Dragon’s Gambit

Ostelliach's Vice

In taverns across Ostlliach, one game reigns supreme as the chosen gambling fare: Dragon's Gambit .

History

It is hard to say who started Dragon's Gambit or where, but the straightforward game has existed since well before the Breaking, records of the rules largely unchanged in tales from adventures hundreds of years ago and illustrated on scrolls of old festivals and celebrations.

Execution

Standard Rules

First, players agree on a target score to reach or exceed. The most common score is 50, but the game can be adjusted to be shorter (common when waiting for public transit is a target of 30) or longer (such as the popular Lucky 75 competitive tier).
A turn entails a player rolling 2 dice and adding the rolls together. This is the score for the turn.
The player can then choose to keep their score or roll again, giving up the old score in favor the of new. A player can reroll twice for a total of 3 rolls, each time giving up their previous scores if they want to gamble on a higher next time.
If a player rolls doubles, they add this total as a bonus to their score and roll again. If they roll doubles again, they double their score for the entire round and may roll one more time. if they roll a third set of doubles, they call Dragon's Gambit and win immediately. (These are very rare moments and are often when accusations of cheating arise.)
If a player rolls a score of 7, they keep this score and may steal 5 points from another player.

Variations

It is common for a tavern or friend group to have House Rules as well, such as rewards or penalties at specific rolls or scores. A common variant is the tag team Dragon Gambit where one person rolls and their partner decides without seeing the outcome if they keep their score or reroll. It is generally discouraged to communicate between players, whether telepathically or verbally, during these matches but, well, it's a tavern dice game.
Additionally, there is a solo version of the game where a player challenges themself to reach a score within a certain number of rolls, or to end on an exact number. This is usually done as practice by competitive players, but it's not a bad way to pass the time on a wagon either.

Components and tools

A simple game, one can spin up a round with just a pair of dice. It does not even need to be a pair of 6-Siders (though this is most common by far). So long as everyone is rolling the same dice, it's considered fair. Some way to keep score such as paper or a scroll is also considered a requirement, lest people cheat when "remembering" their rolls. Often a tavern or bar will have their own dice for use to discourage claims of cheating with weighted dice.

Participants

The nice thing about Dragon's Gambit is that it requires very little overhead - mostly just two people. That said, there are occasionally competitions with judges overseeing the proceedings, and it is not uncommon to have a spectator keep score as even simple math can become tricky or contentious the drunker a person is.
An extra layer of game is often added by spectators guessing what a person will roll or score, placing their own bets in addition to what the players might have bet.