h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The game sounds very much like a favorite in my household called Zilch with the simple additional rule that when one player decides not to continue rolling the next player has the option of taking over the previous players position. If they roll counters they carry on as if they had scored all the points and the previous player scores nothing. If their first roll has no counters (Zilch in our game) They score nothing, their turn ends and the previous player gets to keep his score.

The game I learned as a child was called Farkle. It was the same as your Zilch, except any addition to a triplet you rolled would double the value of a triplet, you used six dice, and a short straight was a (non accumulating) score.

Y'all are right. I saw Farkle in Wal-Mart a while back, but don't remember the manufacturer. Suffice it to say, it's on the market and bears enough similarities to the game I described to lead me to believe I was taught an off-shoot version. Someone knew the rules but had lost one of the six dice, yet decided to play anyway...

Here's a good link for an on-line version:
http://www.spig.net/farkle.html

Bless,

B4