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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
Edited by FrinkiacVII