LongTom

Well, o'course ye cheat! Ye lie like a turkey carpet! That's why it's called Liars Dice! Seriously, I'm not clear why anybody would want to fold. After all, everybody at the table has everybody else's dice at their disposal, and the goal is to work that fact cleverly. The idea is to force one of the other players into either 1) making an unreasonable bid, which you or somebody else will call "liar" on, or 2) get them to call you on a bid that they think is unreasonable, which you really can make -- bearing in mind, again, that you make your bid using everybody's dice, not just your own. When you have few dice (or a lousy roll) you will want to concentrate on strategy "1" One thing you can do is bid on dice that you have none of. Then when the next player ups that bid, thinking he can add what's in your hand to his own, you call liar. Obviously, this is a bad idea if you have any wild dice, and you can't do it consistently, or it loses its effectiveness. But hey, that's Liar's Dice for you. They aren't supposed to be able to tell when you're lying and when you aren't. You can also combine fake bids with real ones. Start with a reasonable bid on something that you have none of, to drive the bid up. Then when the bid comes around again, bid high on your strong number. You run a good chance of actually making that bid if called out, or at least skating so the next player is in the hot seat. Please, tell me the rules that come with the set don't limit you to your own dice, do they? If so, I see why you would find it frustrating.

I am not so sure that tents wouldn't be used, for exactly the same reasons (strangely enough). Given that quantities of sailcloth and duck cloth would be available it would take a boatswain/sailmaker no time to run up some servicable ridge tents for extended stays. The cloth used for the tents wouldn't be first quality, I am sure that old sail suites would be turned to exactly this purpose. This is plausible. My thought was that the creation of a dedicated tent would require at least part of the cloth goods to be cut up and tailored, at which point they would be less serviceable as sail materials. Not necessarily something one would want to risk while far away from home. To leave the sail intact, and accomplish the tent via some creative rigging would be more economical (cloth ain't cheap) as well as better conservation of your repair stores. Regarding the time factor, the rigging of awnings and other shelter from large pieces of cloth is probably an order of magnitude faster than sewing up real tents, even with an experienced sailmaker. They are stitching by hand, after all, and you are talking about tens of feet of seam per tent. The crew could string up ten crude but perfectly serviceable shelters in the time it would take to sew one tent. I'm thinking of this from the perspective of an ultralight backpacker, having seen some of the perfectly marvelous shelter configurations you can get out of a tarp with some creative folding and guying; no cutting or sewing necessary. I'm not saying that these would be the actual rigging techniques used (some of them look distinctly outlandish and modern). More a matter of speculating on what would be important to the sailor of the period. That, and working up a justification for a shelter with the ends of spars and sweeps sticking out all over the place, for visual effect.

Chunky Monkey

{edit} You're right. Never mind.

(in best Daffy Duck impersonation) Becauth you ladieth are all tho thmokin' hot! Woohoo,hoohoo,hoohoo,hoohoo,hoohoo...

No he isn't. Merely observant. :)

Silkie, I like it! Original, and well done, too. That was an interesting point about the brightness of the white in the skull, against the other colors. I love hearing technical tidbits like that.

LongTom looks up to see the swiftly shrinking figures of Montoya and his sidekick, carried off on a sea of naked backs. "Hey.... He never bought me my drink..."

In the long version, where you go until there is only one die left (and the owner of it is the winner), a variation is that when there are only two dice left, total, you bet on the number of pips showing. Otherwise, when there are only two dice on the table, it gets rather easy to guess how many of a given number on out there. (Gee, 1 or 2? Okay, maybe zero, but the higher numbers are right out, which makes the final round kind of short.) It's a very fun game. Figuring out how to bid in order to get the next player into an untenable position is the fun of it. Though the time that I called foul on a bid of "14 fives" out of twenty dice...and they were actually there....

A potential dumb question: Why would a ship bother with tents, when it is full of spare canvas and people who are veritable genii with rigging things with it, along with rope and lumber? I would think a sail and some spars rigged in a picturesque manner would say "pirate" more than a wedge tent would, any day. The extra barrels might well be ashore for re-watering. (how did they refill in the field, anyway?) Whatever other stuff might come off the ship when expecting an extended stay? Chairs, who knows? Hammocks? just speculating...

AIIEEEEEGH! It's Patchouli Pete! And he's ta windward! Run, lads, if ye value yer olfactory capacity!

Ahoy there, Inigo! Welcome to da pub, me hearty! (Er, did he say pirate hunter?) Uh, in that case, forget the "me hearty," but welcome none the less. I'd offer ta stand ya a drink, only yer purse isn't plundered yet, and mine has been already. I'll have a rum, no water, if yer please. I'd be careful about mentioning sinking sheep, there. Don't want to get any of these blokes worked up over nothin'.

Well, CapnWilliam has a grand design to be sure, and splendid execution from you. Cheers to you both. I had actually been considering crossed cannons, but they just weren't coming out the way I wanted. Just as well, apparently, since CapnWilliam had dibs. At any rate, your work inspired me to go back and rework my charges. A little more muscle there this time, I think.

As long as we're talking weird parallels, consider The Hat. (think Indiana Jones. Funny that, with Han Solo and Indy, it's Harrison Ford in both cases, too.)

Ar, 'tweren't nuthin' but a chance bit o' noticin'. William, from your wording I'm not entirely clear whether the crossed cannons flag is more of your work, or are you hosting it for someone else, but my compliments to the artist. Your cannons are... uh, well ... to die for.

Believe it or not, grog, as per the O'Brian novels: 1 part rum, 3 parts water. Entirely too easy to drink too much of it. For drinking neat, why, Pyrat XO Reserve, of course.

Total variants so far: Pirates of the [spanish Main / Crimson Coast / Revolution / Barbary Coast / South China Seas / Davy Jones Curse ] If you get the latest variant, it incorporates the rules from the previous ones. On the other hand, specific items (a particular ship, crew member, treasure, etc.) only come in a particular set. If you don't like collecting them all, you can just assign the attributes from one ship to another of the same form factor in order to play it like that. (Not an official rule, but that's what I do, since I only play at home.) You probably will want to collect enough packs to have at least one of each form factor of ship (1-mast, 2-mast, etc.), for accuracy in measuring and other physical factors when playing the game. But in my opinion, having the wrong paint job on the playing piece shouldn't stop you from playing a particular scenario. You can use items of approximately the same size for islands. That's even an official rule. Of course, by the time you've collected a few more sizes of ship, you will end up with plenty of islands. Personally, I like the sailing rules. For me, they are a nice balance between the rigidness of hex-based or square-based movement systems, and the extreme movement modeling of hardcore sailing wargames. There are a few things I don't care for in the rules. But that's okay, because you can always make up your own rules system.

"This is your brain... <crack, splat, sizzle> this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"

Aye, that be a heavenly Corpus you be showin', to be sure, Captain Siren.

Google "rules of heraldry" and you'll probably find out more than you ever wanted to know about that sort of thing. Not that a pirate would be particularly interested in following rules....

Mmmmmm. Trout.... If they aren't flopping out of the frying pan, they're not fresh enough. Oh, right, what thread am I in again? Declare somethin. Lessee.... I make a point of trying the most outlandish thing on the menu at restaurants.

Someone once told me I was going to sleep with the fishes... Kidding aside, you are going to have a blast. I did snorkeling with the sea turtles in Hawaii about eight years ago and it was incredible. Sounds like you are going to be able to get really up close and personal with the dolphins. Have fun!

Thank you, William and Silkie. I didn't want to post a bazillion variations, but I also was considering the second one, but with the skull in canton (upper left corner). Would make the overall design faintly reminiscent of ... something.... heheheheh. William, both your designs and your execution set the standard of excellence. Thank you for posting them. I'm looking forward to seeing yours, Silkie!

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Been noodlin' on a couple of designs. This one: or this one: (If anybody knows how to get a decent trace out of Illustrator, I'd be much obliged. The skull is a scan of a hand sketch. Bitmaps are okay, as far as they go, but to scale the thing up to full flag size it would be nice to convert it to vector.)