Dice Poker

I play a fair few CRPGs. Given how little gaming I got in my time at uni, it was a way of plugging the gap.

One thing that's always bothered me about CRPGS (yes Bioware, I'm talking about you) is the paucity of decent in-game gambling.

Take, say, Bioware for example. Roam the Old Republic playing Pazaak! Or, as I call it, Pontoon - a game I stopped playing after about age 11 because it wasn't very good.

Then Mass Effect came along with its much better gameplay. Play Quasar, while roaming the galaxy! A game suspiciously like...Pontoon.

Meh.

I recently completed The Witcher (on only my second playthrough. What a game...but back to the point).

In The Witcher, you play a game called Dice Poker. You and your opponent have 5D6 each and try to score rolls similar to card poker - multiples of the same number, straights (1-5 or 2-6).

It's really simple, but it's also addictive. I'd actually boot up the game just to play dice poker.

And it wasn't !"£$%^&* pontoon!

As such, I think that I'd introduce this game into the Fading Suns universe. After all, it's simple to play, easy to play anywhere with a flat surface and is pretty damn fast.

Here are the rules on The Witcher Wiki. Enjoy.

Couple of LARP thoughts

A couple of thoughts:

FS needs a 'pulling rank' mechanic. There is one in the contracts subsystem, but it would be nice to see something more general to allow high-ranking characters to use their rank - for persuasion or coersion, as they will.

The character system is too complicated. Blessings and Curses need to go - I'm thinking of either a limited amount of bennefits/negatives to stats at chargen, or keyword-based traits, much like the system in the Vampire MET rules.

New Prop: personal advisor

Lidl is selling sudoku machines for a tenner. They're perfect for futuristic, Blackberry-style cogitators. Just look at it- once painted it will look just right...

New LARP Rules?

A recent Redbrick blogpost revealed details of the VP3 system.

It's pretty awesome. Here's the best bit:

We chose 6 attributes: 2 physical (Dexterity & Vigor), 2 mental (Wits & Will), and 2 social (Intuition & Presence). These are rated on the standard 1 to 10 scale, but may exceed these limits with racial modifiers, cybernetics, or theurgic influences, etc.

We also expanded the Vitality health track, dividing it into Vitality, Resolve, and Reputation, and essentially providing 'hit points' for the areas of physical, mental and social conflict. In addition, these health tracks are considered 'ablative' or non-life threatening -- only when the track is completely depleted do characters suffer real injuries and risk death.

When a character takes an injury that depletes his Vitality he suffers a Wound. A wound can be almost any type of permanent damage... perhaps losing an arm or an eye. Of course, with cybernetics and wonder medications like Elixir, even these can be restored, but they don't grow back without help. Resolve, when depleted, leaves mental scars, derangements, etc. Reputation leaves the character marred by social embarrassments or a bad reputation that just will not go away.

Finally, there is a new system of 'pool attributes'. Pool attributes accumulate or diminish over time. Every character has a Faith Pool to start with, but characters with occult abilities also have a pool related to the dark side of that ability... a Hubris pool or an Urge pool, for example. Pool attributes have two tracks: a permanent score and a temporary score. All goal rolls using the attribute work from the permanent score. As characters progress through their adventures, their temporary scores will fluctuate. If they increase their temporary score to 10 they immediately gain a permanent point, but if they lose all their temporary points they lose a permanent point.

I haven't really said it before, because working a new LARP system from base sounded like too much work, but...the original rules sucked balls.

You know it's true, I know it's true. There are too many sub-stats and skills, with some serious complications. It's not a good LARP ruleset.

This, though...this I can work with.

Here's hoping I'll have the time. A couple of mates were saying that they would travel down the entire country to play if I run - how can I say no to that?