If Dice Game does it....

[clemon79]

Huh? Every Outburst I've ever seen comes with a d10 and a d3.

I had an early edition of Outburst that came in a long box, a cribbage board to count the score, and to determine the bonus answer you rolled two d6 (0-5) and added them.

Oh, you know what? Upon retrospect, I do remember that one, you're right.

[TLEberle]

So here's the easy fix. Given that TPIR has no problem with redundant games (cf Bonus/Shell), you rework Dice Game. I happen to like shuffleboard, so I'm going with that. You may use whatever method you like. Our intrepid contestant slides a shufflepuck up and down the table, and wherever it lands, that's the number of play. Contestant guesses higher or lower. Repeat three times, check to see if the car is won.

Done and dusted.

[clemon79]

Our intrepid contestant slides a shufflepuck up and down the table, and wherever it lands, that's the number of play. Contestant guesses higher or lower.

Modification fails without riddles or Jim Perry.

[Steve Gavazzi]

Let's say that somebody at TPIR is absolutely desperate to use 0s, 7s, 8s, and 9s in Dice Game.  (I'm not sure why they would be, but that seems to be where this thread's going tonight, so let's just run with it.)  Let's say they also just happen to be looking at YouTube and come upon some clips of Deluxe Dice Game.  They think, "Hey, maybe we can bring this back with a modified format!"

So they come up with this, for those oh-so-frequent times when they want to offer 30- or 40-thousand-dollar cars without playing 3 Strikes:  The basic gameplay is the same as always, but on each number, the contestant rolls two dice, with 0s on one side instead of 6s.  He must guess whether the digit is higher or lower than the total of the roll.  If he rolls 10, which obviously can't be the next digit because 10 isn't a digit, the number is lit up automatically as a reward for being lucky in an otherwise harder-than-usual game.

Is this a solid idea?  I'm not sure.  But it has a specific purpose, it avoids the use of weird-ass dice that 99% of people aren't going to recognize as dice, and it doesn't kill regular Dice Game.

[clemon79]

Is this a solid idea?  I'm not sure.  But it has a specific purpose, it avoids the use of weird-ass dice that 99% of people aren't going to recognize as dice, and it doesn't kill regular Dice Game.

Go back to Bob Zager's initial suggestion and Gene's chart, which isn't going to be too different with your layout. It makes the game ridiculously hard to win because the dice are going to err towards numbers in the middle of the range. At least Bob is outright giving the player the car for hitting the 1-in-36 shot (which would be ultimately 1-in-9 since a player gets four rolls of the dice), where you're just giving them the number.

[Steve Gavazzi]

I've modified Bob's charts for my format:

[font="Lucida Console"]---[color="#FF0000"] 0  1  2  3  4  5[/color]
--+----------------
[/font][font="Lucida Console"][color="#FF0000"]0[/color] | 0  1  2  3  4  5
[color="#FF0000"]1[/color] | 1  2  3  4  5  6
[color="#FF0000"]2[/color] | 2  3  4  5  6  7
[color="#FF0000"]3[/color] | 3  4  5  6  7  8
[color="#FF0000"]4[/color] | 4  5  6  7  8  9
[color="#FF0000"]5[/color] | 5  6  7  8  9  w[/font]

0   |  1
1   |  2
2   |  3
3   |  4
4   |  5
5   |  6
6   |  5
7   |  4
8   |  3
9   |  2
10  |  1

On four out of nine rolls, you're going to either have a 0 or a 9, have only one or two digits that go against the odds, or get the number automatically for rolling a 10.  When you're playing the game for a 3 Strikes-calibre car, I'm not sure this is an awful thing.

(And I don't like the whole "If such-and-such random event occurs at any point, you win the car without playing the rest of the game" deal.  It strikes me as far too big of a reward.)

[TLEberle]

it avoids the use of weird-ass dice that 99% of people aren't going to recognize as dice,

I think you underestimate the intersection of TPIR viewer and D&D player.

[Neumms]

I remember a time when Aces were played when they were drawn (so none of this "hold them aside" crap, since most folks forgot they had one in their pocket anyway), and were wild, but only up to $1000. That made it an interesting decision, and especially if one was drawn near a time when the contestant was likely to stop.

I must've been thinking of Gambit. Well, not entirely, but I'm sure you guys remember correctly and agree the "hold them aside" crap is the problem.

[TLEberle]

I must've been thinking of Gambit. Well, not entirely, but I'm sure you guys remember correctly and agree the "hold them aside" crap is the problem.

I don't agree at all. What if you want a little longer to contemplate your bid without a host braying at you to make up your mind?

The biggest problems Card Game has are that you have to guess the price of a car, and being over by a dollar sinks you. If you came up with a game where you had one chance to price a car within $2,000 without going over, I don't think you'd have any more successes than Card Game does.

[clemon79]

I don't agree at all. What if you want a little longer to contemplate your bid without a host braying at you to make up your mind?

Then you should have drawn the ace a little later.

Topping out the wild value of an Ace at $1000 fixed that, because they either were ready to stop, in which case they fairly quickly fine-tuned the Ace to get the bid where they wanted it to be, or they didn't, in which case they made it $1000 and played on.

If you came up with a game where you had one chance to price a car within $2,000 without going over, I don't think you'd have any more successes than Card Game does.

The problem is simply that it hasn't aged well with the inflated price of cars, and the very-top-level-basic premise of the game (that a card is worth its value * $100) is one that can't really be updated cleanly; as such they have tried to update pretty much everything else ASIDE from that untouchable premise, but that's really the premise that breaks the game in 2012. When the readout only had four digits in it back in the day, it worked a lot better because as you got close you had to think about whether your next draw was going to take you over where you wanted to be, and a $1000 window was pretty lenient if you drew the right card at the start.

[TheLastResort]

Why does Card Game HAVE to be played for cars?  Play it for lower priced prizes like trips and such and be done with it.

[MikeK]

Why does Card Game HAVE to be played for cars?  Play it for lower priced prizes like trips and such and be done with it.

Wha-wha-whaaaa?  You're tinkering with something that has worked for decades!  There will be riots in the streets!  Imagine the chaos and looting!  Oh the humanity!

And then most of the G-R membership will go back to their parents' basements when curfew hits.

[Dbacksfan12]

Why does Card Game HAVE to be played for cars?  Play it for lower priced prizes like trips and such and be done with it.

I've often wondered this myself for other games, such as Money Game and Lucky Seven.

[clemon79]

I've often wondered this myself for other games, such as Money Game and Lucky Seven.

There's absolutely no reason Money Game couldn't be played for a bedroom set, just like there's no reason Joker couldn't be played for a car. But they've decided that part of the formula is that there are Car Games and there are Not Car Games, and when you're doing a special show (like the Young Driver's Special thing earlier this week where they were all car games) you can go in one direction and make a Not Car Game into a Car Game if you need to for time or variety, but it doesn't go in the other direction, ever. It Just Is. (Not saying you're not, but man, I wish people would accept It Just Is as an answer around here a little more often.)

Also, note that for the most part car games are some of the longer, more involved games on the show. (And rightly so.) So if you've decided you are gonna offer on average X cars per show, and you have room for X long games per show, it follows that those are gonna match up, or else you have to play short games for cars to even things out. And I think we all agree, gimmick shows aside (and really it even twinges at me on the gimmick shows) that playing Pick-A-Number or Double Prices for a car is incredibly unsatisfying.

[JasonA1]

I've often wondered this myself for other games, such as Money Game and Lucky Seven.

"We're looking for the front half of the HDTV..."

The biggest reason to me is that they simply started that way. The foreign versions can get away with it because their audiences never got introduced to a game in a certain light. I mean, sure, you can play the Pyramid Winner's Circle for a Mediterranean Cruise, but it sure looks strange after years of playing it for large sums of money. But in addition, as I alluded to above, a lot of the car games were created with that prize in mind. "If you have just one dollar left, I'll sell you that living room" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, for example (in my opinion). They are often the longer games with the best moments of tension.

In fact, now that I think about it, I have seen a scenario where they tried this. On Mark Kriski's TPIR94 pilot, they played Lucky Seven, and then 3 Strikes later in the half hour for a sailboat. It felt really strange that 3 Strikes took longer and had more drama than the game played for twice as much money earlier in the show.

-Jason