Favorites in italics:

Game	For	Level	Description
Crib Dice	2-6	Medium	A great party or pub game. Race your marker across a cribbage board. The more you throw, the further you can go... and the more you can lose!
Farkle Crib	2-6	Medium	Farkle has entertained for a thousand years. Now it's turned into a race on a cribbage board.
Grab It!	2-6	Easy	Like Yatzee ® but quicker and more competitive. Plus it's free! Great for individuals or partnerships.
Bon Fortuna	2-6	Medium	Our longer version of Grab It! Exciting to the end because the final dice throws often decide the winner.
Tic-Tac-Dice	2	Easy	Tic-Tac-Toe made more interesting and strategic with dice. Fast easy fun.
Nice Dice	2-4	Easy	A more challenging version where you score points for every row you complete.
Super Nice Dice	2-4	Medium	Our adult version of Tic-Tac-Toe with dice and cards.
Grandfather's Clock	2-3	Easy	A simpler but exciting alternative to Parcheesi for kids.

---

Introduction to My Dice Games

By Howard Fosdick © BestFreeNewGames.com

Games with six-sided dice used to be widely popular. After all, dice are inexpensive, portable, and indestructible. You can play hundreds of different games with them.

But sometime after the Second World War, dice faded into oblivion. Aside from a few commercially-sold games like Yahtzee, LCR, or Shut the Box, they've left the national consciousness.

Why?

One problem is that so many games are based solely on luck. They offer little strategic element.

Others are little more than vehicles for gambling. Beyond the excitement of exchanging cash, they hold meager appeal.

Still others center around drinking. Fine for the bar, but that leaves out families and their children, and good friends who just want to hang out and have fun.

It doesn't have to be this way. A few wildly entertaining family dice games do exist. Why aren't there more? Where is it mandated that dice can be of no consequence beyond gambling and drinking?

And why should you have to buy a commercial package?

This is why I invented my original, new family dice games. There's nothing to buy. They're free. All you need to play are a few dice, and this website's printable score sheets.

Most importantly... they're fully play-tested for fun!

The Backstory

Dice pre-date recorded history. They are the oldest gaming pieces known to man.

For example, the ancient Egyptian game of Senet was a dice race much like Backgammon. It was popular between 3000 to 200 BCE, and a gameboard was discovered in King Tut's tomb.

Bone and clay dice have been found as far afield as Scotland and the Indus valley, dating from 3100 to 1900 BCE.

The Romans were famous dice wagerers. They bet on Colosseum fights and chariot races. They even bet their freedom on a single toss of the bones -- the loser became enslaved!

It's no accident as Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon he shouted, "The die is cast!"

Dice games have fascinated throughout the ages.

Here are my modern dice games intended for you and your friends or family.

Racing Games

Some of the world's most popular games rely on dice. Examples include Parcheesi and Backgammon. These "racing games" stretch back all the way to ancient Roman and Babylonian times and games like Tabula and Ur.

Crib Dice offers our own twist on the fun.

In Crib Dice, players toss the cubes to race across a cribbage board. The challenge is that the more times you choose to throw the dice in your turn, the further you can go... but only at the risk of losing your turn altogether if you fail along the way. Better hope for a lucky run and then voluntarily end your turn before you lose it all!

Crib Dice makes a great party or pub game for groups of two to six players. You can play as individuals or in partnerships. All you need to get started are some dice and a cribbage board.

Farkle has entertained people for a thousand years. Its merit has earned it the crown as one of oldest surviving dice games.

We took Farkle and transformed it by adapting it to a cribbage board. Not only does this make keeping score easier, but Farkle Crib presents a visual race between competitors. You can see where you stand at any time and adjust your strategy vis-a-vis your competitors.

Farkle Crib is much more exciting than the ancient game with its burdensome pen-and-paper scoring.

For kids -- or a parent with one or two children -- we offer Grandfather's Clock. It's a race game much like Parcheesi, but it uses playing cards for the board and is quicker and simpler.

If you like racing games, we also offer three in which the board is composed of face-down dominoes. The racing track changes during the games as tiles are turned over and exposed. Find the rules to these three games here.

Completion Games

My new game Tic-Tac-Dice is based on the traditional schoolyard game of Tic-Tac-Toe. But with one big difference. It requires strategizing as well as lucky dice. This is not the trivial schoolyard game you remember.

The board consists of a 3 by 3 matrix of face-up playing cards. As you roll dice, you find that you can claim certain cards in your effort to complete a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row on the board. The dice matter, but so do your choices.

Tic-Tac-Super-Dice expands the board to a 4 by 4 matrix and adds an extra die. This makes the game a bit more challenging.

Nice Dice extends the concept further. Players turn over cards instead of claiming them. They score points for each horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row they complete on the board. Clever players can score several points in a single play by completing several rows at once.

Super Nice Dice extends Nice Dice to a larger board and more challenging gameplay.

These games are all based on the same principles as time-proven winners, like the ancient Egyptian game, Seega. The dice add an extra element: they dynamically alter players' universe of allowable moves.

Category Games

In some dice games the objective is to roll to achieve specific combinations. Over the course of the game, you must complete a list of required combinations to win.

Commercial examples of this type of game include Yatzee ® and Kismet ®. The national game of Puerto Rico, called General, is another.

But here's the odd thing about these games. Play them a lot, and you'll find they're rather placid. We've ramped up the excitement in our new game Grab It!

Players go head-to-head and only one contestant grabs the points in each category. Overlapping categories present some interesting challenges in what to shoot for, and how to structure a Plan B if you fail.

For those seeking a longer game we offer Bona Fortuna.

Players must decide whether to enter their scores into their regular scoring column, or the column that doubles those scores. Then they compete in a "lightning round" where only one contestant scores in each category.

Enthusiasts agree that Grab It! and Bona Fortuna are more rousing than the packaged games. (And yes, they're free.) Try them and you'll ditch their commercial competitors.