Article by Joe Celko (71062.1056@CompuServe.COM).
Revision 1
April 19, 1998
Ship, Captain and Crew is generally a bar game played for drinks with a dice cup and five dice provide by the bar. Or at least that is how I learned at US Army Officer Clubs.
Looking at a copy of THE WORLD'S GREATEST DICE GAMES by Gil Jacobs (John Hanson, Milbrae, CA; ISBN unknown), I found two versions of the game. In one version, the 1-2-3 are the ship, captain and crew; in the second version the 6-5-4 are the ship, captain and crew. He also went into other elaborate rules for large multi-player games.
In the simple 6-5-4 version you must first have the ship (6) before you have the captain (5); likewise, you must first have the captain before you have the crew (4). This can be very frustrating when you fail to roll a six, and have a score of zero.
As you shoot each one of these points in order, you can pull that die out of the cup and set it aside. Alternatively, you can elective to put as many of the dice in the cup and try again (this is stupid, since it does not improve you odds, but it is legal).
Each player gets at least one and no more than three flops (toss of the dice cup) in the two player game. The score is the total of the two dice left over after the Ship, Captain and Crew have been completed. A 2 is the lowest score and is called a "minimum" while 12 is the highest score and is called a "midnight"; I don't know why.
The highest score wins. If there is a tie in a two player game, they just play another hand and buy their own drinks.
If there is a tie in a multi-player game, then the (n) players who tied for high score play shoot two dice again for highest score. This sporcess continues until you have a winner.