Drinking games that need nothing but dice
No cards, no cups, no elaborate setup. A pair of dice and people who can count to twelve.
Updated September 2026 · 5 min readFor over-18s. Everything below works with soft drinks exactly as well as it works with anything else, and the games are better when people can still follow the rules. Nothing here is a challenge or a race: no game on this page asks anyone to drink quickly or to keep going, and every one of them assumes that passing is always allowed and never remarked on. Look after each other.
Sevens
Roll two dice and pass them on. Roll a seven and you drink. Roll doubles and you nominate somebody.
That is the whole game. It is the one to open with because nobody has to learn anything, and the seven comes up often enough to keep it moving.
Three Man
Everyone rolls, and the first person to roll a three becomes the Three Man. From then on, any roll containing a three means the Three Man drinks, and they stay Three Man until somebody else rolls a three.
Other rolls: a total of seven means the person to the roller's left drinks, eleven means the right, doubles are handed out to anyone and rolled again. It sounds like a lot and takes two rounds to stick.
Mexico
Roll two dice and read them as a two-digit number, higher die first. Doubles beat all numbers, and 21 beats everything. Lowest roll in the round drinks.
The good version adds bluffing: the first player may look at their roll, keep it hidden, and announce any number they like. The next player can either accept it and try to beat it, or call the bluff. Liar's dice is the same instinct with more dice.
Ship, Captain and Crew
Five dice, three rolls, and you must get a 6, then a 5, then a 4 in that order before the last two dice count as your cargo. Lowest cargo drinks. Failing to get the ship at all is worse and usually carries a double penalty.
It has enough structure to hold attention for a full circuit of the table, which most of these do not.
Dice Pyramid
Write the numbers 2 to 12 in a pyramid, wide at the bottom. Take turns rolling and cross off the number you roll. The person who crosses off the last number of a row hands out drinks equal to the row height.
Needs a scrap of paper, which is the only setup on this list, and gives the evening a visible end point.
Twenty-One
Go round the table rolling one die at a time and adding to a shared total. Whoever pushes the total past 21 drinks and the count restarts.
The tension is that the person before you decides how much risk you inherit, so it generates a lot more argument than a game this simple deserves.
The part that matters
Two things worth agreeing before you start, out loud, once. Anybody may pass on any round without giving a reason, and nobody comments on it. And whoever is driving, pregnant, on medication, or simply not drinking plays the same games with the same drink as everyone else, because a game that singles them out is a worse game.
If somebody has had enough, the game is over for them and that is the end of it. None of these are worth a bad night.
Make one rule of your own
Every group ends up with a house rule, and the games are better for it. The good ones are specific and easy to remember: doubles mean everyone changes seat, a roll of two means the previous rule is cancelled, a five means nobody may say anyone's name until the next five.
Write it down when you invent it. You will not remember it next time, and half the pleasure is having a rule that only your group plays.