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Now, I'm considering dropping my players into a sabacc tournament, which I think would be neat and enjoyable for all involved. I've spent some time fleshing out the actual rules of the game (see here for the WIP: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgqmc4ss_44g68tjpcg ), and I figured I'd just have my players play actual sabacc instead of turning the thing into a boring skill challenge.

But I do remember there being skill challenge-y rules in place for sabacc in SWSE, yet I can't seem to find those rules. I just want to look at the rules and see if they're at all applicable to an actual game of sabacc as I have planned, but I've had no luck looking for 'em so far. Did I just imagine that there were sabacc rules in SAGA? Or am I a terrible looker? Maybe I saw the stuff in an online supplement?

Also, as an aside, any critique of my interpretation of the rules (at link) is welcome.

Dawn of Defiance Episode 3: The Queen of Air and Darkness involves a sabacc tournament. You might be thinking of that.

I adapted the RCR Galactic Campaign Guide's rules for sabacc not so long ago:

Description: Sabacc is a card game involving a deck of seventy-six chip-cards with electronic interfaces that change value at random. Players can “lock in” a card’s value by putting it in play. The goal is to get a total score of 23. Players must pay an initial ante to get into the game. They then proceed to bet on their initial hands and on their final, locked totals.

Mechanics: Participants start by paying an ante of [50] credits. Each player then secretly rolls 1d10 to simulate the quality of their initial hand. Then each player makes an Intelligence check, adding the quality of their hand to the total. They may also add +2 to the total for each of the following skills in which they are trained: Deception, Knowledge (social sciences), Perception, and Persuasion. Players can then increase their wager in increments of [50] credits at this time. Before determining the final winner, each player rolls 1d6: on a result of 1, they must roll 1d10 and subtract that result from their total. The player with the highest final total wins the hand and collects the pot.

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There's the basic gambling rules on page 47 of the 'Core Rulebook'.

It's just an Wisdom check, as opposed to a skill challange, but I don't imagine it would be too difficult to take those basic rules, add in a few Perception and Deception checks; maybe a Gather Information check before hand; or even Knowledge (Bureaucracy), (Galactic Lore), (Social Sciences), or (Tacticts) to give the players circumstance bonuses.

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It all depends on how you are running it. Is it all the PCs at a table playing each other? Each PC is playing NPCs?

The second one sounds more fun to me, as you can use more skills for different aspects of the game. If you have a bad hand and you raise the bet... your bluffing, making a deception check. Make a perception, insight, check to tell if a player is lying to you. Maybe you trash talk at the table and you make a persuasion check to throw your opponent off their game. Using various knowledge skills you may be able to know more about your opponent. I think it is harder to do with players, as you either have to do all the rolling secretly... or find another method of determining actions.

If I was to do PC vs PCs, I would probably run it in such a manner. Everyone rolls 3d6 at the start of the game to determine their starting hand value (3d6 are used to make this a more even measurement). Each hand you roll a d4. On a 1, your hand goes down in value -2, one a 2 it goes down in value -1, on a three it goes up in value 1 and on a 4 it goes up in value 2. You can reroll the d4 up the value of your wisdom modifier, but you must take the value of the reroll. After every player is done creating their new hand value, they all make deception checks. This is for more than bluffing your opponent, this is your "poker face" value to hide how good or how bad your hand is. Each player may now make ONE perception check against another player. If the player beats his opponents deception DC, the GM will give him a range of numbers for the hand value. I would recommend 5 values. Players can then decide if they want to stay in another round or drop out. I thought about working persuasion checks into the "betting phase" somehow, but the problem with allowing "real" betting is that it allows for a lot more metagaming on the parts of a player. You might play a scoundrel.. but unless you actually know something about poker you probably won't know how to bet.

Of course if I was really to do this PC vs PC, I'd probably just pull out a Sabacc deck... act as the dealer and make my players actually play

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Welcome back to GSPN's continuing coverage of the World Series of Sabacc.

I like xphile's ideas for doing it. It makes it just meta enough where those who enjoy gambling are going to really like it, but not so meta that they are going to have a major edge, and it also keeps it constrained well enough in the existing rules and streamlined enough that those who normally don't like poker or the like aren't going to be bored to tears. Heck, I might even adopt the basic idea of PC vs PC and include a series of skill checks around it, running each hand as a sort of "micro skill challenge" with victory going to the participant with the most successes (or the higher threshold of success, though that could get fairly book-keepy fairly quickly).

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Thanks for the input, guys! And I must've been thinking of the general betting rules, since I haven't perused DoD too much. And, looking at those DoD rules, that looks awwwful and dreadfully dull. I know my players, and they'd be bored to tears by something so abstract and skill-dependent as that. They like puzzles and problem-solving on their own. Much like, I suppose, a video game. (Like the KOTOR games, where combat is a series of dice rolls and skill bonuses, but all the various puzzles you run into have to be solved by your own wit and guile. Tis how it should be!)

However!


For the most part, it'll be PC vs. NPC (although it's an online tabletop game, so I may rope in some non-players to make NPC decisions behind-the-scenes, making character actions more realistic). Probably only two of the PCs (at most) will be playing in the sabacc tournament, so it could be PC vs. PC vs. NPC at a sabacc table. Which would be the best of both worlds!

I really do like the idea of using skills in supplement to the player's card-playing logic. Like, as you said, Deception would give a bonus to a attempts at bluff. (As happened in Rebel Dawn, Lando flashed one of his interfered cards to Han, showing Han that he had The Idiot, one of the key components of an Idiot's Array. It was a bluff, though an effective one.) And Perception checks could come in handy, plus any variety of other skills. That sounds like a good use of skills to me. I'm definitely not too hot on rolling a series of die to determine general "quality" of one's hand. I'd prefer simply to shuffle the sabacc deck, deal the cards, and let the players (and NPCs) determine the quality of the hand for themselves.

Overall, I think the main goal of a SAGA game is to immerse the players in the Star Wars universe they've come to love -- playing sabacc is one way to do that. Rolling random handfuls of dice, though good sometimes, is not. Just imo!

I know your question was about Sabacc, and I believe that there were sabacc rules and a sabacc deck in one of the old WEG scenarios. I also found a sabacc computer program that has the player playing against the computer. But I don't know where I found it. Another option could be that instead of sabacc tournament perhaps it is a Dejaric tourn. I have seen a whole lot of references to this game, but perhaps it is a gambling game as well. I am planning on getting a full set of minis for it and the game board after I return home.


Salcor

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Is this what you're talking about? http://mavrinac.com/files/sabacc/index.html

It's the closest I've found to actual sabacc, though it's far from perfect -- you can't use interference fields (which is frustrating!) or play more than 1 person at a time. It's a nice way to get the very basest of grasps on the game, though. There are one or two other sabacc games floating around the net, but they're typically incomplete or feature really weird variations on the rules. The above is best, imo. edit: I lied! You can place cards in the interference field in the above game. Neat!

And as for dejarik, that's a good idea. I should probably figure out how that game is played, too! My players' ship has a dejarik board on it, after all.

There's also the option of Pazzak, of KOTOR fame, if you're interested in a game closer to blackjack than poker.

Here's a printable deck, and the rules can be found on wookiepedia.

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I actually did look into it, and read up on the rules since I avoided pazaak minigames like the plague in the KOTOR games.

Pazaak looks like it could be a neat diversion, but the game itself is pretty simple and dry, plus its not very iconically "Star Wars" like sabacc. I should probably see how my players feel about it, though.

I tried to run an actual Sabaac game with cards and everything, the problem being that you are very limited because if you do it this way at a table you can really only play one NPC's hand at a time because trying to play multiple hands at once, as I found, was not so great. So if you are cool with doing a one on one sabaac game or even if your other players join in as well then you are fine. But I opted not to use the real cards during the Sabaac tournament on Bespin because it would have taken far too long, also I am not a fan of leaving it up to the players to play without any skill checks because what good is a scoundrel decked out with gambling perks if the person playing him has no idea what he is doing.

Darth Drakaunus

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I'll be playing online, so doing multiple hands (the players will be playing at a tournament with 4-6 other characters at each sabacc table) shouldn't be a problem. I've already run through a few practice games with myself, and it was hardly unmanageable. I'm sure it'd be difficult on an actual tabletop, though.

And I'll certainly allow skill checks to be made by the players, but I won't make the ordeal simplistically and entirely skill-dependent like vanilla gambling would have it be. They can roll Deception to aid in a bluff, or make UtF checks to cheat. After all, it's still Saga Edition they're playing!

By the way: the linked sabacc rules up in the OP are more or less finished. So anyone can feel free to use them for their own benefit!