Pieces
All you need are two standard six-sided dice and a dice cup (or something with which to hide the dice). Also, some kind of counter for players to keep track of their lives. Or each player can just use a die, which works. Or pennies. Whatever.
Rules
You should decide before the game starts how many lives you will play with. The number should depend on the number of players you have -- for a lot of people, starting with 3 lives will keep the game shorter, but for only a few, you might want to go with 6. This all just depends on how long you want to play.
The game starts with one player rolling the dice and looking at them, making sure that no one else sees. He then announces a score to the rest of the players -- not necessarily the score shown, though (more on scoring later). You can lie and announce a higher or a lower score if you want.
The dice then pass to the next player. He has a choice: he can either believe the previous player and re-roll the dice or call his bluff and look at the dice. If the dice show a lower score than he announced then the liar loses a life. However, if the previous player wasn’t lying, or if he declared a lower value than the actual roll, the accuser loses a life.
If you choose to believe the previous person and re-roll the dice without looking, you must declare a higher score, even if it means lying. You can still declare something lower than the actual amount, so long as it’s higher than the previous roll (or supposed roll).
But there’s one other choice that adds some strategic subtlety: if you think that the previous player was lying with a lower number than he actually rolled, you don’t have to re-roll the dice at all. Just declare a higher number without looking or rolling and hope for the best. You are still responsible for the number you declare, however, so if the next player calls your bluff you’re the one losing lives.
Now, when someone declares a “Mia” (described below), things change a little bit. Mia is the highest roll possible, so there’s no way the next player could beat it. They instead must accept the call, losing a life, or call the previous person a liar. If they’re right, the liar loses two lives. If they’re wrong, however, they lose two lives.
After someone loses a life, either by rightly accusing, wrongly accusing, or getting Mia’d in the face, a new round starts, and whoever was up to play next gets to start it. Once a player loses all of his lives, he’s out of the game. Play continues until there is only one man standing.
Scoring
The trickiest part of the game is probably the scoring. You don’t add the dice up, instead the score is formed with the higher of the two dice as the tens digit and the lower as the ones digit. So a three and a five would be 53, a six and a one 61, two threes 33, etc.
But it isn’t just about getting the highest score. Rather, the scoring works like this: doubles come first, with lower doubles beating higher doubles. So a 22 beats a 66. Then come the “mixed” numbers, which beat all lower mixed numbers. So a 64 beats a 53, but any double beats any mixed number.
But there is one exception: a roll of 21 (a two and a one) is called a “Mia” and it beats every other roll, period.
So, just for example: 11 beats 53, 44 beats 55, 66 beats 43, 43 beats 32. Everything beats 31. Nothing beats 21. Or if you prefer it more precisely:
21 > 11 > 22 > 33 > 44 > 55 > 66 > 65 > 64 > 63 > 62
> 61 > 54 > 53 > 52 > 51 > 43 > 42 > 41 > 32 > 31
And there you have it.
A gratuitous dice shot. Oh yeah. Check out the pips on that one.
