Thirty Rules — How to Play and Keep Score

Setup

Six dice and a seat order everyone agrees on, because the whole game runs on who sits after whom. Agree the starting points, whether a failed turn costs anything, and whether you must set aside exactly one die per roll or may keep as many as you like. Give every player their starting points on the sheet — the app counts down from there.

How to play

Take all six dice and roll them. Set at least one die aside, keeping it at the value it shows, then re-roll the rest. Keep going until every die is set aside. The dice you kept are your total, and it has to come to more than thirty.

There is no way back once a die is down. Setting aside a two early because nothing better came up is what loses turns, and holding out for sixes with one die left to roll is what loses them faster.

If your total is thirty or less, your turn is over and nothing happens.

If it is more than thirty, look at the margin. Thirty-three beats thirty by three, thirty-six beats it by six. Pick the dice up again, roll all six one last time, and count how many of them show that number. Every die showing it takes one point off the player sitting after you.

Six dice cannot total more than thirty-six, so the margin is always between one and six — which is why it is always a number you can hunt for.

Scoring

Nothing is added up. A cell holds the points knocked off that player in that round, and their points remaining is derived as starting points − the sum of their cells.

• The player whose turn it was records 0. They never take damage from their own roll.
• The player sitting after them records the number of dice that came up on the margin — anything from 0 to 6.
• Everybody else records 0.

A turn that failed to beat thirty is a row of zeroes.

So a table of four on thirty points each, where Anna beats thirty by three and rolls two threes, has Ben on 28 and everybody else untouched. Ben's cell reads 2, not 28 — the sheet records the damage, and the total takes care of itself.

A player reaching zero is out. Their column stays on the sheet, greyed, and the points that would have hit them carry on to the next player still in.

Ending the game

The last player still holding points wins. There is nothing to compare and no tiebreak: points come off one turn at a time, so two players cannot reach zero together.

A table that wants a shorter game lowers the starting points rather than the target. Raising the target instead makes successful turns rarer, which lengthens the game without making any single hit smaller.

Common variations

Exactly one die per roll. The strictest form: six rolls, no scooping. Every turn takes the same length and the decisions are purely about which single die to keep.

Failure costs. A turn that does not beat the target takes a point off the player who rolled, or the amount they fell short by. Both turn a wasted turn into a real one, and the second makes a total of twenty-nine far less painful than a total of twelve.

The damage is lost when the seat is empty. Instead of carrying on round the table, points aimed at an eliminated player simply disappear. It slows the endgame down and makes the seat after a knocked-out player the safest place at the table.

Two dice for the hunt. Rather than re-rolling all six for the final count, some tables roll only as many dice as the margin — beat thirty by three and you roll three dice. It caps the damage at the margin itself and makes a narrow win much less dangerous.