So...I've been thinkning about how to do Liars dice as an RPG mechanic.

For those of you who don't know wat liars dice is it goes a little like this:

Quote1. Multiple players place five dice (six sided) in a cup and shake them.

2. They place the cups face down on the table, looking at their dice and not revealing their dice to the other players.

3. The first player calls out as many matches as he wants (i.e. "I have two 3's").

4. Then the player clockwise must call out a larger set of matches (i.e. 3 or more matches given the last example), he can also call bullshit on the previous player.

   4a. If the previous player is called out, and they are revealed to be lying than they lose a die (or give a die to the calling player, or take a shot....depends on the variation being played).

4b. If the previous player is called out but is not a liar, then they accusing player takes loses a die (or gives a die to the accused, or takes a shot...etc. etc.)

5. The next round begins with the next person clockwise from the accuser.

Pretty simple right?

So...how to make this into an RPG mechanic?

My ideas:

Begin a game with a simple threshold system for task resolution. i.e. the GM sets a threshold for the task and the player MUST get that many matches to succeed.

I think calling out shoud be the difference between critical success and critical failure. In my mind it should go something like this:

1. Players cannot call out themselves, but they can call out each other. They can also call out the GM. The GM can call out all the players.

2. After the GM sets the threshold, the player can only tells whther he has succeeded or failed at a given task (which they are allowed/encouraged to lie about). Players and GMs are not supposed to reveal their die roll unless they are called out.

3. If someone is called out, and they are revealed to be a liar, than they have critically failed and bad stuff happens.

4. If they are called out and are not lying, then they critically succeed and good stuff happens.

That's the basics.

Here's some guidelines I've setup for myself for the rest of the ruleset:

I think it would be best to not change the dicepools in the cups too much, as that would slow down gameplay. Maybe have +1 Die per level, or something similar. This gets trickier to implement when it comes to the GM.


So...gimme your thoughts/suggestions/critiques....

I think a mechanic like this would be well suited to diplomacy. It is, however, a fairly complex resolution method and might stall game play if used for all task resolution in a game.

It does seem like it would slow down the action/dialog a lot.

Do you have a way to speed it up?

its also very confrontational, pitting the player(s) directly against the GM or other players, not a good idea for community gaming.

perhaps that is the reason why Liar's Dice it is a drinking/social game not suited for RPG mechanic.

if you can get it to work, then Id love to see it.