Can you have something similar to poker in a TL 1 setting

[SteampengMK-1]

I don't know how helpful this is going to be, but the first playing cards were invented in China 7th Century AD.

Dice however(often made out of bones at TL1 time, hence why its "Roll them bones") were around during this time. There were also tiles.

This site may prove helpful

http://www.gypsyware.com/gamblingHistory.html

[mlangsdorf]

Is there any reason that your TL1 poker players couldn't use cards made from barkcloth, leather, or papyrus? Canonically, those are all TL1 media.

A slightly advanced TL1 society might also have access to parchment or vellum, which are TL2 media that could also be used for cards.

[Anders]

Ivory plaques sound interesting. Each god in this setting has an associated number - maybe something about adding the numbers together?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Is there any reason that your TL1 poker players couldn't use cards made from barkcloth, leather, or papyrus? Canonically, those are all TL1 media.

A slightly advanced TL1 society might also have access to parchment or vellum, which are TL2 media that could also be used for cards.

Unless the medium is about as stiff as cardstock shuffling becomes difficult, and it is easier to use tiles that can be "stirred", like Mah-jong tiles.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Is there any reason that your TL1 poker players couldn't use cards made from barkcloth, leather, or papyrus? Canonically, those are all TL1 media.

Perhaps for solitaire or some kind of fortune-telling game, but in a competetive game with cards you want the cards to be free of marks. That includes the "marks" that arise from natural variation in pieces of bark, and so forth.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anders

Sketching on a TL 1 setting and I want to make it a little Old West as well. Could you have something like poker in the Bronze Age? There's no paper, but could you have painted wood plaques, maybe?

Or could you have something similar but not using cards?

I thought a bit about that for my TL3 Ärth historical fantasy setting, and I think the least bad fit is a game based on cubic dice, rolled in a cup and kept hidden by it, where you bid and bluff, and one of the things you can bid is how many of your dice you're going to re-roll, with lower numbers being worth more.

Clearly there's some room for cheating. Someone with good Sleight of Hand skill could covertly tip one of the dice over, unnoticed. On the other hand, the other players will know to be wary of this (I envision it as a money betting game, not a recreation) and so it's hard to get away with, and may depend on one of the dice being positioned just right, within easy reach of a finger duing "The Reveal" which is probably a formal process.

On the third hand, subtly weighed dice is also a real risk. I imagine many players would insist on using their own dice (at least each player has to have a set, of I think 6 if not 7 or even 8). But on the fourth hand, it's not about rolling high, so you don't really gain anything if you unbalance one or two dice to be more likely to roll 5 or 6. Rather it's about getting "combinations", like in Poker and Yatzee. Rolling many sives or many fives is a combination, as is rolling several of each, but not the only one.