Dust Devils - first session

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Matt,

Just a couple of points to ponder ...

ONE
I am not sure that Narrating another player's PC to suffer less damage is against the spirit of the game, given its other text. Nothing in text suggests that the wounding of other player-characters is in any way an advantage to a player.

In some ways, it comes down to what you would to encourage players players to do – which is to say, specifying what are rewards good for. If they can help one another freely with spent chips, with no price to pay in damage of their own, they will do so; if you make it hurt, it may be less common.

Another, related issue, is how you perceive player-characters to be interacting. For instance, in our game, at least two of them are at distinct cross-purposes at the moment (the players know it, but the characters don't yet). To take it to Unforgiven, would Little Bill be a player-character? Do you see play as a matter of potentially irreconcilable conflicts among player-characters?

Now, the funny part is that if the goal is to address the Premise you've stated, then even such a PC vs. PC story can be created with the players enjoying themselves thoroughly, and not operating at cross-purposes. That is, even if Little Bill and William Munny are both PCs, that doesn't mean that the players have to be competing – and given every aspect of Dust Devils as written, Little Bill's player might well spend chips in Munny's favor during that last showdown.

So I'm saying something kind of complex – that if you penalize "helping" one another, you make it less common, and promote a player vs. player thing; but if you don't, you make it more common, and promote a player-with-player thing that still permits PC vs. PC conflict.

TWO
I think that Hero Wars or Pool style "goals" is the key issue for the outcomes of hands. So if I'm shooting at four guys shooting at me, my goal is to win the friggin' gunfight, not just to take them down one by one, round by round, draw by draw. I'd play it as my one hand vs. one hand representing all of them (a biggish one, naturally).

Now, if I get a lousy hand that still wins (say a high pair), I win the fight – but I can only do a shitty little bit of damage, distributed across the combatants in some way. Now whoever does the narrating will have to take all that into account, including distributing the damage.

This is a totally, totally different way to play from the traditional mode. I like it a lot, and I suggest trying it out in play before making rules tweaks.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

For our next Poker Trivia Question: can anyone remember what the order of suits is? There are no ties in Poker. Someone always has the high hand.
Mike

My understanding is that this is *not* true.  I remember looking it up way-back-when, and according to the most authoritative source I could find at the time . . . no suit is higher than any other.  Identical (non-flush) straights will split the pot.  If 2 players both have 2 pair, Aces and Eights, with a Queen kicker, they split the pot.   The "tie breaker" in poker is always the high card - if one of our Aces n' Eights players had a King kicker to other guys' Queen, he'd win.  If you can't break it that way (very rare), it really is a tie.  Even with flushes, you look at the value of the cards, not the suit.  If (in some odd wild card and/or multi-deck game) you have flushes with the same value . . . again, that's a rare, "real" tie.

Gordon
(Who doesn't put it past Mr. Holmes to have posed this as a "trick question", to see if anyone really thought suits had ranks . . . ;-)

Not a trick question. Just an honest one. I don't know the answer myself (I think I remember something about spades being high, hence the special ace). I may simply have been suffering from the misconception that you mention, however.

OTOH, you can have tied flushes, then, even without wild cards or multiple decks. Unlikely, but 3, 5, 7, 10, A in spades is the same as 3, 5, 7, 10, A in hearts. Unless you have a high suit.

Does anyone know for sure? I mention this because the game has wild cards and situations that have few cards which make such ties more likely. And they are considering multiple decks. If you can tie, what happens in Dust Devils, then?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Oh yeah,

The way we played, which I thought was by the rules (evidently not), was that the Dealer has one deck for any and all NPCs in a conflict, and the players share one deck. Again, no shuffling of any kind during the conflict, but shuffle thoroughly after each one.

(Unsurprisingly, casual shuffling as a "thing to do with one's hands" was common for both decks, just like rolling or arranging one's dice can be.)

I kind of liked that effect, and I'm thinking in terms of probabilities. I like the idea that character effectiveness is "spread" across the PCs via the removal-factor of everyone drawing at once. I like the idea that this effect does NOT, NOT apply between players and GMs because they are using different decks. This ties into my observation that GM and player(s) are not "playing poker against one another."

As for ties? No problem. If the goals are compatible (I shoot you, you shoot me), they both succeed. If they aren't, they both fail. In fact, I rather like the idea.

True ties will be very rare anyway, as Matt's rules do include the ranks of Suits, thus ties of hand type would also have to include full matches of Suit type. Not real likely.

Best,
Ron

[jrs]

Mike,

In Dust Devils, Matt stipulates the suit ranking from low to high as clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades.  I have no idea if this is standard for poker (although I have this notion that the ace of spades is considered to be the high card).  I do know that this same ranking is used in bridge.

Julie

[Matt Snyder]

Mike,

In Dust Devils, Matt stipulates the suit ranking from low to high as clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades.  I have no idea if this is standard for poker (although I have this notion that the ace of spades is considered to be the high card).  I do know that this same ranking is used in bridge.

Yeah, this is how I always learned it: "reverse alphabetical order." Hence, Spades highest, Hearts second, etc.

I didn't consider whether this was "correct" poker, just going w/ the poker rules I knew and had fun w/. Heck, probably isn't even the kind of poker played back in th day, but it works.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Mike,

Yeah, my "wild cards/multi deck" comment re: flushes was wacky - of course you can have "identical" flushes.  For what it's worth, the faq for rec.gambling.poker (I found it at http://www.conjelco.com/faq/poker.html) says "Suits are not used to break ties, nor are cards beyond the fifth; only the best five cards in each hand are used in the comparison. In the case of a tie, the pot is split equally among the winning hands."

But the S-H-D-C ranking is (as far as I know) the "default" ranking of suits in many games.

Gordon

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks Gordon, I shoulda thought to check Usenet.

Anyhow, I like Ron's suggestion for ties. I envision those two flushes being laid down simultaneously, and both players realizing that their characters had just shot each other dead in one shot. Nifty.

FWIW, I play a lot of Sheepshead (State game of Wisconsin) in which the order of the suits is C-S-H-D (for queens and jacks only, which are high trump). I highly recommend the game.

Mike

[unodiablo]

Great post everyone...

Just a few notes here. I did a lot of playtesting with the card system myself, and I did it in a fairly different way. I suppose it's my habit to skew most games in a 'cinematic' fashion, but I have been allowing larger than 5 or 7 card hands (sometimes my character ends up with 10 with a Devil bonus, and a 'big weapon bonus' (think Shotgun or Sharps Rifle)).

I do give each NPC a hand, based on a plot importance (equal to hero, important, and pistol-fodder) and allow the hero to spread his hand as need be (i.e. if he ends up w/ 4 pairs, he gets to play them all as needed, against indiviual NPC's.). In one of my PM's to Matt I think I might have asked about adding rankings for 'non-standard poker hands' as well. I've mainly played out a series of combats and steel-eyed showdowns of will...

I also give bonus cards for various advantages - Big Gun or Signature Weapon, suprise, etc... This is a more standard way of handling things, but it also works well. Just goes to show the flexibility of the rules, I think!

Sean
(the only Forge member who hasn't read Hero Wars?)