The Great Gamer Gift Grab – 2025 Edition

Years ago my long time gamer group decided that we should do a gift exchange, but gosh darn it, we had to make it something special geeky. Given our tendency to have long drawn out discussions over house rule resolutions, so we would do so for our version of a White Elephant Gift Exchange.

The original one had rules written down, added to, amended by a simple majority of 50%+1, dice rolls, as many rounds of swapping seating order as time and patience would allow, and general mayhem. Some rules were lost, others rewritten from memory, changes made and later discarded. In short, it was a lot like our TTRPG games.

So from my Gaming Table to yours, Behold the most recent iteration of the Doomsday Droolers Great Gamer Gift Grab!

Proposed The Great Gamer Gift Grab 2025 – Draft 1.0

Part of the First

Last place in each round gains 1 Reroll Chip to be used in Part of the Second

1) Initial Seating Order: Dice Roll Off
Options include

• a) Product of 1d30 x 1d6 (d30s have a special place in our history)
• b) Highest hand of poker dice (best hand after 2 rerolls)
• c) Any other approved dice method sufficiently random enough to generate as few ties as possible.

2) Secondary Seating Order: Elimination Round
Options include

• a) Rumble in the Dungeon
• b) Schrodinger’s Cat
• c) Some other elimination game

3) Final Sorting Round: Order of the Grab aka the Steal
Options include

• a) Wizard
• b) Hearts
• c) Sushi-Go
• d) Some other card game of point scoring
  • In the event of a tie, the Gamers will enter sudden death by a card draw with the high card winning (Aces high)

Part of the Second

Gifts of $15-$25 ish, exceptions for really cool stuff.

4) Four is Right Out
5) Top Scoring Gamer from #3 gets to select the first gift and open it
6) Next highest score gets to select an unopened gift or grab an already opened one, as long as there are no immediate take backs
7) Targeted player may roll a d20 save 12+ to avoid the steal, forcing the Attacking player to select a different gift
8) Reroll chips may be spent to reroll their save or force another player to reroll
9) For every time a player is successfully attacked, they get a +2 to their save roll, to a maximum of +10
10) If a player failed to save, they are the new Attacking player (no immediate steal backs!)
11) Once all players have been able to grab a gift, one final steal may be attempted in the reverse order of #3

Part of the 3rd

12) Once accepted, the rules may still be changed by a majority vote of 60% or better by players present
13) Remaining reroll chips may be honoured for campaigns in 2026 with GM permission, expiring 31 December 2026

Addendum

• In years past, the First Part resulted in several quick games like Sushi Go, Archeology, and other means to determine an order of seating, as anyone who has sat down from the wrong person in a trick taking game knows.
• We’ve tried many a Saving Throw mechanic in the Second Part, to gamify and add chaos but also because some of us got stolen from repeatedly. Feedback this year was to just add rerolls. I’m thinking of maybe making them available to be spent by attacker or defender but once successful, they are spent. Meanwhile, I’m planning on using some of those +2 tokens for Pirate Borg or similar for minor modifiers.
• Our Table, Our Rules. If it entertains you to do something like this at your table, have fun and merry be the chaos!