A thread over at story games about games within the game (i.e. using the actual game (poker, parcheesi, whatever) to resolve the in character situation) got me thinking of ways to do that and still include PC skill.

One thought I had was for poker, and playing straight hands of draw poker. No betting means no need to worry about poker faces. To include character skill you roll whatever the Gaming skill is for the game and use the level of success to give the participants extra cards. So instead of playing five card draw one guy is playing six card draw, another eight card draw, and the card shark with massive skill and a little cheater's sleight of hand is playing fifteen card draw.

I've never had an occassion to do it, but it's got me wanting to.

Anyone else used a RL game to resolve an IC game? If so, how did you manage player skill vs. PC skill?

Yeah, I pretty much used your system when I used to run Deadlands a lot. It worked real well as I recall. Sometimes for big poker tournaments what I'd do was decide ahead of time what a major NPC would have (like Eli Pact over there has two pair, jacks high and unless the PCs have something better he's going to win the prize). Sometimes when I was feeling really slick I'd even stack the deck, and make the game within a game really tense.

There was one time when I actually played out the Hucksters attempt to cheat at cards mystically with a short game of Texas Hold 'em, all the while roleplaying what the Manitou was doing.

DnD 3.0 game where we played "marbles" with a giant. Drew a bullseye on a sheet of paper and rolled twentysiders in. Unfortunately our designated marbler was unable to hit the 8x11 sheet of paper from one foot away so we lost the game even with the GM trying to throw the game in our favor. "It's not my fault! My thumbs don't work!"

Ooh! I remember seeing an adv for something like that at GenCon. Shuffleboard to hit. Wire and loop puzzles to defuse a trap etc....

Quote from: Malleus ArianorumOoh! I remember seeing an adv for something like that at GenCon. Shuffleboard to hit. Wire and loop puzzles to defuse a trap etc....

True Dungeon. It's a cool idea that was, IMO, badly executed.

I only went to one of them, and it turns out I'd chosen one that was on "super killer" difficulty or something like that, and they didn't tell anyone. Being a starting character I had no healing. I could have had some, but they sell the potions and I'd already spent as much as I wanted to on a one-shot "this sounds cool" game.

I don't remember what class I was because I only ever got to do one thing: cast detect magic. I died because other characters couldn't do their jobs. The rogue set off one of the traps (they played like the Operation game) and did a lot of damage to all of us. Then in another room where we were supposed to find a blacklight by searching with the invisible ink stamps on the back of our hands we ran out of time and all took damage again. Three of us died there. It wouldn't have been so bad if we'd had any idea what we were supposed to be doing in that room.

Overall there was way too much reliance on total strangers to keep you alive, while you stood there and watched them do their challenge.

True Heroes was a similar setup based on Marvel Superheroes. It was much more fun, although it also suffered from the watch and wait problem. The combat involved throwing heavy metal balls at a magnetized target. You could knock them out or stun them depending on where you hit. The only problem with that is that the big fights that were fair numerically speaking had GMs with tons of practice facing gamer geeks who'd never thrown a heavy ball at a magnet before. Kinda like a fair fight at the table being complicated with loaded dice. Despite that though, I enjoyed the True Heroes a lot more, as I actually got to do something in almost every challenge. Although I don't know if I'd do it again unless it was with at least a couple of people I knew. I definitely wouldn't do True Dungeon again unless I knew my fellow adventurers. Darn thing's expensive!

Thought of another way that would be simpler (but perhaps less satisfying): do a die roll-off, highest number wins. However, all players start with a d4 and roll their gaming-related skill. The margin of success determines how many times they get to step their die up, so you end up with some d6's, d10's, and the guy who really juiced up his skill rolling 2d12 + d4.