I've never played Rogue Trader, but I've been going through the book and making house rules, etc in case I do manage to start a group for it. The House Rules document I've written is like 7 pages long now and a large chunk of that is the rules for a sub-game I want to do to make gambling against NPCs more meaty. To that end I've comne up with the following. What I'm mostly concerned about is the number of successes and failures needed in various parts of the rules, so if you think something is too easy or too hard anywhere please tell me.

and so, without further to-do....

The Rules of Calixis Hold `Em

1. Successes and Failures : Several parts of the game refer to “the winner” or “the most successful player”. In all cases this means the player with the most successful result, as defined by the rules for Opposed Skill Tests (see book pp232). In all Opposed Skill Test dice rolls made in Calixis Hold `Em, there must be a winner, so re-rolling tests may need to happen in some cases to break ties. That notwithstanding, and somewhat ironically, the actual card game itself can end in a draw. Also you'll need a standard 52-card deck of cards.
2. The Ante Phase : Each player at the table (including each NPC) places one chip into the pot and makes a Gambling Test. The two most successful players continue to play, all other players fold and lose their ante. At the end of the Ante Phase, there will always be exactly two players remaining, and they will play head-to-head from that point on, until the next hand is dealt, starting a new Ante Phase.
3. The Deal Phase : Each of the two remaining players is dealt a single card, face down. The players test Gambling again and the most successful player may either choose to act first or force his opponent to do so. The person who ends up acting first is then referred to as the “Roob” and the person who acts last is called the “Dealer”, and is said to have control of the “Dealer’s Quincunx” (analogous to the Dealer Button in Vegas), but the GM always deals the actual cards.
4. The First Cheating Phase : In the Wagering Phase (which comes next), the Roob and then the Dealer must decide how to bet. Before that happens, however, both players may try to cheat. Each player, starting with the Roob, may make up to one attempt at cheating. Forms of cheating are listed here, all cheating attempts are opposed by the opponent’s Scrutiny test to detect or prevent the cheating behavior, which the GM rolls secretly as the cheating attempt is made. In the case of an NPC player cheating against a PC, the GM rolls privately for both the NPC’s cheat and the PC’s Scrutiny, as such the GM must have the PC’s Scrutiny Skill number at hand, but never divulges the NPCs’ Scrutiny, Gambling, Sleight of Hand, or Deceit scores. Types of cheats:
   1. A Card Up Your Sleeve: A player may try to improve their hole card by making a Sleight of Hand test. Success means you get a new card dealt to you, which you must immediately choose to either keep or discard. If you lose the Opposed Test and score two degrees of failure or less you are not caught cheating but do not get the new card. If you lose the opposed test and score three or more degrees of failure it means you have been caught cheating and will likely be thrown out of the game, or worse. The GM puts any discarded cards on the bottom of the deck.
   2. Peeking : A player may make a Deceive test to distract the opponent and look at the opponent’s hole card so as to better gauge how to bet. Success means you get to peek at their hole card immediately, failure means you try but fail to see their hole card. If you lose and score three or more degrees of failure, someone sees you trying to peek and might point that out (or not). More than one such “caught peeking” penalty, if outed, will likely get you thrown out of the game.
   3. Stacking the Deck: The Dealer, and only the Dealer, may attempt to stack the deck in his own favor. To do this, the Dealer tests Sleight of Hand. If he wins the opposed test and scores at least one degree of success he may look at the top card of the deck. If he scores three or more degrees of success he may look at the top three cards of the deck and put one of them back on top, and the other two on the bottom in any order. If he loses the opposed test and scores three or more degrees of failure he gets caught, the punishment for which is usually getting thrown out of the game, or worse, but in some cases might only earn you the penalty of “eternal Roob” meaning you are not allowed to be Dealer for the rest of the game, or perhaps only the rest of your life, whichever comes first.
5. The Pre-Flop Wagering Phase: The Roob, who is first to act, must either Fold, Check, or Raise. There may be an established bet limit, or it may be “No Limit”. This is usually agreed upon by the players before starting the game, or it may be a rule of the house in the current locale. After the Roob acts, the Dealer must respond in turn. If the Dealer Raises, the Roob must respond and this continues back and forth until one player folds or both check in succession.
6. The Flop: The GM then deals the top card off of the deck face up as a “community card” and the players once again make an Opposed Gamble Test to determine who will be first to act. At this point the Dealer and Roob roles may be reversed depending on the outcome of the Gambling test.
7. The Post-Flop Cheating Phase: Once the Flop is done, the players may once again try to cheat, but may not use the “Stacking the Deck” option at this time, as it will not do anything. Again here, the Roob (whomever that is now) goes first.
8. The Post Flop Wagering Phase: After any additional cheating, the players, starting with the Roob once again place bets of “Fold, Check, or Raise” until someone folds or they both check in succession.
9. The Warp: If both players checked and are still in the game, they reveal their cards and each player makes a two-card hand out of their hole card and the one communal card revealed. The player with the best 2-card hand wins. Hands are evaluated according to the following chart:

Hands in Calixis Hold `Em by Value

Straight Flush : The best hand in Hold `Em is suited connectors, that is, two cards of the same suit in consecutive rank (e.g. Jack and Queen of Spades). Different straight flushes are compared based on the value of the best single card in the set, aces are considered high if connected to a king, and low if connected to a deuce. ( Odds : for any hole card, there are exactly two cards that would match with it to form a Straight Flush, and one, but not both, of them could be in the other player’s hand.)

Pair : Two cards of the same rank (and obviously different suits, as only a single deck is used). ( Odds : For any hole card, there are three other cards that might pair up with it, and at most one of them could be in the opponent’s hand.)

Straight : Un-suited connectors, that is, two cards of consecutive rank but not the same suit (e.g. Jack of Spades and Queen of Hearts). As with the Straight Flush above, different straights are compared based on the value of the best single card in the set, aces are considered high if connected to a king, and low if connected to a deuce. ( Odds : For any hole card, there are six cards that might form a Straight without forming a Straight Flush, and at most one of these six might be in the opponent’s hand.)

Flush : Two cards of the same suit but not in consecutive rank (e.g. Jack and King of Spades). Aces are always considered high in this hand. ( Odds : For any hole card, there are ten cards that might make a Flush without making a Straight Flush, and at most one of them might be in the opponent’s hand.)

High Card : Two cards that have no special relationship to each other. Only the higher ranked card counts. All Aces are counted as high here. ( Odds : Of the 51 cards which are not the player’s hole card, 21 of them will form one of the hands above and the remaining thirty will form a High Card hand. The lowest ranked card that could theoretically win a hand as High Card is a five.)

Notes on game play, advantages to be had, and outcomes:

1. There may be circumstances when Sleight of Hand or Deceit might be easier due to the opponent being distracted, drunk, etc. The GM will adjudicate all such occurrences as needed.
2. In head-to-head play, if one player has twice as many chips as the other (or more), he is said to have his opponent “Short Stacked” and as such gets a +10 to all Gambling tests against the opponent, not including Ante Phase tests.
3. After a number of hands have been played, regardless of whether or not the player has participated in any of them, the players may each roll a Scrutiny test to try to learn each other’s “tells”. This not an opposed test. The difficulty of the Scrutiny test will be set by the DM based on the assumed skill level of the opponent being scrutinized on a case by case basis, but a general rule of thumb is that the difficulty starts at Ordinary (+10) if the opponent is not trained in Gambling or Difficult (-10) if the opponent is trained in Gambling. For each level of Mastery the opponent has in Gambling the difficulty of the Scrutiny Test goes up by one level of difficulty. If a player successfully learns an opponent’s tell, they get +10 to any and all gambling tests made against that opponent for the rest of the game, if the test scored three or more degrees of success, this bonus goes to +20. These bonuses never count during the Ante phase. Multiple tells cannot be gained against the same opponent, but a player may roll against the same opponent in subsequent opportunities in order to improve his tell from +10 to +20 if possible. The player rolling to find a tell decides which player’s tells he is looking for before rolling the dice. At each opportunity, a player may only learn one tell, but he may roll once for each opponent until he’s rolled for all of them and failed or until he succeeds once.
4. If the players both go to the Warp and end up with hands that are of equal value then the game is a draw and the pot is divided equally among the two players. In this case the players basically end up winning the ante, which may include monies put into the pot by people or NPCs who folded in the Ante Phase. If there are an odd number chips to divide, the house rakes in the odd chip remaining. That is, if there are 11 chips in the pot at the end, and it’s a draw, then the two players each get 5 chips and the GM discards the eleventh one.
5. The different suits are not evaluated relative to each other in any way. In hands involving High Cards and Flushes the rules do not use the second-best card in the hand to break ties in any way. For example if one player has the Ace and Queen of Spades, he has an Ace-high Flush. If the other player, due to the Ace being a community card, has the Ace and Jack of Spades, then the hands are both Ace-high flushes and are of equal value and the game is a draw.
6. Actual punishments for cheating vary widely based on the circumstances of the game. In a game involving high-ranking Imperial officials, the offender will likely be prosecuted in accordance with the law, etc, and may earn a bad reputation. In a game against void pirates aboard their pirate ship, the pirates can and likely will cheat a lot and never own up to it while they’re on their own “home turf” whereas the opponent may be murdered for cheating once (or for winning legitimately, or for being so stupid as to complain to the pirates about their cheating, for that matter).

Whattaya think, sirs?

(and sorry for the long post)

In reply to my own long post, I want to point out that my intention with the cheats is that they be things which result in one of three possible outcomes (assuming you have the pertinent skill well trained up and your opponent is a relatively good match for you):

1. You succeed and pull off the cheat (should happen, but somewhat infrequently)

2. You fail but are not caught (should happen more frequently than any other option)

3. You fail and ARE caught (should happen less frequently than succeeding, as it often will end the game and start the gunfight)

Obviously, against lesser opponents, like those who are untrained in some of the required skills or have low Perception, Intelligence, etc, you ought to be able to go to town, within the limits of that old maxim "You can shear a sheep many times, but skin it only once." That said it might be beter to remember that OTHER old maxim "If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour, you ARE the sucker."

You've never played the game before, so you're making house rules for a system you don't know is broken. I mean, there's broken bits in the system (all systems have broken bits).

Did you just hear something inconsistent with that logic?

Nothing wrong with house rules as long as your players are informed of them beforehand.

I assumes stacking the deck happens before the cards are passed out? If so it looks good.

Is Scrutiny an opposed check vs Slight of Hand/Deceive?

Or does it give a penalty?

If a penalty what would a Scrutiny skill of say 63 give?

:minor notes

Only Rank 8 Rogue Trader class characters would be masters at Gambling, Deceive, and Slight of Hand though. Voidmaster is the only other class with the Gamble skill at all.

Granted a Voidmaster built for it would be good. Good quality cybernetic arms help with slight of hand in addition to piloting, you could take slight of hand with origin path. And they get cheap perception for scrutiny/cheap agility for slight of hand.

As for the wisdom in desgining a sub-game for a game I've never played, I agree that it's probably going to be frought with problems. That's one of the reasons I've posted the idea here so I can glean wisdom from the community at large. Now when you get down to specifics, that alone is not an argument that the card-based sub-game I've described here actually has anything wrong with it per se, it's only the prediction that it probably will. That said, I'm content to reach for the brass ring despite the "you'll never succeed" and "who do you think you are" responses I might get.

You seem to be of the opinion that the skill system in RT itself is a problem, and I'd like to hear more about that if you could enlighten me. Do you think the moves available to the players in this sub-game are not designed right in terms of number of successes/failures needed to achieve different things? If so please tell me what's bad and why so I can tinker with it. This is a work in progress, afterall.

As for who get's which skills, a skilled NPC "professional gambler" would probably be trained in all four necessary skills and would likely beat any PC adventurer given enough time, for that reason. Gamblers don't need to know so much about running a starship, hand to hand combat, shooting, etc. as adventurers do, so that's the trade-off. As GM I personally would allow anyone to take gambling as an Elite Advance, if they want to, and then let them progress in it in some way, probably similar to the Void Master.

All cheating attempts are Opposed Skill Tests against the opponent's Scrutiny, yes. Scrutiny is also the skill that one can use to learn tells, and as such it's a very useful skill, and perhaps the most useful of the four Hold `Em skills in non-Hold`Em situations. Gambling is also valuable because it get's you the ability to actually play hands against NPCs who may more often have to fold before getting cards, and it get's you the ability to act last, which is a big advantage in the card game itself evwen with no cheating. WITH cheating the ability to go last is even better.

Players that want to play "honest" can work on just cranking up their Gambling and Scrutiny and hope to win via legitimate means, whereas card sharks might try to cheat more if they have a lot of Sleight of Hand and/or Decieve Skill. That said, I tend to think of that stuff as being the sort of thing pirates and other NPC opponents would do (and be better at) more so than the PCs, mostly. As such the "honest" player can get by agaisnt weaker and maybe about equal competition with just Gambling and Scrutiny. That said, this is only a sub-game and intended mostly for fun and maybe as a preamble for, and cause of, the occasional bar fight or all-out throw-down against badguys, etc. Maybe if a game ends amicably you get an acquisition roll to see if you won somebody's prized Bolt Pistol, etc, something like that.

First, my standard warning:

Beware of creating complicated rule systems for anything that isn't an integrated and fundamental part of the campaign. Also insure that the players are aware and equally enthusiastic about its inclusion. Regardless of the balance and functionality of the rules, failure on either of these points will likely result in the rule-set situation being avoided, ignored or considered necessary evil of your game that players will roll their eyes though so they can get on with it.

Relatedly, and this is not part of the rules per se, A huge percentage of hands, or entire games, aren't going to be high enough stakes to have an appreciable effect on a Rogue Trader's wealth. Unless they're throwing in the archeotech power sword, or wagering the mining rights for Aleph 7 as part of the final pot, it doesn't matter if the PC wins or loses anymore than your average middle-class guy cares if they win the $20 buy-in poker night.

Now for specifics:

"The two most successful players continue to play"

This is a problem, because at most tables, this is going to be two NPCs. So a large percentage of the time, you're playing with yourself. No fun for anyone else. Even if a PC does get in the heads-up section, the rest of the players at the table have nothing to do. (other than check their phones, look at online comics, or comment of FFG's forums...)

“Roob” and “Dealer’s Quincunx”

Beware of uncommon terms for things that people are familiar with, particularly if they are not standard words - unless it's used a lot, most players will just use the standard english words.

"Wagering Phase"

This is a problem because it requires the skill to be put back on the player, rather than the PC. I happen to know that one of my players is a terrible gambler - no poker face, no understanding of how to run bets, etc. Under this system, regardless of how they build their character, they would never be good at this game, because the player isn't. This section also involves actual cards, which adds an unnecessary secondary randomization unit.

"based on the assumed skill level"

This is dangerous because NPCs should be attempting to read PCs, or PCs may attempt to read each-other. By having it "assumed" and "GM assigned" you've put yourself into the position of adjudicating PC gamblings skills without regard to their character sheet. Better off just making it a set rule.

I thank Quicksilver for the input and would like to continue the discussion with the following responses:

1. Any house rule or added bit of fun would have to meet with the approval of the group, or at the very least, I'd feel like I need to run it by them before springing it on them. So yes, I'm not going to force this on anyone who doesn't want to do it.

2. Yes, the stakes are low in the sense of what you might win or lose, and I'm fine with that, as it's mostly about fun role playing and maybe a little penny ante gambling. This also makes the temptation to cheat a thing that people will likely do as more of a "staying in character" thing than an actual attemt at gaining more gear for themselves, so I like that. I like that nobody's likely to try to cheat for "personal gain" in the gear sense. That said, any game that a person is playing tends be something they want to win, so you can get carried away and end up playing a very cutthroat style of play in order to win for the sake of winning. It's usually more fun than losing, for one thing.

3. I agree that the Ante phase is problematic, I just wanted to avoid having three and four way action in pots where different people have gone all-in for different amounts. This involves calculating side pots and so forth and I just don't want to have to deal with that. It also has the positive effect of encouraging people to get the Gamble skill up before trying to sit in a game lest they get fleeced without ever playing a hand. Also, as GM I always have the ability to set the relative skills of the NPC at appropriate levels. There might be 4 NPCs at the table, 3 of whom are basically suckers, maybe one of them doesn't even have Gamble trained. They add more chips to the pot. In any event I'm amenable to changing this rule somehow, but I want to try to make the game head-to-head as often as possible.

4. As for game terms, the player who has the dealer button is generally called "the dealer", and in casual poker at someone's house or whatever this usually means that that person is actually dealing the cards for that hand and is last to act. This can get confusing in games where the casino has an employee not playing in the game who actually deals the cards, while the person with the "dealer Button" is the "Dealer" in terms of position at the table, last to act, etc, but NOT the person dealing the actual cards. Roob is a name I came up for the sake of brevity. It's shorter than "person to the dealer's left" or "person who is first to act" and it conveys, I hope, a sense that the person in that position is at a disadvantage. I didn't want to call them the Fool, Sucker, or Mark, but I had thought about Mark a little before settling on Roob. It only really needs to be in the rules to make the language flow better when you read it. I think it's easier to read when you define what the Roob and Dealer are then refer to them by those short epithets instead of "person who is first to act in the round" etc. The Dealer's Quincunx is a Latin-ized version of the Dealer Button and would liekly take the shape of a brass coin with five dots on it, which is what the original Roman Quincunx coin actually was (it was a coin that represented five thelveths of something else, from what I've read, and classically would have had, on it's face, a set of five dots arranged like the pips on a six sided die on the "5" side).

5. I understand that this could be a problem, but people who are bad at actually playing poker can still win against NPCs via cheating or just being Dealer more often, so there are advantages to be gained there. Frankly this game ends in a tie a lot more than a lot of other card games anyway, and to win any one hand is very dependant on the luck of the draw in the first place. A good gambler might be able to win more than they lose or draw in the long term, but that long term probably never arrives because we aren't meeting once a week for a few hours just to play Calixis Hold`Em, we need to get some gunfights and Endeavors and starship maneuvering/battles in too. Also, the GM decides when the NPCs fold, check, or raise, so that can be affected by GM fiat in extreme emergencies.

6. I'm mostly just leaving myself (or the GM, whomever that is) enough wiggle room to do things like make certain aliens or whatever more or less "unreadable" in terms of tells while maybe leaving their gambling skills fairly low despite that. I mean you might be playing against a sentient slab of rock who LITERALLY has a face made of stone and cannot be "read", but still sucks at poker and ends up in the Roob position a lot. That's all that rule is there for, really.

Ever read the AngryDM? You can find some very good advice there. You may not agree with it all, but it's certainly worth the read. I do agree with him about lessening the number of die rolls needed. You're adding many unnecessary rolls.

And what about conflict? What is the conflict here and why is it necessary for the characters to win? Lure of the Expanse has a similar scenario in the auction house and there's something to be gained, but a simple game of cards doesn't.

Will your characters put their ship in the pot? Are you willing to deal with the consequences of their defeat (i.e. they have no ship)? Will NPCs put their ship in the pot? Couldn't there have been a more interesting and exciting way of increasing the size of the Dynasty's navy?

I don't like being the curmudgeon in this instance (usually I don't mind), but I fail to see any interesting decisions here for players to make. I don't see party involvement. I see all kinds of room for abuse (astropaths and divination?) that doesn't involve actual cleverness. There's a machine (I forget the name) that discourages Sleight of Hand during commercial transactions. I'd think it could be used in this instance, or that another would exist.

As to the question of whether the RT skill system is a problem, I'd say no, but there are other system problems: starship combat, personal combat, achievement points, PF as maintenance, purchase of starships, colony acquisition and growth, initial acquisitions, passage of time, certain ship components, xeno PCs, logistic fallacies of the Halo Barge, Warp travel in general, etc. You'll need house rules. I'd advise concentrating on the ones that need fixed more than the ones that aren't fleshed out well enough for your personal tastes.

But hey, that's just me. Knock yourself out.