Three Dragon Ante- Does anyone play it?

[Savage_ScreenMonkey]

Ive never played this and have heard pretty much only good things about it. The other day I rewatched James Bond: Casino Royale and it got me thinking about basing a d&d adventure loosly on the movie but using 3DA instead of poker.

My question is could the game be played as part of a d&d session? If so what if a player decides that he wants his character to be a 3DA pro can this be reflected in the his skill at playing the game? For example the player himself is barley knowledgeable about the game but his character has 10 ranks in Proffession 3DA playing. Can those ranks equate into providing the novice player with an advantageous edge in the actual playing of the game?

Is the game fast enough that it can be played during a typical 4-6 hour gaming session while allowing enough time to actually roleplay?

Ive also been trying to flesh out more ideas for the adventure itself. If anyone has any ideas to contribute or inspirational movies or books that would be great!

[Dragonmann]

There are rules for playing in character, with abilities granted for having ranks in certain skills.

It can be played quickly enough to fit into a regular session, if everyone knows the rules in advance, the first couple hands go slow, after that you can do pretty well

You may need to egg timer it, with a 30minute cap, whoever is leading at that point wins, but since you only play until the first player is eliminated, it isn't like poker...

[Savage_ScreenMonkey]

Dragonmann wrote:

There are rules for playing in character, with abilities granted for having ranks in certain skills.

It can be played quickly enough to fit into a regular session, if everyone knows the rules in advance, the first couple hands go slow, after that you can do pretty well

You may need to egg timer it, with a 30minute cap, whoever is leading at that point wins, but since you only play until the first player is eliminated, it isn't like poker...

Thanks, that makes this adventure idea sound like it has some promise. Im going to have to look into this some more.

[Craig Shackleton]

We played it in character as part of the Age of Worms, and it was excellent. We modified the character effects slightly, requiring skill rolls to use the benefits.

I also feel obliged to mention that Dragon 346 has an article that I wrote on using the 3DA deck to generate characters. It's darn good if I say so myself.

[Dragonmann]

Rambling Scribe wrote:

We played it in character as part of the Age of Worms, and it was excellent. We modified the character effects slightly, requiring skill rolls to use the benefits.

I also feel obliged to mention that Dragon 346 has an article that I wrote on using the 3DA deck to generate characters. It's darn good if I say so myself.

Kudos for the character generator!!! It is pretty cool, aside from occsionally spitting out captain average (14,14,14,14,14,10 is not a typical 32 point buy)

[Derrick Graffius]

I just picked up Three-Dragon Ante after receiving my leftover Dragon Magazine subscription credit. Like many people have said, the box design is horrible, the cards bounce around in there, it doesn't actually stay closed, it was made extra big to fit the rulebook rather than sizing the rulebook down to match the cards and having a box that would actually fit. It would be nice if it would stay closed, you'd think that the company printing Magic would have plenty of experience making boxes and rulebooks that would fit together with the cards...

On a positive note, the game itself was really fun. Me and two of my friends spent a few hours sitting in Denny's playing it. I described it to them as being kind of like a cross between Poker and Uno. The game went on forever though, we ended up quitting without anybody really winning. Other than that it was really fun, actually, even that was fun, but in the future we may have to decide on a set number of rounds to play or something like the rulebook suggests for using house rules. Supposedly in larger games it goes a lot quicker, but with 3 people it seemed endless.

I give the box a 2/5, but the gameplay itself a 4/5.

[CharlieRock]

Fake Healer wrote:

Does anyone play this game and if so what experiences have you had with playing?

FH

I played it. It's kind of fun. Not the best card game I've tried but certainly not the worst.

[varianor]

We tried it on the way to GenCon this year in the motel. I liked it a lot. It has strategy, bluffing, card counting and some sheer random fortune (ill or good) built in. We still play it if we get the chance and I look forward to introducing others to it.