TL4 Poker Chips

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That's skilled gambling, though, which is at best rare in Ärth. Almost all gambling consists of pure-random dice rolling, coin tossing, or wagering, and is therefore disconnected from all character skill, and from all character traits (even luck traits) unless one character wishes to cheat or has specialist knowledge that lets him know what to bet on.

Why even luck traits?

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

After the invention of the printing press maybe. Before that when all decks are hand-painted I doubt that decks are common at all. Very dificult to play card games when you don't have a deck.

printing press != printing with movable letters

Woodblock printing is wildly used in TL4 and you don't need movable letters for playing cards.

And we know that one of the items woodblock printers made in the 15th century were playing cards.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The printing press is in fact one of the characteristic technologies of the Renaissance—and, more to the point, of the Reformation, which happened more or less at the same time. Francis Bacon cites gunnery, navigation, and printing as the three great triumphs of European technology. Of course now we know that the Chinese came up with all three first. . .

Which brings us around to various gambling tiles and sticks used in historical Asia where modern western cultures would use cards. Modern mahjong tiles (and dominos) work perfectly well for this, but strips of bamboo have (naturally) also been used. If you believe the mythology, mahjong has been around since 500BC but it seems based on a (chinese) card game which in turn dates back somewhere in the Ming Dinasty (1368–1644) - with actual cards, but again the Chinese had TL 4 technologies earlier than the Europeans. And as noted, you make cards with woodblock printing (which they had), not movable type (which isn't very practical with ideograms) - they're artwork, not writing.

I vaguely also recall hand-painted "cards" made out of hand-painted thin sheets of ivory, but that necessarily puts them in the realm of "the fabulously wealthy".

Wikipedia claims playing cards date back to the 9th century in china, which makes them firmly TL3 technology - just one that didn't make it to the West.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Also, check out the histiory of cards. The conventional history si that hand-painted Tarot cards existed in the TL4 period but were used for fortunetelling instead of gaming.

If I remember correctly, Tarot (the card game) predates Tarot (the fortune telling method). However, prior to widespread printing, cards were incredibly expensive (a few dozen hand painted works of art), so dice games tended to be the gambler's venue.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RyanW

If I remember correctly, Tarot (the card game) predates Tarot (the fortune telling method). However, prior to widespread printing, cards were incredibly expensive (a few dozen hand painted works of art), so dice games tended to be the gambler's venue.

I have never heard of a Tarot-based card game.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I have never heard of a Tarot-based card game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot,_...tarocchi_games .

Bill Stoddard

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Why even luck traits?

Because if characters, rather than players, decide when their luck traits are used, then that's extremely horrible metagaming. So basically any luck trait or luck trait system I design has a rule about characters acting as if they rely on being lucky in a specific instant or situation, e.g. when betting all their money on the number 27 at the roulette wheel.

I'd really like to have a luck trait specifcally for gambling in Sagatafl, but I haven't been able to find a way to make it work in a roleplaying gaing context.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Because if characters, rather than players, decide when their luck traits are used, then that's extremely horrible metagaming. So basically any luck trait or luck trait system I design has a rule about characters acting as if they rely on being lucky in a specific instant or situation, e.g. when betting all their money on the number 27 at the roulette wheel.

I'd really like to have a luck trait specifcally for gambling in Sagatafl, but I haven't been able to find a way to make it work in a roleplaying gaing context.

Err, wait, you have no passive luck traits like in Age of Aquarius (the TT RPG) or Morrowing (the CRPG)?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Err, wait, you have no passive luck traits like in Age of Aquarius (the TT RPG) or Morrowing (the CRPG)?

Not in Sagatafl, no. All are used according to player decision (not character decision), except for Subtle Luck which is GM-prompted.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

What are TL5 statistics? The kind of probability calculations you can use for dice and card gambling can be performed with a stick and a scratchable surface.

You have to invent the field of probability and statistics first. Basically, that was a western European thing around 1700. For a parallel, consider Newtonian kinematics. At TL 8 anyone with IQ 10+ and a year of calculus can derive all the equations from first principles on one sheet of paper, but when Newton first invented them it took months of work by a genius!

The classic paper was by Christian Huigens de ratiociniis in ludo aleae (1657) but until the 18th century there were only a handful of other papers.

Today any elementary school student has repeatedly rolled 2d6 or 3d6 and tallied the results, but there is no evidence of that until the 17th or 18th century.