by Jonathan Leistiko
Complete Goal cards and gain points by rolling different combinations of colored dice. A game ends when a player has completed Goals of three or more colors with a total value of more than 100 points.
Shuffle the RYB deck. Deal out cards as follows:
You may look at the cards in your hand at any time.
If you are playing a friendly game, or are playing with children, play with the cards in your hand face-up on the table.
Place the remaining cards face-down in the center of the table; this is the Draw deck. (In a friendly or children’s game, keep the Draw deck face-up.)
Each player gets two red, two yellow, and two blue dice. Your collection of dice is called your Dice Pool.
Peacefully choose someone to go first.
Starting with the first player and proceeding to the left, each player takes a turn. On your turn you must Refill or Dump, and then Play A Card. you may also Attempt to Complete a Goal.
Refill: If you have less cards in your hand than you began the game with, draw cards from the Draw deck until your hand is replenished.
(If the RYB deck runs out of cards, shuffle the Discard pile and create a new Draw deck from the shuffled discards. Disregard this rule if you are playing with only two players.)
or Dump: Instead of Refilling, you may choose to Dump—discard your entire hand, and draw a whole new one. If you do so, your turn ends immediately afterward.
Play a Card: Play a card from your hand. Descriptions of all of the cards are provided below. Playing a card is mandatory.
Attempt to Complete a Goal: You score points in RYB by completing Goals. Any attempt to complete a Goal card consists of three separate steps: Declare, Attempt, and Bank or Tally.
See an example of how to total dice1.
See an example of attempting to complete a Goal2.
An easy way to keep track of how many points are banked against the Target is to place another die (like a polyhedral one) on top of the Goal, with the total number of points banked on that Goal face-up.
See an example of a round of play3.
There are two different types of cards in the RYB deck: Goal cards and Action cards. If the card has the name of a color printed across the top of it, it is a Goal card; otherwise it is an Action card.
Goal Cards: Play during the Play a Card step. Goal cards are played in the middle of the table, face-up.
Goal cards have a color, a target, and a value.
Color: The card’s color is printed across the top of the card. Goal cards come in seven colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Black.
Target: The big number in the middle of the card is the card’s starting Target. As points are Banked on the card, the Target will decrease correspondingly.
Value: The number in the lower right-hand corner is the card’s Value, which is the number of points you win when you complete the goal.
Goal cards stay in the middle of the table until they are completed.
Action Cards: Action cards include Gimme!, Swap, Do-Over, Red Rover, Shanghai, and Variable cards. They are played during the Play a Card phase of your turn. Once obeyed, they are discarded, face-up, into a discard pile.
Take one die from any player’s pool and add it to your die pool.
Roll any number of dice in your pool (of any color). If their sum is 10 or less, you may put them in any player’s die pool and take an equal number of dice (of any color) from that player’s die pool.
Play this card immediately after you make a roll to Attempt completion of a Goal. Reroll all dice you just rolled.
Declare a number from one to six and choose a player. That player must roll all dice in their pool. Any die that shows the number you chose is placed in your die pool.
Choose a player and a die color present in his or her pool. Borrow all dice of that color from his or her die pool for your Attempt at the completion of a Goal. Return all dice taken in this fashion at the end of your turn.
In the basic game, this card acts as a Reset: All players’ Die Pools return to the starting state: 2 red, 2 yellow, and 2 blue dice.
Before the game begins, you can agree amongst yourselves to use one of these rules for the Variable cards.
All players’ Die Pools return to the starting state: 2 red, 2 yellow, and 2 blue dice.
Choose a player. That player must give you dice (his or her choice) until you have as many or more dice than he or she has.
Choose a side, left or right. All players must pass their dice to the player on the side you choose. Like the Mad Hatter, call out “Clean cup, clean cup! Move down, move down!” as you pass dice.
Take a card from the discard pile that can be played during the Play a Card step and play it immediately. (So this excludes Do-Over and De-nied.)
As long as this card is in play, you may trade dice and cards from your die pool and hand with any and all other players in the game, and they may trade with you. You must have the permission of the other player for each exchange that you make. Other players cannot trade amongst themselves; they must go through you. Discard this card when your turn ends, or when three minutes have passed, whichever comes first.
Choose a player and a die color. That player must give all dice of that color away to any player or players of his or her choice.
Play this card on a Goal in play. You may bank points on this card instead of on the selected Goal. Points banked on this card only count for your totals. Discard this card when the Goal it is attached to is completed.
Play this card when a player chooses you as the target for a card and before the effect of that card is resolved. The card that is targeting you has no effect and is discarded.
Instead of attempting a Goal in play this turn, you may attempt to complete a Goal that another player has already completed. If you do not complete the Goal, you may bank points on it, but you may not attempt it again without another Raid card.
I made this game up on the bus on my way home from work in early October of ‘99. It took me about three hours to get it all down-pat. I have no idea where this really came from - I just thought that it would be neat to create a math and color-oriented game. The target audience I had in mind is children from the ages of 7 to 9.
10/27/99 @ 9:33 PM
Ugh! Attempting to write this clearly and succinctly was a bear-and-a-half. I’m not in any shape to write up variants on this right now. I’ll definitely write some up later though… Take care all; I hope you enjoy the game. – JAL
10/27/99 @ 9:40 PM
All right, I just thought of a variant. Instead of giving all players their dice to start, put the dice in the center of the table. One randomly selected player takes a die from the middle and puts it in their pool. This procedure proceeds clockwise until all players have taken a die. Now the most recent player to take a die picks one out, and the procedure proceeds in reverse back to the first person. Keep going back & forth like this until all players get six dice. (There should be no dice left in the center. If there are, you’ve messed up; try again.)
If you want to make this even more interesting, you could have players select their dice after they have their five cards.
1/27/00 @ 9:33 PM
Here’s another variant that I had originally designed as a rule for Peds II: Downtown Cabbie. Players may re-roll all dice rolled in any one roll by doing any of the following immediately after the roll has been made (pick one variant):
1/27/00 @ 10:15 PM
One more variant: A player may cancel out the effect of an Action card by discarding a card of the same type immediately after the card to be canceled is played. The canceling player’s hand is not refilled until the beginning of his or her next turn.
1/30/00 @ 1:29 PM
So, last night Sharon and I went over to Justin’s house to play RYB. This was the first time that RYB had ever been played and quite a few changes were made to the game that evening:
Yesterday, Sharon & I played RYB with frends over at Ben’s house (it was Sharon’s birthday). We played a four-player game with reduced hand sizes (everyone had three cards). It worked just fine and the rules for less cards with more players were created. Playing with a hand of five cards at all times makes the game degenerate into a dice-stealing bout.
The Equalize card, which was the Trade card, became the Wild card. The Reset ability of the Wild card was created shortly thereafter. The additional Wild card abilities were created later that evening as well.
1 Example: How To Count Dice Totals
Let’s say you have two red, two yellow, and three blue dice in your die pool. You roll all of your dice and get the following results:
This roll would give you the following Primary color point totals:
...the following Secondary color totals:
...and the following Tertiary color total:
2 Example: Attempting to Complete A Goal
Say you’re trying to complete a Purple Goal that has a target of 9. You have three red dice, three blue dice, and one yellow die in your die pool. You pick out and roll your three red and three blue dice, because red and blue make purple. Your red dice roll 1, 4, and 5—a total of 10 red points. Your blue dice roll 3, 5, and 6—a total of 14 blue points. You can mix these together to make 10 purple points, with 4 blue points left over. 10 points is one more than what you need to complete the Goal, so you can take the Goal and put it in your pile of completed Goals.
3 Example: A Round of Play
In the following example, dice are noted in the following format: [#x], where # is the number rolled on the die, and x is the color of the die (r, y, or b).
Al, Bruce, and Catherine are just beginning the first round of a game of RYB. They have their six dice, and five cards. (I’m not going to get into which cards they have – I’ll address that as we go along.)
At the end of the first round, Al has two red, one yellow, and two blue dice. Bruce has two red, three yellow, and two blue dice. Catherine has two red, two yellow, and two blue dice. There are two Goal cards in play: a Green-9 with no points banked on it and a Red-18 with seven points on it. There is one Gimme! in the discard pile, and all players have four cards in their hands. At the beginning of their next turns, each one will refill his or her hand to five cards.