Roulette

[Lxndr]

So, strange person that I am, while looking over a site for dice to buy, I came across a miniature roulette wheel.  After some thinking, I decided to purchase it for a rather geeky reason - in case I came up with some sort of resolution mechanic.  Besides, I got mine for $20 including shipping, so it's a novelty if nothing else.  I make weird purchases all the time.

But I digress.

It arrived yesterday.  And after looking over the rules of roulette, spinning the wheel, and sleeping on it, I've got the bare bones of a resolution system for it.  Will this go any farther?  I don't know.  I love the idea, but buying a roulette wheel can seem... excessive... for a lot of folk.  And 38 (36 numbers plus the zero and the double-zero) doesn't really seem to divide really well into any set of dice I can think of, which makes producing an alternative somewhat difficult.  If I can figure out a way to cross that hurdle...

But I digress, once again.  

My idea is relatively simple, which is nice.  I like simple.  Characters have some sort of trait or skill or descriptor, which is ranked entirely in whole numbers.  From these attributes, plus perhaps other hobgoblins in the rule system, we are able to derive a number.

That number turns into a number of chips.  All involved parties pony up their chips simultaneously, wherever they choose, and must bid every chip they have.  They can put all their chips on one position, or they can (more logically) split their chips up into numerous positions.  All the standard roulette bets exist.

Once everyone is satisfied with where their chips are, or whenever the GM is ready, he spins the wheel.  Eventually, of course, it lands on a number.  

Pay-outs are the same as roulette.  If you put a chip on red, and it lands on a red number, you get two chips back (if it lands on a black number or one of the zeros, you get none).  The best pay-out occurs if you put a chip on a number, and it comes up that number (the payout is 35:1, so you'd get 36 chips back).  Nonetheless, the odds still favor the house.

The chips you win (or not) can be spent, somehow, ensuring success.  A lot of number crunching, or at the very least a lot more eyeballing, needs to be done before that can be determined (perhaps a task is "rated" in difficulty, and one needs to spend a certain number to beat that difficulty - or perhaps NPCs bid as well, and it turns into a spending war).  

They can also, possibly, be carried over to the next action (any that aren't spent on ensuring success, anyways).

So, this is a very basic idea... but what do y'all think?

[Paul Czege]

Hey Alexander,

"Kewl mechanic" discussions are supposed to be off limits for Indie Game Design. But I will say this. I quite like the notion of an entirely resource-based system for ongoing character effectiveness tied to fluctuations (from gambling opportunities) triggered by circumstances within the setting.

Paul

[Lxndr]

Oh, um, well, oops?  Sorry, I guess.  I mostly hover around the 2nd half of this site, or reply to threads that have already been created.  So I'm not entirely up on what should and shouldn't be here.

That said, I like this notion/mechanic enough that I probably will be following up on it, in one way or another (if I do make it resource-based, with characters based on a pile of chips, then I've got to come up with something to balance out the "house advantage" - otherwise, in the long run, I'd wind up with a bunch of characters without any chips at all, and what's the fun in that?).  

I'll wander on back to my dark corner until it turns into something worth posting here, and then I'll return.  :)

[Shreyas Sampat]

Well, you could always make the payouts exactly fair, as opposed to house-advantaged like they are in roulette.  Seems like the most elegant solution to me.

[Lxndr]

Hm.  Unfortunately, that still wouldn't work, I don't think.

It's like The Pool, in that way.  In The Pool, without some outside agency occasionally giving you dice (even just "free GM dice" or "free dice from a Trait"), eventually you may lose enough gambles to empty your pool, and then you'll "thrash at the bottom."

Similarly, even if the pay-out was equal in "the Wheel," as opposed to stacked slightly in the house's favor (the stack is only 5%, by the way - small, and a hard stack to get rid of, at least if I want to use a standard roulette wheel), without some way to get chips that doesn't involve gambling from the current stacks, the odds are likely that eventually, it'll go down to zero, and the player won't be able to do anything at all.

Of course, I could design around that inevitability.  "Down to zero?  Bummer, man.  Roll up a new character."  It'd be a very fatalistic game, but I could work with that.  Hmmm.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think that some metagame way to pull chips out of the air is in order here - maybe you can add facts to actions to modify the payout; adding complications increases your potential payout, while adding benefits reduces it.  Of course, that's juat another level of gambling...

[Mike Holmes]

Huh, I thought I'd posted to this thread, but it doesn't seem to have gotten through.

Problem one. Shreyas' idea won't work, because the ratios for payouts would be odd. To make a red bet even, for instance, you'd have to pay out 9:19. So you'd have to bet in groups of nine, or have fractional chips.

Problem two. Setting targets will be weird. Because a player can nearly garuntee that they'll get back as many chips as they bet by hedging, or, IOW, covering all bets. Think of it this way, I put half on red, and half on black. The only way I don't get the same amount back is if the number comes up green.

So, you have this easy take, but it limits your total potential returns. So, what if I need more than the X chips that I started with back? Well, I have to bet a little less safely. Meaning I increase my chances of busting, in order to obtain what I need. Basically, whatever the player's "target" number of chips is, he has a minimum best betting strategy. If there's no profit to getting more chips than the target, the player has no incentive to get any more result than that minimum. Only a single best strategy for each case means that this does not add anything to play; it's just a very fancy and complicated to understand resolution system. Carry over doesn't help because the best strategy is still, not to play.

What would make sense would be to have some benefit for getting more chips than the minimum required. Success levels or excess chips as Exp or something. That gives the player an incentive to gamble more, and makes things more "fuzzy".

Also, the player can control all the potential payouts. If he bets 5 on red, and 5 on even, he has slightly less than 25% chance of doubling his chips, a slightly less than 50% chance of getting bcak all his chips, and a somewhat better than 25% chance of busting. So, in the end, we know that he'll have 0, 10, or 20 chips when he's done. That's a lot of "accuracy" in player determination of outcome for a randomizer.

It's intriguing, but it needs something else.

Mike

[Lxndr]

You're right, mike, Shreyas' idea doesn't work without yanking a Roulette wheel apart (though it makes coming up with a dicing mechanic easier, as long as I don't come up with any special rules gimmick involving the zeroes - roll 2d6 "percentile style" to get a # between 1 and 36).

Now, more generally, let's assume the following (ideas culled from, well, all over, though most of them are at least related to what I was thinking at the beginning of the thread):

[*]Conflict-based resolution (though I suppose you could make it task-based if you really wanted, but roulette wheels are sloooooow).
[*]Each player has a stack of chips, representing their character's current resources, however they might be defined.
[*]In any particular conflict, each player may not bid more chips than their character's appropriate statistic/trait value (or combined values, or whatever).  He can bid less, however.
[*]Any bonus chips the GM gives the player for however the reward mechanic is defined, the GM also gets to place as a bet, after all other bets are placed.  This ensures players don't have complete control over their winnings.
[*]In any particular conflict, a player may only spend chips on success from his winnings, not directly from his stack.  In other words, you bid nothing, you spend nothing.
[*]Any chip from winnings can either go back into the stack (possibly increasing the size of the stack) or contribute towards success, with multiple levels of success possible.
[/list:u]
In this case, merely "breaking even" would result in a reduction of the stack if you wanted any success at all, or result in no success if you wanted to keep your stack from plummetting.  In other words, in this case you would generally (I hesitate to say always) want more than the X chips you started with.

Hmm...

[iago]

You're right, mike, Shreyas' idea doesn't work without yanking a Roulette wheel apart (though it makes coming up with a dicing mechanic easier, as long as I don't come up with any special rules gimmick involving the zeroes - roll 2d6 "percentile style" to get a # between 1 and 36).

Zero could be "critical success", double zero could be "critical failure", I guess.  Or they could figure into some sort of open-ended thing. And rolling (d6 - 1 ) x 6 + d6 does work (requires some math, though, since someone rolling a '3,6' isn't rolling a 36, they're rolling a 18.

[Lxndr]

Zero could be "critical success", double zero could be "critical failure", I guess.  Or they could figure into some sort of open-ended thing. And rolling (d6 - 1 ) x 6 + d6 does work (requires some math, though, since someone rolling a '3,6' isn't rolling a 36, they're rolling a 18.

Well, if I want people to be able to do this game without a roulette wheel, then I probably should avoid making the zeros special - after all, they're already sort of a "critical failure" as is, unless someone takes one of the few bets that include them.  

Besides, the odds aren't significantly different between a regular wheel (0 and 00), a European wheel (no 00), and the 2d6 method, as this table below should show.

Code Select Expand


2d6    European American
Straight 2.8%   2.7%     2.6%
Split    5.6%   5.4%     5.3%
Street   8.3%   8.1%     7.9%
Square  11.1%  10.8%    10.5%
Column  33.3%  32.4%    31.6%
Dozen   33.3%  32.4%    31.6%
Even*   50.0%  48.6%    47.4%
* Even Money includes Red, Black, Odd, Even, High & Low

As for the 2d6 thing, I wouldn't want people to do all that math - counting in base six is HARD.  I'd just have a simple table on the back cover of the book, or something.  Probably arranged two-dimensionally, with one set of numbers across the top and another set of numbers down the side.  Then just cross reference the row# on your red d6 with the column # on your black d6... and voila.

What I'm considering for a "critical success" mechanic is letting each player choose a "lucky number" for their character.  No matter what else they're trying, no matter how many other chips they bid, they would always have a "phantom bid" on that number.  This would mean that, every once in a while, wham, they'd get an extra 36 chips out of effectively nowhere.

I'm still waffling between "character as a pile of chips" and "traits as chip generators."  The two methods I'm pondering would work, basically, as follows, assuming the character has a trait and/or combined applicable traits of "X" in either scenario.

Method 1:
The character has a pile of chips.  He can bid any chips out of his pool, up to but not exceeding X.  Other elements of the game (GM, items, the lucky number mechanic above) can give him bonus chips - these can exceed X, but the player may have less control over where they are bid (and here I picture a weapon, maybe a gun, that always puts a chip on red; and then a bullet-proof vest, which always puts a chip on black).  His winnings must be split between "what goes back in the pile" and "what gets spent on success."  More chips equals greater success - or a greater chance of reaching success (depending on the "target number").  Your stack reaching zero is in some way horrible.  Perhaps character loss?

Method 2:
The character has a much smaller pile of chips.  Whenever he takes an action, he gets X chips to put on the wheel, and can add any additional chips from his pile that he wishes (perhaps he's required to bid at least 1 from the pile, to represent effort).  As in method 1, other elements of the game (GM, items, etc.) can also give him bonus chips, but these aren't as prevalent.  Winnings, once again, can be split between the pile and the success.  As above, more chips equal greater success.

(Then of course, there's Method 2b, which is "no pile of chips at all, all your winnings go directly to success.")

Sticking with outside bets generally keeps the piles of chips from rising too quickly - even money gives 2 chips back on a win per chip put in, and the dozen and column bets give 3.  After that point, things get wonky.  Square bets give you 9 chips (including the one you bid), street bets give 12, split bets hand out 18, and the straight-up bet gives a whopping 36 chips.  The rest of the game system should be able to handle both extremes.

[Mike Holmes]

That's a cool idea, Fred. Or, if one really didn't want to have the zeros come up, one could (to avoid tearring up the wheel) just put a little modeling clay into the zero slots to make it impossible for the ball to land there. This might affect the distribution, OTOH.

The slowest part of Roulette, BTW, is calculating the payouts, especially for complex bets by lots of players.

Any bonus chips the GM gives the player for however the reward mechanic is defined, the GM also gets to place as a bet, after all other bets are placed. This ensures players don't have complete control over their winnings.

Cool. The GM has very fine control over the bonus then. In fact, it would be the finest control that I've heard of outside of infinite regression mechanics (see Andrew Martin's games for examples). This is both good and bad. The greater flexibility means that the GM can grade performance more finely, but that means that his decisions will seem more arbitrary (unless you define exactly what the specific bonuses are given for).

I think that it would be effective in getting players scrambling for the rewards.

In any particular conflict, a player may only spend chips on success from his winnings, not directly from his stack. In other words, you bid nothing, you spend nothing.

Representing the character not even trying, I suppose?

Any chip from winnings can either go back into the stack (possibly increasing the size of the stack) or contribute towards success, with multiple levels of success possible.

This gives the player an unusual level of control over how much success they have, presumably extending into just how much they "failed by" in the case of not reaching the target. But I'm not sure that's bad. Basically the player can only choose to do less than the maximum afforded by their winnings.

That said, the old problem of outcome control is still present. If I know the target, then I can plan my bets to get the exact amount of output that I want. This means that, though I can decide how much to spend, I will always be able to count on having a certain amount to do it with (assuming things turn out my way). So, if the TN is 15, and I want a level 5 success, I can organize things so that I get exactly the 20 that I need if things go well for me. So, in effect, I'll rarely be getting more chips than I want to spend. Using the example above, for betting strategy of 5 on red, and 5 on even, I will either get my 20 and spend them as planned, get 10, and spend them all to mitigate the failure somewhat, or get zero and bust. Why would I shoot for 25 when it would lower my chances of success, and the only added benefit would be to add the other 5 to my bank?

Bonuses in this case are just icing on the cake in most cases, as the real gamble would be to count on the GM giving you enough bonus to make your target.

Alex and I talked about Opposed stuff on IRC, but that's problematic. The cups idea we discussed might work. Players having, say, five cups and putting chips under them secretly. And, BTW, might solve the problem of coding chips in roulette. In a casino each player has different color chips so they can all bet on the same table, and everyone knows whose bet is whose. You can get little opaque plastic cups of the right size in different colors. Chips are more difficult in comparison rarely coming in anything but red, white and blue. The other advantage of the cup mechanic is that it limits the number of bets making calculating payouts easier.

In this case, merely "breaking even" would result in a reduction of the stack if you wanted any success at all, or result in no success if you wanted to keep your stack from plummetting. In other words, in this case you would generally (I hesitate to say always) want more than the X chips you started with.

It really doesn't matter what your strategy is, this reduction will occur at generally the same rate. Betting other than safest simply means that you are randomizing your length more. This works fine, however, as the player will then look to the importance of the event being resolved in order to determine how much of a gamble they should take. The bonuses will have to be regular enough that they tend to balance out this reduction, or the player will bottom out with some certainty (unless they have vast resources, which makes the chip hoarding unimportant).

As long as you're going to try to mitigate this effect with bonuses, I'd keep the zeros, and just make sure they're mitigated as well.

The system implied, BTW, does mean that sometimes you'll have the "wallowing" effect at times, but this, as noted, isn't bad itself. Wallowing being losing most or all of your chips and, therefore not having the resources to win enough to be able to spend on success recularly. The problem with wallowing is not that the character can't succeed, that's actually cool. You get a sorta "down and out" effect. The problem is that it becomes difficult to get out of the situation. Unless the bonuses are very accessible, climbing out of a wallow with this system may be really painful. To test, start with just one chip, and see what I mean. This difficulty can lead to sucking up for Bonuses at a level that's so high that it's not neccessarily healthy.

The "base chip" for free would go a long way to help here. I like that philosphically, because there's no way to make one chip into a safe bet, but you can go long on it.

On the opposite end of the wallow, however, you have the embarrasment of riches, which will also occur with some regularity in the game. In this case, the player hits a jackpot, and has more chips than he know's what to do with. He'll always put the max into success, and bet fairly large. What's cool, however if I have my calculations right, is that these larger expenditures will be more difficult to offset by the Bonuses, and a drain back to reasonable levels will occur. It may take some time, however, and players who are rich may be able to ignore the bonuses more easily.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Double post. Delete please.

[Lxndr]

The zeroes are staying.  I just don't want any particular ruley-effects attached to them, so they can be "removed" easily in case people don't want to run out and buy a roulette table.

The slowest part of Roulette, BTW, is calculating the payouts, especially for complex bets by lots of players.

Very true.  It's definitely a languorous game, as well as a risky one.  The wheel spins, and that takes a while.  Calculating payouts, that also takes a while.  That's why I cannot see it being used for task-based resolution.

Cool. The GM has very fine control over the bonus then.

Seems that way.  :)  Your bonus chip(s) could be anywhere from a straight bet ("that's absurd, but if it works, well, nobody would expect it") to an even money bet ("okay, that's fair, I'll allow it").  I hadn't thought of it being perceived as arbitrary though, and I guess that should be addressed.

Linking it to odds makes sense.  So does advice like, "Does it seem like it'll make this action more likely to win?  If so, make a complementary bet that overlaps with at least one existing bets, if not more.  Does it seem like it'll make a particular success better?  Then augment an existing bet instead."  Can you think of any other GM pitfalls I should mention/point out?

Also, what do you think of related-bonuses?  Item-bets, etc.?

Representing the character not even trying, I suppose?

Right.  The bid represents the effort (and in Method 1, your statistic represents the maximum effort you can exert before bonuses).  On the other hand, you can always get "lucky" (I'm really liking this lucky-number mechanic).  So there's always some way to get winnings, even if you don't actively bid.  It's just unlikely (2.8% on 2d6, or 2.6% on an american wheel).

That said, the old problem of outcome control is still present. If I know the target, then I can plan my bets to get the exact amount of output that I want.

Using Method #1, which is basically what I enumerated in the bullet points above, your character has constraints on the # of chips that can be bet FROM THE BANK in a single action, based on the appropriate statistic/trait/etc.  That's the maximum (the minimum would be zero - riding totally on luck).  So if you're gunning up against, say, a TN of ten, and you want a level 5 success, you're going to want to win 15 chips.  But what if you can only bid 3?

Not to mention that you're going to want to siphon off some of the chips you bid to throw back in your bank in the first place.  Say you got a bank of, oh, thirty chips, and a huge (or so it seems to me) ten in an applicably trait.  You spend your ten chips on even money bids, (Red and Even, in your example) and it comes up 14  (a 22.4% chance on an American wheel)  This 14, for the sake of our discussion, is NOT your character's lucky number, and the GM either didn't give you any bonuses, or they didn't come up (maybe he put a chip for you on "High," or "1st 12" o something).  Yay!  You get 20 chips, total, including the ten you spent from the bank.

So, now you have to decide how to spend those 20 chips.  If you spend all 20 ensuring your success... then you've only got a bank of twenty chips now.  If you replenish your bank, you only got ten chips to spend on success.  This seems to suggest, to me, that the chances of finding your theoretical "best bid" in even money isn't very likely (though surely there is a "best bid").

(This seems like it would get even more interesting, imnsho, if the bank's resources were also used for character advancement.)

Using the Method #2 described above (where I think we cross posted), things change significantly.  You don't have to withdraw from the bank to succeed in this Method (or perhaps you just have to toss out a token single chip, which is much easier to replenish if chips are being thrown at you from nowhere), so you don't need to worry so much about replenishing your store.  This Method seems a lot more likely to result in a lot of bet-hedging of the type you describe.

On the other hand, if you want to bid ten chips, you might still have to dip into the bank.  Even so, replenishing "less than ten chips" is always easier than replenishing "ten chips."

Bonuses in this case are just icing on the cake in most cases, as the real gamble would be to count on the GM giving you enough bonus to make your target.

You know more about game theory than I, but don't bonuses seem to count for more in Method #1 than Method #2?

Chips are more difficult in comparison rarely coming in anything but red, white and blue.

A quick web search came up with a number of sites that sell chips in quantities of fifty for $4 a pop.  Colors:  White, Red, Blue, Green, Black, Orange, Pink, Gray, Yellow, Purple.  They're not as hard to come by as they sound.

Opposed spins, though, do seem problematic.  First and foremost, there's the issue of watching the other players place their bets (hence the cups Mike mentioned).  It's possible players could get so caught up in moving bets around to match the motions the other players are making, in an attempt to strategize for the "best bet."  Thus, the wheel would never be rolled.

An idea I had after Mike logged off #indierpgs last night, that might help mitigate this problem, would be to effectively have the bidding be timed.  

To whit:

Place all fixed bonuses (lucky numbers, GM bonuses, and whatever else the system might provide) on the felt.  Meanwhile, the players to get ready with their bids, making it obvious how many chips they can spend.  They do not place any of their own chips on the table until the wheel starts spinning.

While the wheel spins, all involved parties can place bids, change bids, remove bids, et hoc genus omne.  When the ball finally stops bouncing, however, no more bidding can be done, and bids on the table cannot changed.

At the same time, I like the idea of cups, especially the idea of "bluffing cups" (empty cups placed on certain spots, to mislead the enemy).  But, while the Outside Bet areas can hold multiple cups, I worry they might clutter up the Inside bets (not that too many people are going to try bidding on the same inside numbers).

Hmm.

Meanwhile, there are complementary rolls to wonder about too.  I like the idea that two people can, together, succeed at an action, where one manages to come out on top (embarassment of riches) and the other barely manages to hold his own.  So I don't see much of a problem there, just a different sort of strategizing.

On the welfare line and the embarrassment of riches:
I agree, both will occur with some degree of regularity.  Even without any other bonuses, and with constant bet-hedging, you have an even chance of hitting your lucky number once every 26 rolls.  And all you have to do is hit it once, and get 36 chips, for that "embarassment of riches."  On the other hand, you just have to hit the wrong number a few too many times... to wallow at the bottom.

This difficulty can lead to sucking up for Bonuses at a level that's so high that it's not neccessarily healthy.

Perhaps it should be limited to "one GM bonus chip"?  That way, the "best" bonus you can suck up for is an even money bet (which will give you two chips back).  This seems like it'd make the brown-nosing less unhealthy (and also would keep bonus chips from flying out of control).  It also would make WHERE the chip is placed more important for bonus purposes than HOW MANY chips you get.

If you use the idea I put forth earlier and tie the bank into character advancement, then the embarrassment of riches could also be less of a problem - that's the time you spend some of your bank on self-improvement.  (Conversely, perhaps if you're down on your luck, you could "burn off" some of your character for extra chips...)

Random Final Thoughts

[*]The "average human" statistic is probably only 1 or 2.  Similarly, an "average task" probably has a TN of only 1.
[*]Bidding a single chip on even money, plus one's lucky number, gives roughly even odds (50/50).  So the "lucky number" mechanic removes the house advantage, as per Shreyas's suggestion.
[*]Each additional chip can significantly affect either the chances of winning or the potential payout.  The bonuses available in the game should reflect this.
[*]Apparently there's a "Sixianne", or "Line Bet," which I neglected to include in my table - only certain sites list it.  It pays 5:1 (so, you get six chips back total) and is placed on six numbers at a time.  For completeness, its odds are 16.67% under 2d6, 16.22% under the european wheel, and 15.79% under the american wheel.
[*]There's also the "Five Number Bet" which only exists on the American Wheel and can only be done on the following number combination:  0, 00, 1, 2, 3.  It pays 6:1 (so, you get 7 chips back total) and is the only bet whose house percentage is HIGHER than 5.26%.  I've purposefully chosen to exclude it, as there is no benefit to keeping it.
[/list:u]

[Mike Holmes]

Linking it to odds makes sense.  So does advice like, "Does it seem like it'll make this action more likely to win?  If so, make a complementary bet that overlaps with at least one existing bets, if not more.  Does it seem like it'll make a particular success better?  Then augment an existing bet instead."  Can you think of any other GM pitfalls I should mention/point out?

Good stuff. Definitely add, "If the tactic seems to be a hedge, then place the bet so that it doesn't overlap at all."

Also, what do you think of related-bonuses?  Item-bets, etc.?

Not sure what you're getting at here.

I do think that bonuses should have multiple chips. So that you can spread them out. If something seems part Hedge, part reinforcing, then you can put chips on both.

While I'm on that subject, I meant to mention this before: one of the cool things about this system is that large numbers aren't a big deal. I mean, you're going to be doing double digit multiplication already, so you can have resonably large stats and pools of chips. In fact, I think it's almost a neccessity for things to flow properly. That being the case, you can have some seriously fine granularity. Which is always fun, IMO.

On the other hand, you can always get "lucky" (I'm really liking this lucky-number mechanic).  

Yeah, pretty cool. I was thinking about a minimum one free chip for the player. Sure he can put it on red, but that's only a 50% chance of a return of 2. If the TN is high, then a safe bid doesn't do him a lot of good anyhow.

That said, the old problem of outcome control is still present. If I know the target, then I can plan my bets to get the exact amount of output that I want.

So if you're gunning up against, say, a TN of ten, and you want a level 5 success, you're going to want to win 15 chips.  But what if you can only bid 3?

That's one 12:1 Payoff, and one overlapping 3:1 payoff (and a longshot for kicks). There's almost always a way to place your chips so that one of the results is exactly the number of chips you want. In the case of the example about an 8% chance of getting it.

Not to mention that you're going to want to siphon off some of the chips you bid to throw back in your bank in the first place.

I know, I just forgot to include that in the example. I guess the player in my example just had a lot of chips and intended to "spend" 15.

This seems to suggest, to me, that the chances of finding your theoretical "best bid" in even money isn't very likely (though surely there is a "best bid").

You're suggesting that some players won't understand what they can do? I agree. But that just means that the players who do understand how it works can "work" the system.

(This seems like it would get even more interesting, imnsho, if the bank's resources were also used for character advancement.)

Makes sense to me. Sorta like The Pool. Better yet, have players take chips from their winnings and put them aside for "EXP". These can then be spent at the end of the setting. This would mean that the player might gamble a little on the long side to try to get some points to spend that way. Any additional options help to "fuzz" things up a bit.

Using the Method #2 described above (where I think we cross posted), things change significantly.  

I think that these are going to require a lot of separate playtesting. Isn't it cool that the dicebot can do a d36?

don't bonuses seem to count for more in Method #1 than Method #2?

I think so. I'm not sure what point you're making, however.

Chips are more difficult in comparison rarely coming in anything but red, white and blue.

A quick web search came up with a number of sites that sell chips in quantities of fifty for $4 a pop.  Colors:  White, Red, Blue, Green, Black, Orange, Pink, Gray, Yellow, Purple.  They're not as hard to come by as they sound.

I'd think you'd need about 100 per player, and potential opponent (if you go opposed). For a four-player game, and one extra color for opposition, that would be $40 worth of chips. But, it would look cool as hell. Any chance you can get them to put custom labels on them?

While the wheel spins, all involved parties can place bids, change bids, remove bids, et hoc genus omne.  When the ball finally stops bouncing, however, no more bidding can be done, and bids on the table cannot changed.

Oh, that's excellent. Has a lot of feel, and brings an element of strategy into it. Odds calculation becomes a lot more difficult. Hmm. That might be problematic at first, even. Until players learn the effects of the bets, they might play very badly. That's OK by me, tho. :-)

Hey, maybe Chargen can be a gambling thing as well. In a less pressured environment the player might be able to learn something.

At the same time, I like the idea of cups, especially the idea of "bluffing cups" (empty cups placed on certain spots, to mislead the enemy).  But, while the Outside Bet areas can hold multiple cups, I worry they might clutter up the Inside bets (not that too many people are going to try bidding on the same inside numbers).

If they're small, I don't see a problem (I'm thinking like Dixie Cups, just large enough to cover the chips). In any case, only one player is allowed to make bets like corner bets in Roulette, IIRC. There are so many of these that it's a non-issue. I suppose that gamers being a superstitious lot may try to get to certain numbers, however.

This difficulty can lead to sucking up for Bonuses at a level that's so high that it's not neccessarily healthy.

Perhaps it should be limited to "one GM bonus chip"?  That way, the "best" bonus you can suck up for is an even money bet (which will give you two chips back).  

That's not enough to keep up with the chips going out to buy successes. At that rate, people will be broke soon and constantly.

This seems like it'd make the brown-nosing less unhealthy (and also would keep bonus chips from flying out of control).

This has it's own problems. If there's only low levels of reward, either players won't play for it at all, or they'll expect if for even the lamest ideas. Bonuses have to be healthy in order for people to have a proper incentive.

It also would make WHERE the chip is placed more important for bonus purposes than HOW MANY chips you get.

Not really. Would you rather have 1 chip on an even bet, or 5 on a 1: 36? Where is still very important.

If you use the idea I put forth earlier and tie the bank into character advancement, then the embarrassment of riches could also be less of a problem - that's the time you spend some of your bank on self-improvement.  

Like I said, however, link it to successes. Basically, the winnings pay off to not only create success, but to make the character better. This limits expenditures, too, but maybe not enough in the case of big jackpots. Hmmm.

(Conversely, perhaps if you're down on your luck, you could "burn off" some of your character for extra chips...)

Or take off clothes. I mean, give your character a new flaw. Lots of possibilities there. That would help substantially. :-)

The "average human" statistic is probably only 1 or 2.  Similarly, an "average task" probably has a TN of only 1.

I was thinking 10 for average, and TNs of 5 for an "average" conflict.

Bidding a single chip on even money, plus one's lucky number, gives roughly even odds (50/50).  So the "lucky number" mechanic removes the house advantage, as per Shreyas's suggestion.

Yes, but it only makes things even. So buying success still drains on average.

Apparently there's a "Sixianne", or "Line Bet," which I neglected to include in my table - only certain sites list it.  It pays 5:1 (so, you get six chips back total) and is placed on six numbers at a time.  

Evenmore versatility in player control. Did you get a felt board with your wheel? Basically you'd have to allow only what was on the board (unless you want to draw something in on it. And they vary just like the sites do.

Mike

[Lxndr]

Good stuff. Definitely add, "If the tactic seems to be a hedge, then place the bet so that it doesn't overlap at all."

Aha!  I knew I was missing something.  Consider that noted or added.  (on the other hand, if someone decides to bid black/red, for instance, it's nearly impossible NOT to overlap...)

Also, what do you think of related-bonuses?  Item-bets, etc.?

Not sure what you're getting at here.

I do think that bonuses should have multiple chips. So that you can spread them out. If something seems part Hedge, part reinforcing, then you can put chips on both.

I was suggesting that items (or particlar game maneuvers/stunts/etc.) might exist that give specific bonuses.  "If you shoot someone with a gun, you get an automatic chip on red, in addition to the chips you might place yourself."  Something like that.  A bonus given by some attribute in the system that specified its own static bid.

While I'm on that subject, I meant to mention this before: one of the cool things about this system is that large numbers aren't a big deal. I mean, you're going to be doing double digit multiplication already, so you can have resonably large stats and pools of chips. In fact, I think it's almost a neccessity for things to flow properly. That being the case, you can have some seriously fine granularity. Which is always fun, IMO.

And here I was imagining tiny numbers, in part due to a desire to reduce the # of bets and calculations one might need to perform at any time, and also because my basic roulette set came with only 20 chips of each kind.

But granularity is fun, and big numbers are fun.  More chips means more chances people are going to take longshots...which I want to encourage.  And it also means that a lucky break on a Straight bet isn't necessarily going to be such a meteor strike - winning 36 chips when your average statistic is ten doesn't mean as much as when your average statistic is two.

Hmmm.

So if you're gunning up against, say, a TN of ten, and you want a level 5 success, you're going to want to win 15 chips. But what if you can only bid 3?

That's one 12:1 Payoff, and one overlapping 3:1 payoff (and a longshot for kicks). There's almost always a way to place your chips so that one of the results is exactly the number of chips you want. In the case of the example about an 8% chance of getting it.

Well, I suppose you'd want 18 chips total, to keep your bank equal, so 12:1 an overlapping 6:1, plus the longshot 17:1 split bet?  Or a 12:1 and two overlapping 6:1s?  Or two non-overlapping 12:1s with an overlapping 6:1?  Either way, I get your point.  :)  Nothing wrong with that level of control, though (imho).

This seems to suggest, to me, that the chances of finding your theoretical "best bid" in even money isn't very likely (though surely there is a "best bid").

You're suggesting that some players won't understand what they can do? I agree. But that just means that the players who do understand how it works can "work" the system.

Oh, surely some players won't understand everything roulette can do; hell, I barely know how all the combos might work, apart from the research I've done in the past 48-72 hours.  

But honestly, I was mostly just saying "well, assuming you want to replenish your bank afterwards, your best bet is more likely to push inwards from the 'even money' bids (red/black/odd/even/high/low) to something with a higher payout, even if the odds are worse."  

Better yet, have players take chips from their winnings and put them aside for "EXP". These can then be spent at the end of the setting. This would mean that the player might gamble a little on the long side to try to get some points to spend that way. Any additional options help to "fuzz" things up a bit.

Oooh, this I like.  Don't matter if you got 100 chips in the pool, you have to gamble to get "XP".  On the other hand, keeping it a bit more basic might still encourage the player to gamble a little on the long side to get points to spend on XP.  Or maybe he'd just wait for that average-of-26th roll, and then go "whee, 36 free chips" and go on an XP spending spree.

I think that these are going to require a lot of separate playtesting. Isn't it cool that the dicebot can do a d36?

And a d37 (37=0) and a d38 (37=0, 38=00).  We can futz with all types of wheels, the american, european, and "six sided."  Of course, the system needs a bit more work (quite a bit) before we get to this point, but I'm looking forward to it.

I'd think you'd need about 100 per player, and potential opponent (if you go opposed). For a four-player game, and one extra color for opposition, that would be $40 worth of chips. But, it would look cool as hell. Any chance you can get them to put custom labels on them?

Not for $4, I don't think.  But I'm sure I could find a place to do that.  Why do you ask, anyway?  The only reason that I'd do that that comes to mind is... if I decide to sell chips (and maybe mats) to go with the game.  Which probably means custom-orders, but also paying wholesale.  Hm.

While the wheel spins, all involved parties can place bids, change bids, remove bids, et hoc genus omne. When the ball finally stops bouncing, however, no more bidding can be done, and bids on the table cannot changed.

Oh, that's excellent. Has a lot of feel, and brings an element of strategy into it. Odds calculation becomes a lot more difficult. Hmm. That might be problematic at first, even. Until players learn the effects of the bets, they might play very badly. That's OK by me, tho. :)

Oh, I don't mind a learning curve, necessarily.  I love the frenetic nature of "okay, time to bid, you can move stuff around until the bidding stops."  My wheel at home takes about 40 seconds from spin to stop, by the way, with an extra five seconds or so to slow down enough that you can SEE what the bid is.

Do you think it's something I should do even in non-opposed situations, or perhaps with this idea I should just go back and make all bids opposed?  Opposed DOES make things a bit more "random" since you're trying to win more chips from your opponent (or at least, win more chips you're willing to spend than the opposing force wins chips that it's willing to spend), rather than trying to reach a static target number.

As an aside, do you think playtesting this online could recreate the frenetic feel that doing this in person would have?  I can sort of see people throwing their bids in the channel... "Three chips on the four square bet!" "Two on red!" "No, move one of my four square chips to the second column!" and so on.  But that seems like a lot of terminology to learn.  I can see it happening, though we'd have to allow more time than an in-person twirl would take.  

On the other hand, we don't need to worry about anyone "peeking."  We could just set a static time # (3 minutes sounds fair, considering how long everything else takes online) and just roll the instantaneous-dicebot at the end of that time.  Thoughts on that?

Perhaps it should be limited to "one GM bonus chip"? That way, the "best" bonus you can suck up for is an even money bet (which will give you two chips back).

That's not enough to keep up with the chips going out to buy successes. At that rate, people will be broke soon and constantly.

Doesn't this depend in part on what the averages are, both in terms of statistics and target numbers?  If the average human bid is 2, a single extra chip anywhere can be a very Big Deal.  If the average human can bid ten chips, a single chip anywhere... Doesn't Matter So Much (but not so little that you would scoff at it).  My suggestion of "one GM bonus chip" was assuming the former, where it was a big deal.  Obviously (or maybe not) increased "average bids" would suggest an increased scale of GM awards.

[quote="Lxndr"(Conversely, perhaps if you're down on your luck, you could "burn off" some of your character for extra chips...)

Or take off clothes. I mean, give your character a new flaw. Lots of possibilities there. That would help substantially. :-)[/quote]

I just figured, if you reduce a statistic (or maybe get a new flaw) then you could get back SOME of the XP theoretically invested in said statistic (or the worth of the flaw), as more chips.

Maybe a Nobilis-flaw system of rewards, as well?  "Take a flaw, whenever it comes up in the story AND it seriously affects your character, toss another chip in your bank."

And now I'm skipping on home from work to check out the felt board that came with my roulette wheel.  So far I've just been playing with the wheel itself.

I've obviously got to put some thought into what I want "human average" to be.  Low, manageable numbers (2 or 3) are attractive, but make high payouts (like the lucky number) more substantial in terms of ratio.  Higher numbers (ten, etc.) might be less manageable, but they increase granularity (in a good way), and when tons of colours are on the board... it'll look really neat.

Well, it's time to clock out.  I'll be back later.