Gambling Question

By HueyLewisNthePews, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Looking through The Last Jedi visual dictionary they mention Hazard Toss which looks like a Star Wars Craps table. Any rules out there for this? I couldn’t find any. Is this a stupid question and I’m overthinking it? Just do Skulduggery rolls and narrate it? I’m not really much of a gambler but I have someone joining my group who is.

How much space do you want this to take up within the game? If it's something only one PC will enjoy, handling it in a single roll seems entirely appropriate. Also, I would use a skill only if the game is actually a game of skill rather than pure chance (unless of course the PC decides he'd like to make it less dependent on luck than the designers intended...).

Edited by Cifer

I really hadn’t don’t a ton of thought about how long it might go on. Knew I was going to have it in a nice casino or establishment like that. In the book it was saying that games like Sabacc and Dejarik are frowned upon cause they are played in spaceport cantinas. Just wanted to know if there was any clever ideas I could add in rules wise or if anyone had done something like it before. It might just be that I have a couple skulduggery rolls and come up with a narrative on the fly.

There are some really good gambling rules in Fly Casual , specifically the game Hintaro. It uses the Boost and Setback dice, too, adding a nice element unique to this rule set. That could easily be re-skinned into Hazard Toss. I've run this game at my table, and had the other players portray the NPCs playing against the PC. It was a lot of fun.

If you want something unique, you could always have the PC toss a boost and two setback. Make a table of the possible results, go from there. It could look like this:

Un-cancelled Advantage - PC wins double the wager, double the bet to continue

Un-cancelled Success - PC wins triple the wager, double the bet to continue

All Blank - PC wins ten times the wager and hands off to the next player

Un-cancelled Threat - PC loses and must double the bet to continue

Un-cancelled Failure - PC loses and hands off to the next player

If a player opts not to double the bet, the next player may do so and start from there; otherwise start over at the table minimum (10, 50, 100, 1000 credits - you do you)

In a real casino, there is generally one person rolling at a craps table, and a whole bunch of side wagers. To keep things simple, I would allow other PCs to bet along with their friend and tie their fortunes together if they so wish. The atmosphere lends itself to continual exchange of money, so PCs may have to make Discipline checks to leave (suffering Strain if they fail) if they have an addiction or some other aspect of their personality (or if they've been partaking in the free drinks).

JRRP I really like both of those options. Sounds like a lot of fun.

My new PC is rolling a Gambler and he wants to be kind of lousy at combat and really good at Charm, Deception, Skulduggery, Cool, Etc... so I was also looking to give him an edge at that part of what I'm working on. I'm still new to GMing and I usually lean toward a lot of combat, but I probably just need to branch out and ask my group to be patient with me as I try new things out.

Thank you! I appreciate the help!

If you don't want to actually have them play the games, I've also run them as Cool vs Cool, Deception vs Vigilance, Charm vs Discipline, Coercion vs Discipline, and Skulduggery vs Perception. To make it more interesting, having the PC make all of these checks to come out a winner is extra fun.

Alternately, you could run it like a social combat encounter. Use the rolls above, but have the PC and NPC trade off making their respective rolls (this allows the PC to use talents like Nobody's Fool). Success causes the opponent to lose strain. Continue the encounter until one of them exceeds their strain threshold and loses. This also allows the other PCs to try and help their friend regain enough strain to not lose, or square off with opposing NPCs doing the same thing for the opponent.

Social encounters with money, or, better yet, information vital to the PCs achieving a goal, make the stakes high enough that it can be just as fun as combat. Bonus: opponents rarely die, so they can come back nursing a grudge.