[quote name=\'gshowguy\' date=\'Aug 25 2004, 03:34 PM\'] Now, that was hilarious. If you think you can come up with a better revival than me, give it a shot. [/quote]
Okay.
(DISCLAIMER: I threw this together in about five minutes. It has not been playtested for visual entertainment value or mathematical / budgetary balance. So you're really not gonna end my day if you fry the hell out of it.)
The problem with HR is the simple fact that players are encouraged not to keep the dice in the latter stages of the game. So what needs to happen with any revival is a rule change that will encourage a player to take that chance to clear the board.
I'm not going to bore you with crappy set design details, I'm worried about the game here, not how it looks. Get Thom Filicia in here if you want to worry about the set.
First things first: No columns, none of that crap. The game is played against the Big Numbers board at all times, except there is a readout above it, which displays the value of the Jackpot. The Jackpot is an amount of money put into the pot at the start of each game, which is awarded to a player IF AND ONLY IF they knock the last number off of the board in a game.
Standard HR tossup applies. Player who wins control of dice decides whether to play or pass, but player who eventually rolls dice decides HOW MANY DICE THEY WILL ROLL. (This will hopefully encourage attempts to knock off those 2's, 3's, and 4's. It also fixes the "only the 1 is left" deadlock.)
Game pays $50 for each number knocked off of the board. Game is lost with TWO CONSECUTIVE bad rolls without an insurance marker. (The first one puts you On The Bubble or In Danger or some crap, with appropriate red tinted lighting, not unlike The Block on Studio 7.)
Winning the game by knocking off the last number wins the Jackpot, winning it by opponent crapping out pays the winner a lesser amount.
Immediately start new game: relight the board, increase (or restock) Jackpot, lather, rinse, repeat, until Time's Up Bell sounds. (Yeah, I don't like Time's Up Bells either, but we gotta shoehorn this into a half-hour.)
Winner plays the traditional Big Numbers for whatever. Winner also gets one free Insurance Marker for winning the game. Because of the increased win percentage, there is no need to increase the Big Numbers payout beyond $10,000.
Bring back returning champions or not. You choose. (I choose to, of course, but I'm not looking to sell this.)
My way of thinking, the extra rolls, in combination with deciding whether to roll one die of two, is going to make it MUCH easier to clear the board, but not SO easy that an extra cash incentive for doing so isn't warranted. I'm also thinking that it will make someone keep the dice where on the original show they would pass them.
So there you go. Flame away, but, again, remember this is FAR from fully developed, and may have holes the size of Mack trucks that haven't occurred to me.
