What about gambling in Dungeons & Dragons?

[Geist11]

Hi everyone,

I'm fairly new to the world of Dungeons & Dragons, and I have to admit I'm fascinated by its richness. Recently, I heard about gambling that can be integrated into our adventures, and I think it's a fantastic way to add an extra layer of realism and fun to our sessions. I even came across some tools like this one to make a bonus hunt, which gave me a few ideas.

However, I'm still a bit lost on how to implement gambling in a balanced and engaging way. How do you usually handle wins and losses, and what kind of impact does it have on the game? Any tips, house rules, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. I'm also aware of the importance of avoiding addiction-related issues, so any guidance on that topic would be welcome as well.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[deaddmwalking]

Gambling is what we would here typically refer to as a 'mini-game'.

You can think about Dungeons and Dragons as a 'big game' and it has different components. Making a character is different than 'normal play', but even in normal play exploring the wilderness in a narrative fashion is different than combat where you track actions round-by-round. When you 'change frames' and play the game differently, you're in a mini-game.

There are a lot of 'mini-games' for D&D that already exist. A book like Tournaments, Fairs, and Taverns might be a good resource.

D20 sourcebook containing various "games within the game". Need rules for a card game or a fairground contest for your game? Need a quick archery tournament, or rules for arm-wrestling? Then this is the book for you! Also includes a sample tournament, fair and tavern making full use of these rules and plenty of new uses for old skills.

The first thing to really be aware of is that you're not REALLY playing the game anymore. If your characters all sit down and play poker, you can just play poker to simulate your character actions. Poker is poker whether your imaginary characters are playing it or you're playing it. If the game-within-a-game is more fun than your D&D campaign, people will want to play that instead. If your game-within-a-game is LESS fun than your D&D campaign, people will want to give it less attention. Rather than playing an entire evening of Texas Hold 'Em to figure out who wins a pot, you might want to simplify it and use the tools at hand, typically dice.

In D&D, luck isn't governed by an attribute. If you want a game to be purely luck based, you could have players roll 5d12; players can choose to roll up to 3d12 (meaning they have 2d12 from their original roll and 3d12 from their new roll). Players can then make the best 'poker hand' with 2 of a kind (pair), 3 of a kind, straight, 4 of a kind. To keep it as simple as possible you can tie the game to their wager; maybe if they don't make a hand at all they lose their wager; if they get a pair they get half their wager back; if they get 3 of a kind they keep their full wager; better hands pay double or triple their wager. A single 'hand' could represent an entire night spent gambling, or even just one intense high-stakes game. You can allow players to use character skills to potentially cheat, maybe re-rolling an extra die, or changing the facing on a die (ie, a rouge that had 2, 3, 4, 10, 12 as his final hand could change the 2 to a 12 to make it a pair. If he rolled well enough, maybe he could change 2 dice and instead change the 10 to a 5 and the 12 to 6 so his new hand would be 2,3,4,5,6 a straight.

In most games, gambling isn't featured enough to make a special 'game-within-a-game' worth the time of writing out. Western RPGs tend to be an exception - usually gambling at the saloon is an important enough part of play that there's some suggestion for how to handle it. That said, it's usually a good idea to keep these sequences short to get back to the real action.