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Jain_Mor
2014-04-27, 09:40 PM
Couldn't find any rules for a group based gambling game like poker, so spent a good amount of time coming up with this :)

Step 0) determine the "dealer" and table seating order, choices always take place in order going clockwise from the dealer. Players can of course take turns "dealing".

1) All players buy in for the round (as set by NPCs or PCs as appropriate)

2) Players roll a d20 in private, this represents the strength of their initial "hand". The maximum a player can have throughout the following steps, including bonuses, is 20 and the minimum is 1.

3) DM rolls a d6 or d10 (depending on how high stakes the game is) and multiplies the buy in amount by this number. Players then choose if they want to meet this amount based on their initial roll, to have a chance at winning the pot.

4) players may now choose to cheat, roll a sleight of hand check to add a bonus equal to double the amount on the DC table listed below to your initial hand roll. Then reveal your initial roll and reset it's number to your new value (initial roll + cheating bonus), this now counts as your final "hand", you may skip the next step.
Players can choose to roll perception to catch cheats, if they succeed then roleplay accordingly (perhaps the cheater bluffs that he made a mistake and wasn't sure on the rules etc)

5) Players now reveal their initial rolls and then roll to finish their "hand". To do this you must roll a d20+int modifier and compare it to your initial roll.
If you roll equal to or up to 4 more than your initial roll, make no changes
If you roll 5 to 9 more reset your initial roll, increasing it by 1.
If you roll 10 more reset it, increasing it by 2, and so on
If you roll 1 to 5 less, then reset your initial roll decreasing it by 1
If you roll 6 to 10 less than reset your initial roll decreasing it by 2
And so on.
If you hit a 20 (including your int mod) you always add another additional +1.
And if you reach 1 you will always get an additional -1 (note, if you have any int modify it's not possible to get a 1)

For example, Jehu's initial roll is a 13, he chooses to take a risk and bet on it, he rerolls and gets 19, his int is +2 so that totals 21, however 20 is the maximum so we treat it as 20. 20 is more than 5 higher than his initial roll of 13 but less than 10 higher, so he gets a bonus of +1, but he also reached 20, so he gets another +1, this means his initial roll is now reset to 2 higher than before, his final "hand" is 15.

Example 2, bob rolls a 20, and obviously bets on it. He then rolls to finish his hand and rolls a 1, he has no intelligence modifier (uh oh), 1 is 19 less than 20, so that's a -4 bonus, he also hit 1 so that's another -1, resetting his roll to 15, uh oh, and will have to make up for it in the next steps

Basically if you roll a 20 (1 in 20 chance) you then have to roll another 20 (another 1 in 20 chance) to keep it, having intelligence helps you achieve this. This means the chances of someone automatically getting the best hand is far less then if they just rolled 1d20 (a 1 in 20 chance!), and improving a bad hand is easier: if you roll a 1 on your first roll and for some reason decide to play, you can't make it worse, but for every 5 your roll above it you better your hand.

That was my eureka, and I don't think gambling can work without this skew towards more average hands.

At the end of this step, if anyone actually has a 20 they win/share the pot, they have the best possible hand, it was difficult to achieve (roll 2 20s!) and no amount of bluffing etc is going to stop them from riding it until the end.

6) Players now roll to see how confidant they are in their hand compared to the rest of the table, this is a sense motive check that uses the DC table listed below. The bonuses from the table do not reset your final hand die, they merely add on to it.

If the players with the highest final hand dice reach 20 with this sense motive round they win/share the pot. They have the highest value hand (their final hand die IS the highest) and no amount of bluffing is going to stop them from riding it until the end, and so the bluff step is pointless as you can't get higher than 20.

7) Players now roll to overcome peoples confidence in their hands, this is a bluff check that uses the DC table listed below. The bonuses from the table do not reset your final hand die, they merely add on to it, in addition to the bonus granted in the sense motive step.

The player with the highest total including bonuses wins the pot. If players are tied (for example they have both managed to reach 20) then they "reveal their hands" and the player with the highest final hand dice without the bonuses wins.

For example, Jehu has a final hand of 16, and bob has a final hand of 17. Bob gets +1 on his sense motive and so does Jehu. Bob gets 1 on his bluff but Jehu gets 3.
Jehu is now 16+1+3=20, but bob is
17+1+1=19, Jehu wins the pot despite bob actually having a higher hand.

Another: Jehu has a final hand of 16, and bob has a final hand of 17. Bob gets +2 on his sense motive and so does Jehu. Bob gets 2 on his bluff and Jehu gets 2.
Jehu is now 16+2+2=20, but bob is
17+2+2=21, since you can't get higher than 20 this is treated as 20, so Jehu and bob are at a draw, bob "calls Jehus bluff" since "he is confidant enough in his hand". Hands are "revealed" in character (though the dice were always revealed out of character since step 5) and the one with the highest is bob and so he wins the pot.

Another: Jehu has a final hand of 18, and bob has a final hand of 16. Bob gets +4 on his sense motive! and Jehu only gets +2. However, Jehu actually has the highest roll and is now at 20 with bonuses so he is confidant enough in his hand (he has an 18!) that no amount of bluffing is going to stop Jehu from seeing it to the end, so we may as well "reveal" then and indeed Jehu would win
However if Jehu only got +1 on his sense motive he would be at 19 and therefore not ultimately confidant, and so bob has some wiggle room, if Jehu doesn't get another +1 from his bluff check then bob can then win the pot with his 20.

This all basically means that bluffing and sense motive are more impactful when people have lower rolls (which are more frequent because of the final hand roll in step 5), but are less impactful when people actually have the rarer amazing hands, though there is still room to edge things out through bluffing etc if things go in your favour, or if you are superior than your fellow players.

Skill check bonus DC TABLE!
DC 20: +1 bonus
DC 25: +2
DC 30: +3
etc

Thoughts? It's designed to emulate the skills needed in gambling but also to be fun in game as the rounds go by seeing who overtakes who on the dice rolls and who is now in the lead :)