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My Pathfinder RPG group played Bounder last night. Thank you, James for sharing this game in yesterday's Paizo blog. In a word: Awesome!!! I brought out the poker chips to represent silver and gold pieces. I had each player set their first d20 roll on top of their bet so we could all see what the player needed to roll on their second d20. It was so much fun, the players played several rounds of Bounder during the last 15 minutes of the night as themselves, even after the adventure session was over.
Has anyone had a chance to have fun gambling with the PCs yet using James' blog notes from yesterday? What was your experience like?
Bounder
"Bounder, bounder, bounder! No doubles, no doubles!"
What You'll Need: 3d6 for the dealer and 2d20 for each player, plus coins to track bets.
How to Play: Bounder is unique among gambling games in that both the players and dealer use dice. The dealer gets three 6-sided dice, and each player gets two 20-siders.
To start, each player bets a stake (minimum 1 sp). Each player rolls his first d20, making his "point." After all players have rolled their points, each player may double his stake if desired.
Then the dealer rolls 3d6. Anyone whose point the dealer matches loses his stake.
Then each player rolls his second d20. If the player's two dice results are on either side of the dealer's result—one greater than and one less than the dealer's number—he "bounds" the dealer and wins an amount equal to the amount he bet. Otherwise, he loses his stake.
If a player rolls a 1 and a 20 (or a 20 and a 1), he wins double his bet.
Odds: The house edge in this game is 18% without any doubling. A player over time will get about 7/17 of his money back. Extreme points (1, 2, 19 and 20) are as good as 47.5%, so doubling is wiser there (but still not wise).
James Jacobs
Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief
I thought the odds were a bit off, generally gambling in casinos the house edge is less than 10%. I was thinking about playing it where the player won if his roll matched the dealers roll. This would make the odds slightly better for the player but the house would still retain a significant edge.
Hey, glad you liked it man! The game itself comes from Mike Selinker and crew and theres a few other awesome minigames in Pathfinder #13. While some would be a good bit harder to recreate, Bounder's a perfect in game fantasy diversion if you ever need to get down to winning some gold Golarion-style.
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Me and my friends tend to alternate D&D nights with trips to Atlantic City (it's only an hour away from us) and are big gambling fans. We tried out Bounder and found it a fun fantasy replacement for blackjack, moves pretty fast though there's not a lot of strategy involved.
I've been thinking of ways to spice it up a bit but don't have anything solid yet.
All we need now is a good gambling game to replace Hold 'em. Something you can play that's high stakes and requires bluffing and upping the wages for the big pots (Towers and Three Dragon Ante just don't work for it at all)
We played this game in my opening for my Second Darkness campaign - it was a hit even with just one player playing it.
Ghoulette wasn't so interesting (due to the low odds of winning), plus coming up with witty insults is not my forte.
We finished it up with a round of Three Dragon Ante (house taking 5% of the winner and 1 coin from each non-loser). Made for a great evening.
that halfling game Skiff, sheesh
I just threw that one out the window, it was like a new board game with all the tokens and making a game board and all
its a long game too
I replaced that game with a bidding version of "Liars Dice"
considering how long the game takes to play and how the house only earns one measly coin per game, I think it unlikely that a casino would actually use such a slow and miserably low profit game
casino's like games that can be played fast, the faster the game the more money rolls into their coffers each night
the problem with golem was what if the player didn't have the chips to double the pot if his hand didn't beat the golem? this could also be a slow game with little profit for the house
on second thought, maybe that is the reason why this casino's profits are so dismal
the game selection has been totally mismanaged by Saul, that bungling fool
