Re: Gambling in 2100?
As I understand this, GURPS Gambling skill is about playing true games of chance effectively - getting a feel for odds in general, spotting rigged games, whatever. Games with an actual skill component of any sort (e.g. Poker) each get their own mandatory specialisation of Games skill.
Where Blackjack - random to casual play, susceptible to a certain kind of skill - falls is anyone's guess, but in any event, I too suspect it's a dead game by 2100. Implants and brainbugs would just make it too easy to become a card counter. True games of chance will still be around - they're a compulsion for some people, a tax on hope for others; characters could use AI assistance to judge the odds better, but knowing the odds doesn't necessarily stop a game from being played. People play roulette, where the odds are practically printed on the table, after all.
Actually, that gives me a scenario idea... Back in the 2070s, a chain of high-end genefixing clinics announced that they'd found a set of genetic sequences correlated to compulsive gambling. A significant number of rich parents then paid to have these not occur in their offspring; after all, who wants their kids to be gambling addicts?
It was only in the '90s that various families realised that they'd produced a generation of dull heirs with severe risk aversion. Rather than pay out millions in compensation, the clinics simply commissioned creation of a brainbug that compensated for the genefix. And it's only in 2100 that the clinics have realised that supplying that brainbug free, in unlimited quatities, with few questions asked, may have been a mistake.
The PCs are hired by the clinics to talk those heirs down and off runaway brainbug addiction. These filthy rich, risk-addicted heirs...
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