Liar's Dice: My Favorite Mechanism

0:01 Hey, I'm Jamie from Stonemire Games and today I'm going to talk about my favorite mechanism in the game Liars Dice, which after playing modern hobby games for I don't know a dozen plus years, maybe probably even longer than that. I've never played Liars Dice until very recently. And this is what it looks like. Well, at least these are the dice in the the version that I played. Um, this is a very simple game and I really really enjoyed my play of it. We actually played twice back to back where you have a big you have a cup and you have what do we have? five dice in that cup. At least in a three-player the three-player game that we played. You shake those dice in the cup. You put it down on the table so that only you can see the results of what you rolled. And then you go around the table a little bit like the game skull. And you say, um, I think there are, uh, on the table right now, my dice, all the other dice that other players have hidden, I think there are x number of a certain type of die. Like I might say, I think there are three sixes out there. And then someone else needs to follow. or they could either say, "No, you're wrong." Or they could follow up and say a higher number of any number of dice. They could say, "No, um, I think there are four fives."

1:08 And you keep on going around the table until eventually someone calls someone else out or decides that they can't go any higher. And you reveal all the dice and whoever and if they were right. So, if I said three sixes and there actually were a total of three sixes on the table, then uh the person who called me on that, they uh they have to permanently lose a die and the game ends when only one person has dice left. The key to this game really shining in my opinion is a is a tiny little twist on on what these dice look like. And you can see them in the photo here. These are D6 dice except that the one pipide is replaced by a star and the star is wild. And so that means when I reveal my my first five dice, I might have two sixes. I might have uh a three and a four. And then I have a star. And that star can be anything that I want it to be. It could it could go along with those sixes. It could go along with those fours. It could be a five even though I don't have any fives. I could say I think there are three fives at the table uh because I have that star. The stars add just enough uh flexibility and uncertainty for the bluffing and guessing to work. Um because as players give away information um you start to have a a certain level not certainty but you have you have information if if the player next to me says I think there are four fives at the table either they're completely bluffing or they're kind of saying I have a few fives and I think there are a few I think odds are there are a few other fives out there and so by you going on top of that even though

2:39 you only have one five is it would be rather difficult to do except for the factor of the of the stars. the stars are wild and so so the stars are out there potentially making any number of dice better than they actually are based on the the actual faces of those dice that are rolled. It's a tiny little twist uh but it has a huge impact on the game making the game work in terms of the bluffing and the guessing and the bidding. Every level of the game I think works because of this wild element. I think that is so clever in Liars in Liars Dice. It's also called Perudo apparently. I think that's one of the other names of the game. So that is my favorite mechanism in Liars Dice. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you can if you have a another way to talk about this mechanism or another mechanism in Liars Dice, I'd love to hear it. Or if you have uh if you can think of another game that uses a wild element like this to add to the bluffing and uncertainty or other aspects of a game, let me know about that in the in the comments as well. As I said, Skull feels a little similar using coasters instead of dice and without the random element. Um but it is also a completely different game that doesn't have the the wild aspect to it. So yeah, let me know your thoughts about Liars Dice in the comments below.

3:45 Thanks.