4 Dice Games That Are Fun for the Whole Family And Will Kill Some Time

If you’re looking for something fun and time-consuming with next to no clean-up, then you’re in the right place.

When it comes to dice games, you probably know your Boggle from your Yahtzee!

So I’m not here to tell you about those — when you know, you know.

But how about some new games to add to your list? To mix things up? That’d be nice, right? Right. Let’s schedule a Google Hangout and play some dice, y’all.

To play these games, you only need dice and a pen and paper to keep track of scores. The number of dice varies, so if you’re not a family that collects cool dice, start searching those traditional board game boxes.

Going Somewhere?

Click the picture above for a bigger version of our rules card you can print out!

I need to be completely transparent here and say I made this game up. I was researching dice games and a lot of them had very similar rules. I thought, “um, Kevin, no kid is going to play the same game four different ways just because there are four different titles.”

I’ve road-tested this one personally and it’s very fun.

Basically, you pick a destination — somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. You’re not going anywhere right now, so it’s a good time to use your imagination. When you’ve picked, find out the distance in kilometres from your origin to the end destination. (I just Googled it.)

Then, get rolling. For shorter trips, use one die. And for longer distances, use two or three.

And you can really design this game for your own needs. You can add the dice together to have your distance measured (for example, if you roll a 3 and a 2, you’ve travelled 5 kilometres). Or if you are really going the distance, try using the dice rolled to form the largest number (for example, if you roll a 3 and a 2, the highest number would be 32 — so you’ve travelled 32 kilometres).

A fun idea that I just thought of as I write this is you could theme your dinner to the destination. So, work hard to get to, say, Mexico, and then have tacos for dinner. They aren’t just for Tuesdays, friends.

Bunco

Click the picture above for a bigger version of our rules card you can print out!

Ever played Bunco before? It’s a dice game classic. And the word Bunco is cacophonous and you know what’s fun for kids? Cacophony, baby.

To play, you need nine dice. That’s a lot of dice, but I also learned from writing this that a lot of families have jars of dice. When I was a kid, a neighbourhood family had a jar of cheese balls in their pantry and I thought that was cool.

Divide your family into teams and get rolling.

Each round has a number allocated to it: 1 through 6.

For round one, your goal is to roll ones. For round two, your goal is to roll twos. And so on. For every correct roll, you get a point! So, if you rolled two ones in round one, that’s two points. 

At the end of six rounds, the team with the most points wins.

Beat That

Click the picture above for a bigger version of our rules card you can print out!

We’ve all heard a kid blurt out “beat that” after doing something like a cartwheel or going down a slide really fast.

Well now those playground antics are coming to dice games.

Beat that is very simple, but simple is still fun. This is also a really great game for kids who are learning about unit values.

You need two dice minimum, or up to six.

Each round, players roll their dice and have to create the biggest number from the numbers rolled. If you rolled a 5 and a 6, your highest number is 65. Make it trickier with more dice — if you roll a 6, 2, 4, 5, your biggest number would be 6,542.

The highest number scores a point each round. Play until you get tired.

Run For It

Click the picture above for a bigger version of our rules card you can print out!

This game requires six dice and is all about sequences.

To create a “run” means to have a sequence of any size, be it 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5 or 1-2-3-4-5-6.

Each roll, look for any sequences formed (like 1-2-3). Every sequence gets five points. That’s right, we’re also going to be learning our five multiplication tables just through scoring.

For a bit of additional context, the rolls must be ordered sequentially, so if you rolled 1,6,2,4,2,2 you would not get any points. But if you rolled 1,2,3,5,6,3 you’d get 10 points because there is a sequence with 1-2-3 and another with 5-6.

First player to 100 points wins!