d6 Dungeon (revised)

First off, I don't play a lot of dice games, so I am pretty sure that I am missing something or just flat-out don't understand how the game is played. That said, how is this fun? It looks like fantasy-themed Bunco, which was a punishment my grandmother inflicted on me for coming to visit her. It seems totally random with the only strategic element being whether or not to keep rolling. I understand the calculated risk there, but is that fun?

As I understand it, Player A rolls the dice. Woops, the results equal the doom score, so he passes the cup to Player B with no opportunity to engage in the game whatsoever. Player B rolls, doesn't meet the doom score and tallies up points. Back to Player A whose results equal the doom score. Player B rolls and tallies up the results. Player A's results again equal the doom score. She throws the cup of dice at Player B's face. I don't like that bad luck can potentially ruin the game completely for someone. It's statistically unlikely, but so is a Yahtzee, and I score that all the time.

It feels like it is missing something, like a banking mechanic. You roll your three dice and then choose whether to bank half the points and retain them even if you hit the doom score or venture losing/scoring all of your points on the next roll. Maybe even chits that players can expend once per game, like an exorcism scroll that either doubles a ghost's value or negates its doom score -- something that enhances the fantasy theme. Maybe the dice themselves could reflect an increasing risk, instead of sum 7 values. You pick if you want low risk/reward, moderate, or high perhaps with the doom die rolled at the end of the turn. The doom value maybe should just increase each turn to give the players a level playing field. As it is, that one die roll seems to determine the winner, if I keep rolling 12 and 13, while you keep rolling 8 and 9 -- particularly with the all or nothing scoring.

Yeah, I was kind of figuring that it was mostly me. Never played Zombie Dice. The same doom die result applying to all players makes more sense than what I'd thought. One thing I've seen with most games these days is a basic and advanced rule set in the instructions. You could add a few twists for people experienced with the game to increase replay value.

One interesting thing about any game involving dice is that you'll never get perfectly random results. A d6 should have a 16.66% chance of coming up any specific result, but because of the die's uneven edges or inconsistencies in the faces, that percentage is going to vary to some degree. I've always been curious how custom faces effects that. Lou Zocchi has long made a point of this in advertising his dice, and I noted a marked difference after switching over to Gamescience dice for my RPG sessions. If you had several sets of dice for your game then you might find that a particular set is more likely to roll red results -- probably by a small margin, but it's interesting to note when planning for randomness. I'm a little surprised that you've never had someone hit a doom threshold in their initial roll.