Gambling Gimmick

[xiombarg]

What do people think of this Gimmick?

Once during each of his turns, a player can gamble. He can put up as many coins as he wants (up to the number he has) against the House. He then uses 2d6 to play Craps. If he wins, he gains the number of Coins he bet -- otherwise he loses the Coins he bet.

Comments? You could proably substitute a coinflip or "roll 1d10, win if you roll a 6 or higher" or something, but I happen to find Craps kinda fun. And perhaps you could have a Gimmick for side bets from the other players.

Is there a gambling game that's played with d10s?

[Tony Irwin]

What do people think of this Gimmick?

Once during each of his turns, a player can gamble. He can put up as many coins as he wants (up to the number he has) against the House. He then uses 2d6 to play Craps. If he wins, he gains the number of Coins he bet -- otherwise he loses the Coins he bet.

Comments? You could proably substitute a coinflip or "roll 1d10, win if you roll a 6 or higher" or something, but I happen to find Craps kinda fun. And perhaps you could have a Gimmick for side bets from the other players.

Is there a gambling game that's played with d10s?

Hah! That's really imaginative, reminds me of those magic cards they brought out - the funny ones that you can't use in tournaments. If you had a 007-like story going it might even add to the atmosphere. Here's mine:

The Secret Word. When a player wins the bid for a scene, each other player may pay one coin to write, and hide, an adjective on a piece of paper. If the framing player should speak one of those words during the set up of that scene, the player who wrote it wins 3 coins.

[Mike Holmes]

The problem with the gambling mechanic, to me, would be that it doesn't have any in-game effect. Basically, Complications already are gambling with d10s. But they have an impact on the game. If you could find some way to link the Craps mechanic to what was happening, I'd say great.

For example, perhaps the rule could be that, if the player maneuvered a character into an appropriate situation where something was on the line, he could then make a gamble roll to see what the outcome was.

But, then, this is problematic, because the Complication mechanic would cover many of these sorts of situations. To allow this would be to give the player an incentive to resolve things without incorporating the other players (something we intentionally designed Complications to avoid). The other problem is that, if the player loses, then he actually has less Coins to resolve the situation, meaning that he might not have enough on hand to do a good job of it.

If you required other players to place some "don't come" bets, acting as opposition, then you might have a replacement for the current Complication mechanic. Another idea would be to allow players to gamble their Refreshment instead of taking the standard amount.


About the Groucho mechanic, Tony, I take it is that the idea is to have a way to get players thinking about other player's ideas? The framing player has an incentive in terms of reward, but it's a gamble for the player paying for the word, because it might not get said. The problem with this is that it's subject to signaling. That is, a player can say, "I want to see Bob in a bar in the next scene." And then he pays the one Coin, and writes Bar down on the paper, making it obvious that this is the secret word.

So, if you want to institute this just for kicks, it sounds cool. But for some groups a simpler alternative is available. A Gimmick I see frequently is the "Bribe" Gimmick, which simply says that a player can pay another player an agreed amount of Coins to perform some service. So, if I want Bob in a Bar, with this Gimmick in play, I simply pay the player the coin to get him to establish the Bar for the scene. Not gambling, but bargaining can be a very interesting event as well.  

Mike

[xiombarg]

I'd certainly be willing to limit the gambling to Refreshment. Perhaps spend 3 Coins at Reshreshment to get back 1d6 Coins? And how about "Random Refreshment"? Instead of a set amount of Refreshment, one could set Reshreshment at, say, 2d6 or something.

[Mike Holmes]

I was thinking that you could bet as many of your standard amount of Coins craps style. Perhaps allowing the other players to join in and make side bets, etc.

Mike