Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:38 pm Posts: 690 Location: Birmingham, UK
Profession: Sorcerer
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Gambling is a great way of injecting non-combat conflict into a game and, if the stakes are for something other than money, a way to progress the adventure, too. BUT, all too often, gambling games in RPGs are either a simple skill test or played out by the players as if they were their characters. Both are unsatisfying mechanisms: a simple die roll ends the tension too quickly, and the second option assumes that the players have the same skill with the game as their players (which is not assumed for other elements of Dragon Warriors, such as combat, stealth, etc.). The second option works well if there's no skill involved, such as the Crown & Anchor game played in Glissom, but otherwise should be avoided. So I offer some alternatives: - For games where it's obvious to all players how each is doing, run the game like combat - each player starts with a set amount of "Health Points" and, each round, they attack each other and do damage according to their "weapon". In this context, Attack, Defence, and Damage scores should be assigned according to the character's skill or familiarity with the game their character is playing. The winner is the last person in the game with positive Health Points. This doesn't really work with games that have more than 2 players but could, for example, be used for a gaming tournament played as series of 2-player bouts. For each game, the GM would need to come up with a narrative for what each attribute (Attack, Defence, Damage) represented in the game. And variations could also include armour bypass, too (which would represent reactionary actions the player could take in the game to avoid their position being worsened by the other player's action).
- Skill-based method (attribute checks). In my games, skills are not based on d20 rolls, but a d6 + attribute. in this way, talented characters are consistently better (maybe unassailably so) than their less talented counterparts. For games with no random element, a player with 6 less Intelligence than his opponent will have no chance of victory, which is reasonable for all-skill games like chess. Games with a random element may require a roll with 1d8, 1d10, or higher, depending on how much the random element influences the outcome of the game. For example, chess has no random element, so would be played with 1d6, but poker, which is part skill and part random (but mostly skill), might be played with 1d8, and monopoly, which has a significant random element, might be played with 2d10! If you want something more drawn out than a single check, make the challenge a best of 3 or best of 5, with an opportunity for players to concede or increase their stake each round.
- Alternate skill-based method. The random element of the game is reflected by a number of d6, which each player rolls (the higher the random element, the more d6 are rolled - anywhere from none (for chess) to maybe as many as 6d6 for a highly random game (but still with some skill involved)). The GM decides over how many rounds the game is played and, each round, the player rolls 1d6, adding this to their total, along with a quarter of their Int score (rounded down). If the character has a skill in this game, they add their relevant skill rank, too. The game stops after a pre-determined number of rounds and the player with the highest final score wins. This method is great for allowing players to supplement their stake between each round and bluffing, etc., and players can also withdraw at the end of any round, forfeiting their current stake.
There are a couple of special cases to consider, too: Continued in next post
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