Variant STD

Orphans & Ashes may be the flagship of Blind Ferret’s games selection, but you shouldn’t sleep on Storytime With Dick.

Storytime With Dick is a dice rolling storytelling game. You and up to seven friends take turns rolling dice and pushing your luck trying to match your rolls to the story cards. Meanwhile, you or one of your friends is a Dick, able to mess with everyone else’s story like Richard messes with Cale’s.

I’ve seen the game criticized that the storytelling doesn’t factor into the scoring, that it’s a dice rolling, set matching game with a storytelling theme. I can say that this was intentional, and intended to be a feature. It assumes you’re playing the game because you want to tell stories, but you can play with people who don’t like storytelling games.

If you’re interested in playing the game with the story factoring into the points, here is a variant ruleset you can try:

VARIANT NAME: King Dick
REQUIREMENTS: Inflatable crown (optional)
RULES
Setup
1.       Determine who is the Dick, as usual. The Dick gets the Dick Card, the 9 Dice, and the inflatable crown, if applicable.
2.       The player to Dick’s right deals Plot Cards as usual, including laying the Dick Flop.
Gameplay
1.       Going clockwise, the Dick asks the players how many dice they need to tell a story. Dick hands out in order of fewest dice requested to most, until there are no dice left to hand out. This does mean the last person to get dice might get fewer dice than they requested, possibly even fewer dice than the player who requested the least gets. That’s how the cookie crumbles.
In the case of ties, priority goes to the player with the fewest points. If there are still ties, priority is left to Dick’s whim.
2.       All players with Dice roll simultaneously, being careful to keep track of which Dice are theirs. Any Dick faces rolled are given to the Dick. Using their remaining dice, players take turns trying to tell their story with their remaining Story Elements, starting with the player with the most dice left after Dick faces are removed.
3.       The Dick can use Dick Faces to eliminate Story Elements at any time until the next player starts telling their story. Eliminated Store Elements and Dick faces are pooled together in a Dick Pool.  
4.       Once every player has told their story, they are allowed to request Dice from the Dick Pool, following the same process as in Step 1, but they must discard a card when Dick hands them their Dice. If a player requested Dice and there were none left when the Dick got to them, they do not need to discard a card.
5.       Any players with Dice from the Dick Pool now roll them to continue their story.
6.       Repeat Steps 2-5 until no one has dice left to roll.
7.       The Dick now determines which player told the best story. First, any player who cannot score a card on the table or in their hand says as much, eliminating themselves from contention. Based on whatever criteria they determine, such as whether rerolls or number of Dice rolled or are factored in or not, Dick declares a winner.
8.       The winner scores the best Plot Card they can.
9.       The player with the most points is the Dick for the next round.
 
Winning
When a player scores a 5th card, the game immediately ends. Everyone tallies up their score. Highest score wins, naturally.
Alternately, if a player scores the coveted Dickzilla card, they immediately win the game. There is no bigger Dick than Dickzilla.

Let us know which version of the Storytime With Dick rules you prefer!