The Race to Become Pope - I’m Counting #3
YOU ARE CHARGED WITH INCREASING THE PRESTIGE OF YOUR ABBEY’S COLLECTION.
The circumference of our table would shout while teaching Scripts & Scribes: The Dice Game. Admittedly, we were terrible at bringing new gamers to the table as teaching the game often devolved into role-playing. S&S was no longer a dice game at that point. It was the bi-monthly race for the papacy so we could claim the tall funny hat for ourselves. You think I’m joking but…
Really, every person we’ve educated on the game was able to pick up the rules in roughly ten minutes flat. Even with our unhinged papal assertions as the game’s premise is quite simple.
There are five resource tracks and one abbot track (purple or “pope-rle”). A single die is at the top of each resource track to determine it’s end game value. Each turn, a player will roll the seven dice to determine the action, end game pip-adjustment, and resources available. Three possible actions are 1) a standard turn, 2) auction for resources, 3) auction for gold. Rarely do I take any firm stances but the fourth “action” is really just an extension of the 1st previously mentioned. You may pay 1+previous reroll cost to reroll any number of resource dice as many times as you’d like. Which only the active player may do. During a standard action the active player (post reroll if that action is available) will take all dice with the same symbol and advance up the track by the number of dice taken. This continues round and around until no more dice remain. Auctioning for resources, which always pauses the game, proceeds with bidding gold to take the lot. Auctioning for gold, which makes no sense, is a race to the bottom for how much gold you’re willing to accept to remove a scoring block from the game. That’s it, plus a few additional minor rules.
Bleh, game rules are boring. A necessary evil so we can be on the same page.
The rulebook does have six pages with an accompanying “Rule Summary” card. I’ll be honest, if I could burn every rulebook for this game I would. The rules summary card is well equipped to teach you the entire game. Stretching the necessary information in the rulebook is akin to writing essays to meet a word count. Overindulging your own nearsighted points through literal fluff. Beating them like a dead horse until the reader can do nothing other than nod just to keep the text moving. Locking you into an alphabet purgatory of which you can never escape. I digress.
Sharing this game with you is not an attempt to win you over in my rulebook crusade. Actually my narrative surpasses what this game actually is. You see, this game was one of the first uncommon games in my collection and was gifted to me by a collector. Scripts & Scribes: The Dice Game was my favorite game out of the lot some seven years ago. S&S’s rules suck more than a turbo-charged Dyson. They’re just so bare that often the players are in autopilot for the duration of a game while letting the dice do the work. Your decisions are encompassed by moving up a track or changing a dice value up or down one. Don’t get me wrong, the game can be very interesting at times. Like when you accidentally trigger resetting all the dice to 3 by making all of them a 1 or 6. These shake-ups are few and far between.
Yet, it was still my favorite game. There are an absurd number of games in existence from all different troves of creators. Each was a development of passion and excitement, regardless of how the rules came to existence. Many of them are great for the first few plays, and many miss the mark for some gamers. Script’s & Scribes: The Dice Game does not rank very high overall and was largely forgotten about. It isn’t even included on the creator’s site anymore. However, from my understanding, S&S’s was re-adapted into a new version of the game called Biblios. Which hits home even harder that this game, while not great, was good enough to warrant more work.
My point is that these games can be the foundation of someone’s entry into gaming. Hand-me-down games are one of the best ways to intrigue a new player. You’ve gotten your mileage out of it and figured someone else can give it a try. S&S was easy to learn, easy to teach, and didn’t leave that much of a competitive edge to frequent players. It was just a good quick game to open up the evening, or close it after a night of liquid induced fun. For me, that was enough to keep it in my collection indefinitely. I’m forever grateful for Dr. Finn making the game in the first place. Unfortunately Dr. Finn has also given me the inkling to purchase a sweet pope-mobile for my daily commute.
What game was like this for you? I’d love to hear about your entry game into the hobby as well as your current reflections.
~please excuse any grammar or spelling errors~
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