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I’ve always liked the idea of games within the game. Gambling is an easy way to introduce this into a session - whether it’s on the street, in a shady alley or tavern, or just the PCs gathered around a campfire rolling bones.
There’s Appendix F of the 1e DMG for gambling ideas, but here’s another one you might like. Heck, you might even try this at your next real bar visit.
This simple game was called 2-4-24 by the person who taught it to me (my wife). We used to play this with some of our drunk friends in San Francisco dives, way back when we were dating. Ah... the idyllic days of yore. Anyhow, here’s how it’s played:
Before rolling the dice, everyone antes up whatever the agreed upon amount is (we usually did $1-$5 each). First, you roll 6d6. Every time you roll, you need to take away or save at least one of the dice and roll again, but you can finish on the first roll if you want - the idea is to end up with a 2 and a 4, and then have the highest sum of the other 4 dice. The highest sum would be 24, hence the name of the game, 2-4-24. Highest roller with a 2 and 4 wins the kitty. If you don’t have a 2 and a 4 saved by the time your last die is rolled, you’ve automatically lost - in the case of a tie, there’s a roll off. Play proceeds in a clockwise fashion, with the first person always being the winner from the last round (as a handicap). If someone is playing “the house”, they should always roll last, to give them the added benefit of knowing what number they need to beat. Of course, usually you’d never play with the house, but another way you could play it would be for the house to start with 7 dice instead of six. I’ve never tested that though, so I’m not sure how unbalanced it might make the game.
The game would scale easily with 1, 10, 100, etc. gold piece antes for example. Hey, if nothing else, now you’ve got another reason to take those six siders with you wherever you go.
4 comments:
Not much of a gambler myself. I think we play maybe $20 each at the blackjack table, once a year, and pocket our winnings as we play, we usually end up with about what we came in with, and get to play for about an hour.
@Paladin: Yet again LOL
So this works as a simple tavern game within a RPG and, apparently, as a fine way to bring that romantic spark that any long-term relationship may need from time to time. Nothing like a good drinking game to create those tender loving moments. Sweet.
I just thought of another idea for a quick game (assuming you know the rules to Yahtzee). Basically, you do one set of Yahtzee rolls. Whoever has the higher score wins. Same clockwise rotation applies.
@Don - a neat idea, it's basically fast poker with dice. I'm surprised Gygax didn't include it in Appendix F, maybe he erroneously thought there might be a legal risk, although I suppose it's possible (gasp!) that he just never thought of it period. Weird how Hasbro has since acquired the rights to both Yahtzee and D&D (through it's subsidiary, WotC).
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