Yahtzee is best as a solitaire

I recently downloaded a bare bones, no frills Yahtzee app to my phone for those times when I want to play a solitaire game without getting out physical components. I’m sure I’ll add some other, better dice games at some point but for now, this does trick for me.

Playing Yahtzee this way solves what I consider to be its biggest flaw. It’s multi-player solitaire where you have to sit through everyone else taking their turns. Just playing it actually solitaire solves that problem very nicely.

Yahtzee does have other issues. Speaking as a guy who loves abstracts, I think it’s pretty dry and abstract. And it’s ultimately a pretty shallow game, despite having real choices and being a fundamental class in understanding dice and odds.

But it is pretty good for a mass market, everyone-has-played-it game. Which might be damning Yahtzee with faint praise but considering that there’s some really bad mass market games out there, that’s actually saying something.

And that’s ignoring the real big deal of Yahtzee. It has inspired and influenced a ton of other games. Albeit many of them are better, sometimes much better, than Yahtzee.

Frankly, I have a meh-meh relationship with Yahtzee. I don’t think it deserves the hate that it seems to get from a lot of gamers. And I know as a five-minute, brain-checking-out exercise, it will see plenty of play on my phone.

However, I would never suggest it as a game to play with actual other people. For all the good things I can say about Yahtzee (influential, has actual strategy and challenges, portable, easy to teach), it’s not a game I would suggest and I’d only play it if someone was really, really set on playing it. Even if we are just talking about short games that have no theme and are just dice, I can think of better games. (Cinq-O comes immediately to mind)

Even though I know it will get some love on my phone, that doesn’t change the fact that Yahtzee is better as an inspiration than as an experience.

Evaluating Roll and Write games

While I have had an interest in PnP Roll and Write games for years, the Spiel Press kicked my interest in them up a couple notches. Then GenCan't basically dropped a library of them in my lap :D 

So as someone who is currently interested in casual games and whose interest in PnP has just been increasing, I have a feeling that I will be exploring this particular medium for the next few months.

So I have asked myself what am I looking for in a PnP Roll and Write Game, other than fun? I decided that the three most important elements are interesting choices, interesting mechanics (innovative is too loaded a term) and interaction.

Interesting choices is the most important thing that I am looking for. Because, quite frankly, I have played some games like this that actually haven't had any choices. Just roll the dice and see what happens. I want to have some agency in the game and some control over what happens.

I realize that this is a really basic requirement. However, since I have seen it not met, it is definitely one that I think needs to be addressed.

Mechanics, that comes down to this. A lot of the Roll and Write games I've seen harken back to Yahtzee and Take It Easy. And that's not a knock. Yahtzee is a very strong engine and I adore Take It Easy. However, seeing the game that breaks out of those frameworks is really cool.

Interaction is related to that. Both Yahtzee and Take It Easy are literally multi-player solitaire, unless you're playing by yourself. In that case, they're literally solitaire. Again, that's not a knock. We are talking about games that I have really enjoyed and had an easy time getting other folks to enjoy. For instance, I've had a lot of success with Wurfel Bingo.

However, interaction and direct conflict would definitely add some spice. I already have a nice selection of Roll and Write Games that are multi-player solitaire. Having something that I can print out and then go head-to-head would add additional options and audiences to the PnP library.

I have started to go through the GenCan't library and I'll probably blog my thoughts about them. It will be interesting to see how far I go through the library and what I discover.

Yahtzee as a system

Yahtzee is one of those games that is both so easy to scorn and to appreciate. Everyone has heard of it, including folks who have never heard of Catan or Tera Mystica and game designers keep on mining it for inspiration. 

The obvious reason to scorn Yahtzee is because it's a successful mass market game. The gamer subculture can certainly have some elitist tendencies, although I swear that is dwindling as destined games become more mainstream.

However, Yahtzee also is luck-dependent, involves no interaction with the other players and has zero theme. Any one of those things can be a turn-off for some folks and they are all legitimate gripes.

Despite that, I have come to enjoy Yahtzee and have lost any scorn I might have had for it. It's an easy game to cobble together and teach. More than that, it does help teach odds and dice evaluation. It isn't as random as it looks at first.

I even went through a spell of regularly playing Yahtzee online. If I woke up early and wanted to get in a life game without getting out of bed, Yahtzee was a game I knew I could find an opponent and finish a game before I had to get up.

Still, Yahtzee is never going to break into my top 100 games. It's not a game I would actively seek out or suggest to play. Yeah, if someone really wanted to play, I would play Yahtzee and I would have a decent time. However, what I have come to truly love about Yahtzee is how it has been a stepping off point for so many other games.

Simply put, getting two re-rolls and trying for specific combinations of dice faces is a fundamental mechanic for game design. It is one of those bed rock concepts. 

I know that Yahtzee didn't invent those mechanics from scratch. Dice games have been around for thousands of years. But Yahtzee helped codify the formula and helped spread it around, particularly for the non-gambling audience.

There are literally hundreds of games that are built off of the Yahtzee mechanic. I am not even going to pretend to try and list them all. While some are frankly garbage, others are genuinely good. 

And the ones that are fun address the issues that I brought up before. Games like To Court the King add special powers that five players a measure of control. King of Tokyo not only adds interaction by having folks beat each other up, it embraces the rich theme of giant monsters. And that's not even the tip of the iceberg.

Yahtzee has given us a way of understanding and using dice that has created a lot of fun experiences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahtzee

Outlaw - a super easy game to make yourself

Outlaw is a tiny little dice game that feels like a simplified version of Knizia's Pickomino with a bit of Sackson's Can't Stop and its bell-shaped curve thrown in.

While it is themed around capturing outlaws and bandits in the Wild West, it's really about dice and odds. The board consists of two rows of wanted posters. One is numbered four to nine and the other one is numbered nineteen to twenty-four. Each poster has a reward, ranging from $1000 on the nine and nineteen to $10,000 on the four and twenty-four.

On your turn, you roll four dice with two rerolls. As long as you rolled one of the numbers on a poster, you get to place one of your tokens on that poster. If your opponent had a token on the poster, you replace it. BUT if you already had a token on that poster, you take it back.

When you have three posters claimed, you collect the reward for all three posters and take your tokens back. The first person to get to $50,000 or $40,000 in a three-player game, wins.

I've already compared Outlaw to other games, like Pickomino. And, quite frankly, Outlaw isn't as strong. While there is interaction between the players when you poach claimed posters, it's pretty mild. More importantly, it's too easy to have a turn where nothing happens. 

However, Outlaw does have one very strong thing going for it. It's a free print-and-play that requires virtually no work to make. No cutting and no gluing and no folding. Print out the board and add four dice and three tokens per player. Done and ready to play.

Seriously, for the deep budget gamer, Outlaw is a pretty good deal. It may not be the end all, be all of light dice games but it's still a decent little game. If you are watching your gaming budget, Outlaw is a good choice.

Personally, I am planning on taking the time to mount the board, the rules and the purely optional score board and laminating them as a travel game. Even that will probably cost me less than fifty cents in material costs. I'm also planning on recommending it to family and friends.

Outlaw is a light dice filler. It's not a perfect game. However, for a free, print-and-play game that requires minimal effort to make, Outlaw is well worth the effort.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169309/outlaw