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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Poker Made Easy [ACTION X]

I was just watching an episode of Mission: Impossible which hinged around a high stakes poker game. It occurred to me that such an occasion might arise in a modern role playing game, such as ACTION X (whenever I finish it), so it might be worthwhile to come up with a little in-game system to simulate a game of poker. Note - this is not a step-by-step simulation of poker, and it is completely untested and probably stupid.

Step one for the player (or players) involved is to roll on the following table to discover the strength of their hand. Essentially, this would be their final hand - there's no drawing of new cards in this simulation. For our purposes, we just want to get a relative idea of what the player has to work with. Each hand carries with it a modifier that will be used later in the simulation.



D%
HAND
MOD.
01-44
High card
-2
45-86
One pair
+0
87-92
Two pair
+1
93-94
Three of a kind
+2
95
Straight
+3
96
Flush
+5
97
Full house
+7
98
Four-of-a-kind
+9
99
Straight flush
+11
100
Royal flush
+13


The player now nominates how much money he is risking on his hand. This will be matched or nearly matched by his opponents (see below)

Next, the player makes a Gambling task check against each opponent in the game. A gambling task check is a Charisma check in ACTION X, which uses the same task resolution system as Blood & Treasure. The player adds his hand modifier to the roll, and subtracts his opponent's Wisdom modifier. If his opponent has a knack at gambling, the player suffers a -2 penalty to his roll. If his opponent is skilled at gambling, the player suffers a -4 penalty to his roll.

Each time the player makes a successful task check, that opponent folds and leaves the game. Each person who folds deposits half the amount of money the player chose to risk into the pot.

Each opponent that survives these Gambling checks now reveals his or her hand - roll randomly on the table above to find out what they have. Each of these participants will put risk as much money as the player. The participant in the game with the best hand takes the pot.

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