And my priestess of Tyche did some heavy duty gambling to raise fund to help the party build fund to improve the town she lived in.

@Kurt “Telas” Schneider – Yeah, thinking is when things get dangerous. It should be avoided at all times!

I once had a group of Star Wars PCs gamble but the Jedi cheated and manipulated the “chance cubes.” Too bad the casino manager picked up on what the Jedi was doing. The game went rapidly downhill from that point, kind of validating the theory that cheaters never “prosper” or something like that…

However, it’s funny you mention Croaker and the mercenaries gambling because the rules for Tonk are in the back of the Black Company Campaign Setting book (Green Ronin). I’ve always thought that was an awesome addition to the setting.

@John Arcadian – Sometimes the best roleplaying happens when your hands are busy and you have a good reason to be in the same place, not killing each other. Gambling’s one good way… well, at least until you catch the cheater.

Also, gambling rules in Savage Worlds? Now I really need to read that book I picked up a month or so ago after hearing other neat things about the system.

That said, we used the Savage Worlds simplified gambling rules instead of actually playing cards, because the results were more important than the cards.

@Zig – Yes, gambling is a great way to lose money– which is great if it means XP. I like the “GP wasted = XP” thing too.

@deadlytoque – Yes, if your players don’t want to play a different game in the middle, don’t play the other game. I suspect LARPs are the easiest to work a gambling evening into– particularly if there’s one or two tables setup and roving GMs for other interactions as normal.

If a PC put lots of points in Craft(Carpentry), then it’d probably have some impact on the game– crafting mobile siege engines and shields, making petty cash or impressing noblemen with crafting, figuring out how to find and disassemble complex wooden objects– yeah, if the player wants to “waste” points on it, it’d be nice if it came up in the story. If he dedicates a skill point or two, sure it can be minor background. If they make it a major investment, it’s a vote for it to be important to the game.

Also, using gambling as a way to give the characters things that they want is illusionist, at best. If you want your players to have the Millenium Falcon and you make them play Sabacc for it, and they _lose_, then you’ve just wasted everyone’s time and you have to throw in a Deus ex Machina to get them back on-track, or else wait until some alternative presents itself. Otherwise you have to cheat behind the screen to give them what they want.

In a more narrativist resolution mechanic, you can get away with stuff like this a lot more. I’m thinking specifically of shifting-narrative-control games like Houses of the Blooded or Polaris. In games like that, gambling becomes simple a dramatic/narrative exercise, because it’s just as much part of the greater system, with as much room for consequences, as anything else (fighting, infiltration, politics).

I’m thinking of adding gambling in as a minor thing in my new second edition D&D campaign. I have a couple players who would enjoy it. Also, I plan to use the 1gp=1xp point for players who blow their adventuring gains in high fashion ala Conan, so gambling would be a good thing. Another Gnome commentator shared that idea in the comments of another article (sorry, I can’t recall who it was, but I thought it a great idea!).