comments to date.