Retrospective: Dungeon #64 (Sept/Oct 1997)

Spoiler alert! Of course, 15 years is well past the spoiler statute of limitations.

These were some pretty memorable adventures; after all these years I remembered a little about all of them, although perhaps more about the scene at Lathtarl's Lantern than the actual adventure it's in.

"Grotto of the Queen", by Paul and Shari Culotta (AD&D Forgotten Realms, Levels 6-9): The ambush of a rival adventuring party offers the PCs an opening to raid the submerged temple of the evil sea goddess Umberlee. The hook into this adventure is fairly contrived, requiring a fair amount of DM engineering: the adventurers are approached by a Lantanese emissary, to recover a magical boat taken by the cult of Umberlee. The party's nemesis (a 14th-level wizard with nothing better to do than follow the party and engineer some scrapes for them) warns the cult of their attack, and the cult prepares an ambush, which is instead triggered by a rival adventuring party. Alternatively, the author suggests that the cult of Umberlee has an effective spy network, which seems like a much simpler backstory.

Either way, the adventurers travel in an advanced Lantanese ship to a pirate enclave of Lathtarl's Lantern, on the Sword Coast between Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep. This is a neat little evil pirate town: it has a huge tavern full of dozens of pirates and outlaws, along with a couple of gnolls, ogres, and half-orcs, all drinking and carousing. There's a high likelihood that adventurers will get into a barroom brawl, ending in a boxing match before a shouting, leering crowd. Most of the residents are followers of Umberlee, so the adventurers should use some sublety in town. The grotto itself is a well-conceived dungeon, built by terrestrial worshippers of an evil sea goddess. The moderately-sized complex opens with some traps, some of which have been triggered, and can catch the temple unawares. Which is good: the final encounter should be very challenging, with a sea priestess who uses the environment of the confined, flooded temple to good advantage.

I don't like the plot of this adventure, but the actual setting and dungeon are pretty great. With some modest re-skinning, it would be an excellent addition to a campaign involving grim pirates who follow evil sea gods or demons.

"Bzallin's Blacksphere", by Christopher Perkins (AD&D, Levels 12-15): In the town of Horizon, a sphere of annihilation is growing and threatening to destroy the community. The town's wizard-protector Amazzer (Wiz17) believes that his predecessor Bzallin is responsible for this. So the adventurers travel to Bzallin's ruined keep and destroy its guardians (a hibernating necromancer and some powerful undead), then travel from there to the lich Bzallin's lair: a pocket demiplane suspended within the quasielemental plane of Vacuum. It's not a tesseract, but the geometry of Bzallin's Cube is interesting enough to temporarily confound mappers. This demiplane is full of Bzallin's apprentices (themselves fairly powerful wizards), his demonic and daemonic servitors, and a number of magical traps and wards. There's many of the delicious trimmings you would expect of a high-level lich's lair, making use of a wide range of evocative higher-level spells. This is a high-level, high-magic romp, and the author is probably right in suggesting that the DM refer extensively to all volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica. There's probably about two to three dozen encounters, ranging from Bzallin's apprentices (who are mostly around 10th-level wizards) to the lich himself, a near-epic-level enounter.

One thing that's apparent about the suggested level of these adventures, generally speaking, is that an average-sized party needs to be near the high end of the level spread, not the low end. A 6th-level party in "Grotto of the Queen" will probably get killed, while a 12th-level party in "Bzallin's Blacksphere" is very badly outclassed by the big bad. Anyway, I love wizards and liches, and "Bzallin's Blacksphere" is definitely my favorite from this issue.

"Last Dance", by Jeff Crook (AD&D Ravenloft, Levels 4-6): In the city of Pont-à-Museau in the domain of Richemulot, the adventurers are hired by Madame Araby Tuvache, a psychopath, to clear out her basement of rats. In fact, she plans to trap them inside and kill them with her clockwork house of marionette horrors. The plot is simple and the dungeon doesn't seem all that dangerous, but this adventure is certainly gruesome. The PCs are not really expected to defeat the villain—if they kill her, the Dark Powers of Ravenloft transform her into an even worse creature, a Greater Animator running a haunted house—but merely to explore the environment and make it out alive. I'm not sure why the heroes don't just burn the place down from the get-go. This may be short enough to finish in a single session.

"The Mad Chefs of Lac Anchois", by Jennifer Tittle Stack (AD&D, Levels 6-9): So, Pol and Prue Dhomme, a pair of Francophone cloud giant restauranteurs have captured some grippli young (instead of giant frogs) to butcher and serve for some giantish food critics that will visit their establishment, Chez Grands Frères, in three days. The grippli tribe mother asks some adventurers to intervene and rescue the children, and why not? How PCs approach this problem is fairly open-ended: they can try stealth, role-playing, deceit, negotiation, or even a direct frontal assault. The restaurant has several kobold waitresses (Francine, Chapponage, and Amortisseuse) to serve human-sized customers, although getting past the half-ogre mage wine steward Brummel and into the kitchen will be a challenge. If the adventurers attack the chefs, they may battle a dough golem or suffer the effects of their dreaded spoon of transmuting flesh to roquefort. The cloud giants are not actually evil evil, they just don't realize that the grippli young are sentient creatures.

This could be an interesting variant on a rescue-the-princess scenario, but the adventure plays it for laughs, and humor in D&D can be quite difficult to pull off. I don't think that the author quite succeeds; it seems pretty goofy. Of course, there is a time and a place for all things. Perhaps this adventure could be lighter interlude and welcome relief from a gruelling hack-and-slash campaign against giantish foes, such as G1-3: Against the Giants, where there is little or no opportunities for role-playing with the giants. "The Mad Chefs of Lac Anchois" certainly has more opportunity for role-playing, although I think the cloud giant brothers and their minions could be portrayed in a more sinister light; the comedy of this adventure will come through in any case. It's short enough to play through in a single session, I reckon.

Humor is used in a lot of my favorite adventures later on: the kobold Meepo in Bruce Cordell's The Sunless Citadel, the kobolds in Richard Pett's "The Devil Box" in Dungeon #109, or some of the goblins in Pathfinder #1—Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings, by James Jacobs. "The Devil Box" is in fact one of my favorite Dungeon adventures, and it is hilarious. The key difference, I think, is that those adventures play for laughs creatures known to be small, weak, and relatively nonthreatening when encountered individually, so that humor adds some interest to overplayed monsters. Kobolds and goblins are supposed to be reckless, troublesome, and mischievous; the contrast between their evil ambitions and their individual weakness can be naturally funny. But the real villains in those adventures are not only sinister and threatening, but also powerful and deadly. In "The Mad Chefs of Lac Anchois", however, it is powerful monsters like giants and ogre magi that are played for laughs, and this corrodes the premise of the game: heroes are needed to combat the sinister threats of a dangerous world. Turning the dangerous monsters into jokes weakens the suspension of disbelief, rather than bolstering it.

Retrospective: Dungeon #63 (July-August 1997)

I started buying issues of Dungeon magazines from about 1997, subscribing (with a few intermittent gaps) until the end of the print run in 2007. I sorted them the other day, and found that I have 75 issues all together: half of the magazines published, amounting to some hundreds of adventures. It's been between five and fifteen years since I read these, but there were some great adventurers with vivid scenes memorable even after years. However, I rarely use them, because it's hard to usefully find good adventures. Although Dungeon #150 has an index that lists only the system, title, author, and issue of each adventure, and there are a few public indices online that add a short blurb, it's usually still not easy enough to find an appropriate adventure for a certain style, setting, or situation. So I'm going to start a regular feature, reading through and reviewing some my old Dungeon magazines, starting with the first one I ever bought in a store, #63. What do I remember from this issue, before re-reading it? The goblin-o-war, invisible stalker, and "Blood & Fire".

"Hunt for a Hierophant", by Chris Doyle (AD&D, Levels 6-8): The evil wizard Zerrick has rallied a horde of bullywugs from the Cragmoor swamp to invade the communities beyond the Drakewood Forest, so adventurers are needed to rouse the slumbering hierophant druid Leander. They get some clues from an assortment of fey, treants, and giants, then negotiate the druid's dungeon resting place. The dungeon combines some combat tests with puzzles and riddles, most of which look relatively simple enough for an average group to handle easily.

"Gnome Droppings", by Christopher Perkins (Spelljammer, Levels 2-4): Tinker gnomes drop their autognome cargo from a spelljamming ship, then come back and recover it. The adventurers hear a strange noise in the forest, and if they're curious, they might investigate, slaughter some evil-if-innocent bystanders (grimlocks and spriggans), and interact with a harmless-but-malfunctioning robot. There's a hook into Spelljammer (especially the goofier parts, like giant hamsters), but nobody gets hurt if the adventurers just snooze. The right group would have fun, but is this actually an adventure?

"Huzza's Goblin-O-War", by Paul F. Culotta (AD&D Forgotten Realms, Levels 4-6): A monstrous pirate ship, crewed by goblins, margoyles, and a wizard, attack the PCs' ship at sea. When I first read it, the idea of a hill giant pirate captain struck me as a little too high-fantasy for my tastes. It may seem a little gonzo, but it sure does look like an entertaining encounter, even if Huzza is probably not bright enough to be a corsair. It's set in the Sea of Fallen Stars in the Forgotten Realms, but could be worked into any sea area with monstrous pirates.

"Invisible Stalker", by Johnathan M. Richards (AD&D SideTrek, Levels 1-2): It's exactly what you'd guess from the pun: a creepy sleazeball of a villain with the power to not be seen, here accomplished via a level-inappropriate magic item. The villain's plan would be an interesting encounter, if you want to see how 1st-level characters plan to use a powerful magic ring later on. If so, it can be set in any city environment.

"Blood & Fire", by John Baichtal (Al-Qadim, Levels 5-7): The adventurers travel from Qaybar, an emirate somewhere in Zakhara, to find its missing heir (the McGuffin). They travel across the desert to the oasis of Khaldun where they discover he's been taken by the Brotherhood of the True Flame, a powerful cabal of sinister flame mages, and taken to their Ivory Tower in the Valley of Mist. The plot of this adventure is fairly straightforward, and the final dungeon is not complex; there's about a half-dozen wilderness encounters and ten or so at the Tower. But there's a great deal of attention to detail in creating an evocative Arabian-themed desert setting. There's some excellent images and encounters: leucrottas haunting the dunes at night, an enchanted young couple mystically frozen in amber, a wizard mummy who doesn't realize he's dead in his cairn, the Apparatus of Kwalish clattering in a poisonous fog. Tony DiTerlizzi did some great illustrations here; I love the portrait of the coiling dragonne Zu'l Janah. This looks like a great adventure, my favorite in this issue.

"Beauty Corrupt", by Kent Ertman (AD&D 2E, Levels 4-5): After "The Phantom Menace", I'll never blindly trust a plot that revolves around the disruption of trade negotiations (here, between the coastal towns of Orchid Bay and WyrWatch). The hook is a simple request to heal the key negotiator, who has a mystical afflication. But this adventure has a fairly creative McGuffin: a sirene's song, captured by a covey of hags as a spell component. They dwell in a fairly simple lair typical of a sea hag, guarded by scrags and merrow, with a few false entrances; the encounters look very tough, but the goal is to disrupt a spell, not kill everything in sight. There's the opportunity to adventure underwater, since a plant called quipper kelp allows characters to breathe water.

"Risk" on Hexagons

Some time ago, I was talking with a friend about the board game "Risk", and ventured into the world of alternate maps for the game as an introduction more complex rules variants. I'm still interested in putting together a more involved variant based on Sengoku-era Japan using a map of the ancient provinces of Japan. I still remember the ads for "Shogun" in my "Axis & Allies" box; I really wanted to play that game as a kid, which I see Avalon Hill/Hasbro has just re-issued as "Ikusa".

In any case, I wanted to explore whether symmetrical, abstract alternate maps based on hexagonal tilings would be interesting, which led to the project of translating the original "Risk" map onto an abstract hexagonal map. It doesn't work perfectly, though, since some territories take up two or three hexes.

The history of tarot, in brief

Playing cards were probably invented in Asia and first came to Europe in the 1300s CE through the Arabic world. Few historical decks remain from the Arabic world, but one 15th-century Mamluk deck, preserved in Istabul, featured four suits of polo-sticks, swords, cups, and coins; each suit had ten pip cards and four court cards, and there may have been a joker. Playing cards, intricately painted or cheaply block printed, rapidly spread through Europe from the south, and a variety of designs and games proliferated.

In general, though, there were three main families of card designs. In the Romance world, around Italy and Spain, playing cards maintained the oldest division of the suits: Swords, Staves, Coins, and Cups. Over the Swiss Alps into the German-speaking world, the suits evolved: Leaves, Acorns, Bells, and Hearts. And in France, the suits developed into Spades (from Italian spada or Spanish espada, "swords", taking its shape from the German Leaves), Clubs (from Italian bastone, "sticks, staves", taking its shape from German Acorns), Diamonds (from Coins), and Hearts (from Cups). These stamped French-suited decks were simpler in design and thus cheaper to manufacture in the era of woodblock printing, and so spread through England and western Europe.

In the early 1400s in northern Italy, a new game developed that focused on taking tricks and capturing valuable cards with a group of trump cards. These decks had four suits of ten numbered cards and four face cards, plus a group of about 21 unsuited trumps with allegorical illustrations, as well as an unnumbered trump card used as a wild card. These Tarot card games became enormously influential, and variations of them are still played as games across Europe, especially in France, Italy, and the regions formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In the 1500s, it seems likely that the French trick-taking game Triumph or Trump, adapted for a standard 52-card deck, developed into the English game Ruff and Honors. In the early 1700s, this game developed into Whist, one of the most popular games in Europe for more than a century. Whist began as a plain-trick game in which the trump suit varied from hand to hand, and the goal was to collect as many tricks as possible. As the game diversified into the whist family of games, many common variations began to emerge, such as bidding on the number of tricks players will take in the hand. From bid whist variants came Bridge, Spades, and similar games like Hearts, while games like Euchre developed separately in parallel from similar sources. Modern collections of card games follow Edmond Hoyle's 1742 treatise on the whist, and gamblers and mathematicians were soon to develop probability and statistics.

Meanwhile, in the 1700s, various practitioners began to develop the use of playing cards as symbolic system for a divinatory or occult practice. Tarot cards, with their colorful trump illustrations, became a natural focus for this. Parallel to the Enlightenment of rationalists and philosophers, the undercurrents of occultism and mysticism were seething, soon to break out in the Romantic era. Franz Anton Mesmer mesmerized Paris. Isaac Newton wrote more on the occult and alchemy than mathematics and physics. Logicians and mathematicians speculated on a theoretical "universal language", a symbolic system that could encapsulate all knowledge in an algebra of thought. This never really panned out, except to give us thesauruses.In some ways, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment were periods of separating rationalism from superstition, astronomy from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, which implies an investigation of both. In 1781, Antoine Court de Gébelin published a theory that held the tarot cards to be the distillation of ancient Egyptian civil and religious philosophy, brought to Europe by Roma peoples (popularly called "Gypsies"). This was totally wrong. His speculation came almost 20 years before the Rosetta Stone was discovered and 40 years before it was deciphered; he was speculating at a time when Egyptian hieroglyphs were completely mysterious to the people of Europe. But his theory contributed to the development of occult use of tarot by emphasizing and expanding the allegorical interpretations of the cards. Court de Gébelin says, for example:

Ces quatre Couleurs sont relatives aux quatre Etats entre lesquels étoient divisés les Egyptiens. L'Épée désignoit le Souverain & la Noblesse toute Militaire. La Coupe, le Clergé ou le Sacerdoce. Le Bâton, ou Massue d'Hercule, l'Agriculture. Le Denier, le Commerce dont l'argent est le signe.

In other words, the four suits represent the four Estates of ancient Egyptian society: the sword represents the sovereign, military, and nobility; the chalice represents the priesthood; the staff represents farmers and the peasantry; and the coin represents merchants and commerce.

Then in 1785, occultist and cartomancer Jean-Baptiste Alliette produced a manual on divination with tarot cards. Marie Anne Lenormand was the next famous cartomancer, and Eliphas Levi incorporated Tarot-based cartomancy into his occult system, from where it went into the Golden Dawn and eventually into every modern Borders and Books-a-Million "Spirituality" section. And we come to where we are today, where few Americans know that the Tarot deck is based on an old and still-popular game. The familiar 52-card deck has accreted layers of symbolism, too, over centuries of play: look at Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts or the Ace of Spades' association with victory or death. But with the tarot deck, this was more extreme.

Many people like their board games to have a strong theme, aside from the abstract mechanics of the game, be it commercial real estate in Monopoly or colonization and urban development in Settlers of Cataan. It's on this level that I enjoy the quaint metaphors of Tarot: If each suit represents a social class, then the game reflects the vicious social striving of individual members of society for one-upmanship or material advancement, who are only to be frustrated or trumped by a host of random disasters, external forces, unpredictable circumstances, or merely the vicissitudes of fortune. It's a dark, satirical, and pessimistic vision of life, quite medieval in a way. But to treat tarot as wholly other than a game would be like pondering the mystical import of Blackjack, or contemplating the Jungian symbolism of Druidic Seven-Card Flop Poker, without appreciating the game's more worldly appeal. Some people may be enjoy that, but probably more people enjoy playing them with friends and family as games of skill and chance, that have brought some joy to people for centuries.

How to play Tarot (for beginners)

Some time ago, I became interested enough in the history of tarot games to get my family to try one. But our first attempt to muddle our way through some online rules failed miserably: we broke down laughing and gave up when we came to the formula for scoring the game. Tarot has some quirky rules that aren't necessarily intuitive for American players of simple plain-trick games. I ended up writing extensive notes on the rules in an effort to understand how to play the game, and for people with no basic familiarity with these games at all, hopefully this account may make the game somewhat clearer. If you are not familiar with the basic concepts of trick-taking games (hands, tricks, trump cards, following suit), it may be a good idea to familiarize yourself with a simpler or more common trick-taking game, such as Euchre, Whist, or Spades, before playing Tarot.

This is a description of French Tarot for people who have no familiarity at all with tarot games, drawn from the descriptions at Pagat.com's Tarot games and French Tarot pages, Wikipedia, and Philebus's book Tarocchi: Introducing Card Games for Tarot, available online at Tarocchino.com. I've also referred to the rules at the Fédération Française de Tarot and French Wikipedia, through my weak French and machine translation, especially to clear up any ambiguities. The American Tarot Game Association has an English translation, and there are some videos at FFT as well as here, here, and here (seemingly using VASSAL). Also here. More information is also available at Trionfi.com, Tarotgame.org, the Association for Tarot Studies, and BoardGameGeek.

French Tarot is one of the few games that still use the full 78-card deck (so you can use a French deck to play other games by removing extraneous cards), and it preserves the historic role of the 'Scuse. I have a French Piatnik Jeu de Tarot deck I bought online; French decks occasionally pop up at Internet retailers, as here. It would be better to use an Anglo-American 78-card tarot deck, either purchased online or printed at home using images like these.

I. The Deck

Tarot is played with a French tarot deck of 78 cards, such as a Tarot Nouveau with corner indices to make playing easier. There are four suits (Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts), each of which have ten numbered pip cards and four face cards: Jack (Valet), Knight (Cavalier), Queen (Dame), and King (Roi). These rank, from lowest to highest, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V C D R. (Or, if you can find an Anglo-American Tarot deck, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J C Q K).

In addition, there is a special suit of 21 trump cards (a.k.a. tarots), I-XXI. These function like the trump suit in Whist, Spades, or Bridge. The highest trump (XXI) is called the Mond ("the World"), while the lowest trump (I) is called the Pagat (i.e., "the Magician").

Finally, there is an unsuited Joker, known as the 'Scuse, which is sort of like a wild card and allows a player to avoid playing a card that the rules would normally require them to play. The Joker can excuse a player from the normal requirement to follow suit, for example.

Together, the 'Scuse (the Joker), the Pagat (Trump I), and the Mond (Trump XXI) form a trio of cards called the Ends. The three Ends are particularly valuable, since the more Ends you hold, the easier it is to win the hand.

II. Overview of the Game

Tarot is a point-trick game in which the object is to win tricks tricks containing valuable cards. In each hand, the four players break into two ad-hoc teams: one team consists of a single player, the Declarer, who attempts to win the game by accumulating sufficient card points, while the other three, the Defenders, attempt to win enough points to stop him.

Each hand consists of about six phases: the deal, bidding, optional announcements, playing cards and winning tricks, winning the hand, and scoring the hand. The dealer deals a hand of 18 cards to each of four players, as well as a face-down stock of six cards to the table, known as the talon or kitty. After examining their hands, the players bid to become the Declarer. The remaining three players array against him as the Defenders. Depending on the bid, the Declarer may or may not add cards from the talon to his hand at the beginning, and the cards from the talon may be counted as part of the Declarer's tricks or the Defenders' tricks at the end.

Actual card play is similar to Whist or Spades, although scoring and other elements are quite different. Moving counterclockwise, players play cards one at a time, attempting to capture tricks with higher-ranking cards while following suit or by playing trump cards. Once all the cards in a hand have been played, the players count up their card points to determine the winner.

Tarot has a very distinctive method of adding up the card points. There are several ways of going about this, but each system leads to the same result. The probably-original way of counting is slower, but easier to understand, so that's what I describe here. For more information see "Counting card points in Tarot games" at Pagat.com. First, you win one point for every two cards you take. Certain valuable cards are worth additional points, as follows: The Ends ('Scuse, Mond, Pagat) are worth 4 points each; Kings are worth 4 points each; Queens are worth 3 points each; Knights are worth 2 points each; and Jacks are worth 1 point each. For example, if a player took a trick with a King, a Jack, a 10, and a 3, these cards would be worth 7 points: That's 2 points for four cards, plus 4 points for the King, plus 1 point for the Jack. There are a total of 91 card points in a full deck, of which 52 points comes from face cards and the three Ends. Each trick of four cards is worth at least 2 card points, and the six cards in the talon are worth at least 3 card points.

After determining the winner, the players score the hand in game points that the loser(s) pay to the winner. Since losers pay the score to the winner, it may be easier to keep track of it with poker chips rather than pencil and paper. It's not necessary to play for money instead of game points or chips, but for conceptual clarity, here I'll just describe game points as money. One game point is $0.01, for the purposes of this description.

A tarot game usually consists of a number of hands equal to the number of players, usually four, although five may play by having the dealer sit out the hand that he deals. All play moves counterclockwise, rather than clockwise as is common in the U.S.

III. Playing a Hand

A. The Deal

The first dealer is chosen at random, by a card draw: low card deals. The player opposite the dealer shuffles the deck and hands it to the player to the left of the dealer, who cuts it. The dealer deals out 18 cards to each player in packets of three, and deals 6 cards face down to the talon. The first or last card cannot be dealt to the talon.

A player who has only the Pagat, and who has neither any other trumps nor the 'Scuse, declares this. This cancels the hand, the players discard their cards, and the next dealer deals a new hand.

B. Bidding

Beginning with the player to the dealer's right, players either pass or bid to become the declarer. Rather than bidding on how many tricks they will take, players bid on whether they will become the dealer. In order to outbid previous bidders, they have to take higher stakes and more difficult conditions, such as not adding the cards in the talon to their hand, or giving the points in the talon to the Defenders.

Bidding goes counterclockwise beginning with the player to the dealer's right. Each player has one chance to either bid on the hand or pass. If every player passes, the hand is cancelled, the players discard their cards, and the next dealer deals a new hand. Each player has only one chance to bid.

There are four basic bids. In ascending order of priority, they are:

1. Take

The player says "I'll take it," announcing that he'll take up the role of the Declarer if no-one outbids him. This is also known as a "small bid". If he wins with this bid, the Declarer turns over the six cards of the talon, showing them to the other players, then adds them to his hand. He then discards six cards from his hand face down, which may not include any trumps, any Kings, or the 'Scuse. If necessary, the Declarer can discard trumps if he has no other cards, but he must show them to the other players, and cannot discard any of the three Ends.

When counting points at the end of the hand, the cards discarded by the Declarer count as part of his tricks. A take bid does not multiply the winner's score when scoring the hand.

The FFT explains that this is usually an opening bid with an average hand with the hope of perhaps a 50% chance of success, and often relies on the hope of finding good cards in the talon. However, it's more common to open with a keep bid in tournament play.

2. Keep

A player says "I'll keep it," to outbid a player who has bid "take". It works the same as a take bid, but the stakes are twice as high. This is also known as a "guard bid". As with a take bid, the Declarer adds the talon to his hand and discards six cards, which count as part of his tricks. When scoring the hand, a keep bid doubles the winner's score. See "Scoring the hand", below.

3. Keep without the talon

A player says "I'll keep it without the talon," to outbid a player who has bid keep. The stakes are even higher, and the conditions of victory are more difficult.

When bidding keep without the talon, the Declarer does not add the cards from the talon to his hand, no-one looks at them, and they remain on the table. But when counting card points at the end of the hand, they are turned over and counted as part of the Declarer's tricks. When scoring the hand, this bid quadruples the winner's score.

4. Keep against the talon

A player says "I'll keep it against the talon," to outbid a player who has bid keep without the talon. These are the highest and most difficult stakes.

With this bid, the talon is added to the Defenders' tricks. Nobody looks at it until points are counted at the end of the hand, but the Declarer does not get the benefit of the talon: instead, it counts against him. When counting points at the end of the hand, the talon is counted among the Defenders' tricks rather than the Declarer's tricks. When scoring the hand, this bid sextuples the winner's score.

C. Announcements and Bonuses

If this is the first time you're playing, skip this step. At this stage, players have an opportunity to announce certain bonuses: Pagat Ultimo, a Slam, or a Handful of Trumps. There is no obligation to do so, but an announced bonus is worth twice as much when scoring the hand.

These bonuses do not affect who wins the hand, but only affect the scoring of the hand. See "Scoring the hand", below.

1. Handful of Trumps

A Handful bonus occurs when a player announces that more than half of the cards in his hand are trumps. Before playing the first trick, the player reveals the trumps that he wishes to declare as part of his Handful.

The player only needs to reveal the minimum number of trumps to demonstrate the announcement. For example, if a player has 12 trump cards and declares a Single Handful, he only needs to reveal 10 trump cards to the other players, and can conceal the other two. The 'Scuse can count as a trump for the purpose of declaring a Handful, but if the player uses the 'Scuse in this way, he must reveal all of his trumps.

The Handful provides a bonus to the score only when it is announced beforehand, and the bonus accrues to the team that wins the hand. So it may be beneficial for a player to not announce the Handful if he thinks his team will not win.

There are three kinds of Handful bonuses, depending on how many trumps the player holds. A Single Handful consists of at least 10 trump cards, and gives a $0.20 bonus to the score. A Double Handful consists of at least 13 trump cards, and gives a $0.30 bonus to the score. A Triple Handful consists of at least 15 trump cards, and gives a $0.40 bonus to the score.

The bonus for a Handful is the same regardless of the bid. That is, the bonus for a Handful is applied to the score after the base score has been multiplied by the bid factor. The Handful bonus is not multiplied by the bid factor.

2. Slam

A Slam is a bonus for winning every trick in the hand. A Slam doesn't need to be announced in advance, but the bonus is significantly larger if it is. An Announced Slam must be declared before the first trick is played.

An Unannounced Slam gives the winner a bonus of $2.00 when the hand is scored. An Announced Slam gives the announcing team a bonus of $4.00 if they succeed in taking every trick, but if the announcing team fails, it takes a penalty of -$2.00.

The bonus for a Slam is the same regardless of the bid. That is, the bonus for a Slam is applied to the score after the base score has been multiplied by the bid factor. The Slam bonus is not multiplied by the bid factor.

3. Pagat Ultimo

Pagat Ultimo is a bonus for winning the last trick when it includes the lowest trump, the Pagat. It doesn't need to be declared, it's just added if the last trick includes the Pagat, but it's listed here with the other bonuses for convenience.

The Pagat Ultimo bonus modifies the score by $0.10, which benefits whichever team won the trick (even if it didn't win the hand). For example, if the Declarer won the hand and won the final trick with the Pagat, $0.10 is added to the score. But if the Declarer won the hand while the Defenders won the final trick with the Pagat, then $0.10 is subtracted from the score.

Unlike the other bonuses, the bonus for Pagat Ultimo depends on the bid. That is, Pagat Ultimo is added to the base score before the base score is multiplied by the bid factor.

D. Playing Cards, Winning Tricks

Once bidding and announcements are complete, the Declarer says "Play", and card play begins. The player to the dealer's right leads the first trick: he plays a card by laying it face up in the center of the table. Moving counterclockwise, the other players play a single card each. They must follow suit if they can, playing a card from the same suit that led the trick. Otherwise, they must play a trump. If a trump as already been played to a trick, they must play a higher trump, if possible. If a trump leads the suit, each player must play a trump. If a player has neither a card of that suit nor a trump, he can throw off (discard) a card from another suit, but it cannot win.

The trick is won by the player who played the highest-ranked trump card, or otherwise who played the highest-ranked card in the suit that led. He adds the cards to his pile of tricks captured.

The 'Scuse is so named because it excuses a player from the normal requirement to follow suit or play a trump. A player can play the 'Scuse to any trick, regardless of whether the player the player has cards in the lead suit or trumps. With one exception, the 'Scuse cannot win a trick, but the player who played it does not lose it. Whoever wins the trick must return the 'Scuse to the player who played it, who adds the 'Scuse to his pile of captured tricks. In compensation, the player who played the 'Scuse must then pay a numbered pip card to the player who won the trick. If the 'Scuse-player doesn't have one yet to pay, he must pay it later.

A player can lead the 'Scuse, in which case the next card played is considered to lead the trick for purposes of following suit.

If the Pagat is played in the last trick, the team that wins that trick gets the Pagat Ultimo bonus of 10 points when scoring the hand.

Normally, if the 'Scuse is played to the last trick, it switches sides. For example, if one of the Defenders plays the 'Scuse on the last trick, the Declarer wins the 'Scuse even if he does not win the trick, although he must compensate the Defenders (as above). However, if one team has won every trick in the hand, and leads the 'Scuse on the last hand, then the 'Scuse wins the trick. This rare case is the only time that the 'Scuse can win a trick.

E. Winning the Hand

Once all the tricks have been played, the Declarer and the Defenders count their card points. If the Declarer bids keep against the talon, then the talon is added to the Defenders' tricks. Otherwise, it is added to the Declarer's tricks.

As noted above, a team gets one card point for every two cards it has captured. The team also gets card points for capturing face cards and the three Ends, as follows.

Card	Value
Ends ('Scuse, Mond, Pagat)	4 points
Kings (R)	4 points
Queens (D)	3 points
Knights (C)	2 points
Jacks (V)	1 points

For example, if a player won a single trick containing the Queen of Hearts, the Knight of Hearts, the 8 of Hearts, and the Pagat, then those four cards would be worth a total of 11 points.

To win, the Declarer needs to accumulate a target number of card points that varies depending on how many of the three Ends he has in his pile of captured tricks.
With no Ends, the Declarer needs to meet a target of at least 56 card points to win.
With 1 End, the Declarer needs to meet a target of at least 51 card points to win.
With 2 Ends, the Declarer needs to meet a target of at least 41 card points to win.
With 3 Ends, the Declarer needs to meet a target of at least 36 card points to win.

If the Declarer has the minimum number of card points, then he wins, and each of the Defenders must pay him. If the Declarer does not have the minimum number of card points, then he loses, and must pay each of the Defenders.

F. Scoring the Hand

Whoever loses must pay the winner(s). The amount to be paid is determined by calculating how well the Declarer won or lost, adding the Pagat Ultimo bonus if necessary, and multiplying the score by a factor determined by the bid. Then bonuses for a Slam or Handful are added to the score, which is then paid to the winner(s). See also "Announcements and bonuses", above, or "Examples of scoring", below.

The base score for a game is $0.25. To this, add the difference between the Declarer's target and the number of card points he captured. For example, if the Declarer has 2 Ends, then he needs 41 card points to win; if he captures 56 card points, then add $0.15 to the base score. On the other hand, if he captures 40 card points, then instead add $0.01 to the base score.

Next, add the Pagat Ultimo bonus if applicable. Winning the Pagat in the final trick benefits whoever won the trick, giving a $0.10 bonus. If the winner of this trick won the hand, then add $0.10 to the base score. If the winner of this trick lost the hand, then subtract $0.10 from the base score.

Then, multiply the base score according to the Declarer's bid. Take bids do not modify the score. If the Declarer bid keep, multiply the base score by 2. If the Declarer bid keep without the talon, multiply the base score by 4. If the Declarer bid keep against the talon, multiply the base score by 6.

To this modified score, add bonuses for an Handful or a Slam, as described in the Announcements phase of the hand. A Slam is when a team wins every trick in the hand; this adds $2.00 to the score. An Announced Slam, announced before the first trick is played, adds $4.00 to the score if the announcer's team succeeds at winning every trick, and subtracts $2.00 from the score if the team fails to take every trick. A Single Handful adds $0.20 to the score; a Double Handful adds $0.30 to the score; and a Triple Handful adds $0.40 to the score. The Handful and Slam bonuses are not multiplied, but added to the score after this multiplication has taken place.

After the final score is calculated, every member of the losing team pays every member of the winning team that amount, and a new hand begins. The player to the dealer's right becomes the dealer of the next hand.

IV. Examples of Scoring

North deals. West bids take and South, East, and North pass, so West becomes the Declarer. At the end of the hand, the Declarer needs 36 points to win with 3 Ends, and South has 36 points, so South wins. The score is $0.25 for the game, plus nothing for card points, plus nothing for the bid or bonuses. Each of the Defenders pays West $0.25.

West deals. South bids keep, and East, North, and West pass, so South becomes the Declarer. With 2 Ends, the Declarer needs 41 points to win, and South has 40 points, so South loses. The score is $0.25 for the game, plus $0.01 for card points, times 2 for the bid. South pays the Defenders $0.52 each.

South deals. East bids take. North bids keep, West passes, and South passes, so North is the declarer. There are no announcements. With 2 Ends, the Declarer needs 41 card points and North wins 56 card points. The score is $0.25 for the game, plus $0.15 for card points, times 2 for the bid. Each of the Defenders pays North $0.80.

East deals. South bids keep, becomes the Declarer, and the Defenders win the final trick with the Pagat. With 2 Ends, the Declarer needs 41 points, but South only has 40 points, so he loses. The final score is $0.25 for the game, plus $0.01 for card points, plus $0.10 for Pagat Ultimo, times 2 for the bid. Having lost, South pays $0.72 to each of the Defenders.

North deals. West bids keep and becomes the Declarer, and wins the final trick with the Pagat. With 3 Ends, he needs 36 card points and wins 49. The score is $0.25 for the game, plus $0.13 for card points, plus $0.10 for Pagat Ultimo, times 2 for the bid. Each of the Defenders pays West $0.96.

South deals. East bids take. North passes. West bids keep against the talon. South passes, so West is the declarer. West declares a Triple Handful and a Slam, and succeeds, taking the final trick with the 'Scuse. With all three Ends, the Declarer needs 36 points and takes 88 points (since the talon is counted as the Defenders' tricks), so he wins. The base score is $0.25 for the game, plus $0.52 for card points, times 6 for the bid, plus $4.00 for the announced Slam and $0.40 for the Triple Handful. Each of the Defenders pays the Declarer the final score, $9.02.

Interestingly, it looks like the maximum score is the same if West had taken the last trick with the Pagat instead of the 'Scuse: although West would get the Pagat Ultimo bonus, the Defenders would get the card points for the 'Scuse if West is to get a Slam.

Addendum

In this description of the French game, I've used English terms as well as terms from Austrian Tarock and other tarot games, since this may make it easier for Anglophone novices. In France, of course, French terms are used.

English	French
trump	atout
trick	la levée
Ends	bouts, "ends"; oudlers
the Mond	le mond, "the World"
the Pagat	le petit
the 'Scuse	l'excuse, "the Excuse"
Declarer	le preneur, "the taker"
Defender	défenseur
the talon	le chien, "the dog"
Take (bid)	Je prise, la petite
Keep (bid)	Je garde
keep without the talon	garde sans le chien
keep against the talon	garde contre le chien
Handful	poignée
Slam	chelem
Pagat Ultimo	petit au bout

There are several main ways to count card points in tarot games. As explained here, you can count 1 point for every two cards, plus additional points for valuable cards, so a pip card and a King (worth 4 points) are together worth 5 points. It's more common in descriptions of French Tarot to describe pip cards as worth 0.5 points and Kings as worth 4.5 points, so that a pip card and a King are together worth 5 points. Another way is to count pip cards as worth 1 point and Kings as worth 5 points, but subtract 1 point from each pair of cards, so that a pip card and a King are together worth 5 points. These all yield the same result, and just offer a tradeoff between speed of counting and ease of understanding.

Games to Try

Last August, during my GenCon recap, I expressed some nostalgia for the old hex-and-counter conflict simulation wargames from Avalon Hill, SPI, and other companies that I remember seeing, but never getting a chance to play before they largely faded away. I've spent a couple days trolling through Board Game Geek and elsewhere exploring this subject, and have happened on a couple of games that I'd really like to try.

"Hammer of the Scots" (2002, Columbia Games)(img) is a block wargame that explores the Wars of Scottish Independence, which simulates a fog of war in a manner reminiscent of "Stratego". It seems to be well-regarded, covers an interesting topic, and hopefully looks enough like a Euro-style game that I may be able to rope some family into playing. Unfortunately, it's a two-player game; I suspect that part of the reason so many interesting games get played so rarely is that they're very particular about the number of people who may participate in what is an inherently social activity.

"Age of Napoleon" (2003, Mayfair Games)(video) is a grand strategy game overviewing the Napoleonic wars from 1805 to 1815, with a counters and a card-driven system to represent combat events and shifting diplomacy. It seems like a game I'd enjoy at the same level I enjoyed "Axis & Allies" back in the day, with a history theme I have a nascent and developing interest in, an interesting representation of the vagaries of diplomacy, and grand-strategy-level play light enough to play in an afternoon or evening. Sadly, it is also only a two-player game.

Battle Cry (2000, 2010, AH/WotC) spawned the Commands and Colors system that drives several popular history- and fantasy-themed strategy games. These games, like Command and Colors: Ancients (2006, GMT Games) seem to be very popular and fun, but more game-y than simulationist. I'm a little burned out on WWII and fantasy battle games, and would like a more hardcore take on ancient and American Civil War combat, but this is probably a good game to get, anyway: there's a sesquicentennial coming on, and my interest in the Civil War will likely be high for some time. A game-y system is more likely to attract players, and the 150th anniversary edition includes a lot of battles from the western front important to the Ohio River Valley (Fort Donelson, Perryville) that receive scant attention from wargames.

Entdecker: Exploring New Horizons (2001, Mayfair) is a prequel to "Settlers of Cataan" by the same designer, which uses tile placement to represent the exploration of an archipelago and create territory to be claimed by the players. My family enjoys playing Cataan and Carcassone a lot, so this game may garner some similar interest while being a nice change of pace from those games. It's also the first multiplayer game on this list. =/ There's also a bunch of children's games, like "LEGO Minotaurus", "Max", and "Blokus", that may be a worthy step up from "Candyland".

But I started all this by looking into what historical wargames people are playing these days. Going through all these games, I've started to turn against some of the games like C&C:A that make compromises with historical accuracy for better gameplay; Who wants to play a historical wargame if it doesn't accurately represent the personalities of individual Roman commanders or the interaction of rampaging elephants with pre-Marian legions at Cannae? Terribly unbalanced scenarios, stacks of chits, and endless consultation of combat results tables are a small price to pay for the historic verisimilitude only an old-school hex-and-counter game are supposed to provide!

So perhaps for ancient-era wargames something like SPQR Deluxe (1992, 2008, GMT Games)(img) might be the way to go. It covers most of the Punic Wars and several battles through the Roman Republic era. And ancient tactics are kind of interesting; the way units are laid out in lines and blocks is kind of "chess-y".

A better idea to dip toes in this water might be to try one of the old free or introductory low-complexity wargames, like "Battle for Moscow" (1986, GDW; 2009, VPG)(img) or "Napoleon at Waterloo", an introductory game put out in 1971 by SGI before it was acquired by TSR, and now freely available.. The NAW system was the basis for "Blue & Gray" (1975, SPI; DG), a relatively lightweight Civil War wargame, as well as Napoleonic games. "Battle of Honey Springs" (2007, LPD) is another free introductory print-and-play wargame that cover most important ACW battles in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. And if ~that~ is any fun, then try to something newer like "Three Battles of Manassas", Perryville, or other series (1, 2, 3) before considering a monster game like "Three Days at Gettysburg".

Succumbing to Warhammer

Well, I usually go to GenCon for the RPGs; in 2010 it looks like the collapse of the 3e bubble is nearly complete. There were some good deals on old stock from Goodman Games, but there were many fewer clearance sales.

This year, I got really nostalgic for the kind of strategy and war games that I used to play back in the day, but rarely play anymore. In the early 1990s, I used to play a lot of Axis & Allies, and later on borrowed some armies to play Warhammer with folks that played old Avalon Hill wargames from time to time. At recent GenCons, I've picked up dwarf, undead, and monster decks for Battlegrounds Fantasy Warfare (bgg), which is a great concept (I was hoping to pick up the Punic War deck, but Your Move Games was not at the convention this year). So I spent some time demo-ing strategy boardgames from Fantasy Flight Games. They were heavily promoting Battles of Westeros (bgg) this year, which I watched some demos of. I personally only demo-ed Tide of Iron (bgg) and Battles of Napoleon (bgg). Tide of Iron was OK; it seems like a fun enough game, but possibly overgeneralized and random for my tastes, although it did allow more than two players. Of the three, Battles of Napoleon seemed like the most fun and worthy game. It has relatively few unit types (infantry, cavalry, and artillery) that play over a large hex grid, but much of the strategic depth comes from the command structure and management. It looked like a lot of fun, but at $100, it's somewhat pricey for a game I'd rarely play.

At the last minute, I instead went in for Warhammer, splitting a copy of the Battle for Skull Pass (bgg, review) with a friend. Tonight we assemble and divide it. As another friend said, it's cheaper now, but more expensive in the long run ;)

Battle for Skull Pass includes small 500-point armies for the dwarfs and orcs & goblins and 7th edition rules.The more recent set, Island of Blood, includes small Skaven and High Elf armies and 8th edition rules, which were released in June (1, 2, 3).

Games Workshop has articles on collecting, modelling, gaming, and painting, errata and FAQs, and a nice map of the Warhammer world. There are fan forums like the 40k forums knowledge base
with basic information on gluing, painting, and stripping paint. Wikipedia has background on the game and the armies.

Mantic makes cheaper, ostensibly compatible figures and has a how-to section that includes assembling and painting dwarf and undead units at present.

Downtown eats in Indy

We're leaving for GenCon tomorrow. Yay!

GenCon is fun if you work it right, especially to meet up with old friends who live elsewhere. But I'm not a big fan of downtown Indy; it seems like what a suburbanite's idea of what a downtown should be like. It seems so sterile, rather than being an organic neighborhood where people might actually live. And it is completely overrun with generic chain restaurants.

We always go to the Ram (link), a chain brewpub with a location next to the convention center that has always made a show of welcoming gamer nerds. The Shake 'n Steak nearby is a little cheaper, but always super crowded, while the Einstein Bros Bagels (link) is decent for a breakfast. The food at the Convention Center itself is expensive and truly wretched. We've tried to eat elsewhere from time to time, but such experimentation has led to some terrible experiences, as when (desperately hungry late at night) we wandered into a Hooter's that served one of the most disgusting greasy fish and chips I've ever eaten.

So here's some preliminary research on restaurants near the Convention Center. Mostly I've been using the IndyEthnicFood.com map, trying to get information on places that aren't too expensive, too generic, or serve what we already eat too much of.

The place I've always wanted to go to eat in Indy is the Brugge Brasserie (link, map), ever since sampliing some of their beer at events here in Louisville. They brew some fantastic Belgians, as I recall. The brasserie is a gastropub serving Belgian and European food. At 1011 A.E. Westfield Blvd., however, it is way to the north in Broad Ripple about seven or eight miles north of downtown. This neighborhood, though, appears to have a bunch of great restaurants and all of Indy's independent brewpubs such as Barley Island (link) and Broad Ripple Brewpub (link).

Two years ago, it was really nice to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant after a couple days of Convention Center food and pub grub. The nearest Japanese restaurant is Mikado. A block east is Sushi on the Rocks (link, map, menu) which has lunch specials under $10. At 235 S Meridian St., it is between Georgia and South St.

Noodles & Company (link, map, menu) is a chain that offers a variety of Asian-, American-, and Mediterranean-inspired pasta/noodle dishes. It looks like a meal here runs about $5-10. At 121 W. Maryland St., it's right next to the Convention Center between Capitol and Illinois Ave. The Pita Pit (link, map, menu) is another chain that has various sandwiches for $5-10 and is open until 9 or 10pm. At 1 N. Pennsylvania St., it is just north of Washington St. and about a block southeast of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument. There's a couple of other places around Pennsylvania Ave. and Washington St., like King David Dogs (link) and Dick's Barbeque (link, map, menu) at 50 N. Pennsylvania Ave, which has meals under $10.

TaTa Cuban Cafe (link, map) sells Cuban sandwiches. At 137 W. Market St., it's about a block due west of the monument. Giorgio's Pizza (link) has sandwiches and calzones for just over $5 as well as pizza by the slice, and is on the eastern side of Monument Circle.

The nearest Indian restaurant that I can see is India Garden (link, map, menu). Most of its entrees range from $10-15. At 207 N. Delaware St., it's just north of Ohio St., about two blocks northeast of the Monument.

Scoundrel's whist: A card game

Scoundrel's Whist is a game for four players. It is a trick-taking game with some similarities to whist, but with a greater emphasis on competitive play and a scoring system that rewards capturing many low cards rather than taking many tricks.

One player is selected as the dealer, who shuffles the deck and deals out thirteen cards to each player, beginning with the player to his left. The final card is dealt face-up onto the table, and indicates which suit is trump. After the trump suit is chosen, the dealer adds the card to his hand, and play commences with the player to his left.

In addition to the trump suit, two cards trump all other cards: the Jack of Clubs and the Jack of Spades. These two cards are known as the "scoundrels." If the two scoundrels are played in the same trick, the second scoundrel wins the trick. However, when a player wins a trick with scoundrels, he or she discards the scoundrels from the trick. Thus, the point value of the scoundrels don't count against his or her score.

The first player leads the trick, placing a single card face up on the table. Each player continuing to the left plays an additional card to the trick, and must play a card of the same suit if they have one. A player with no card of the suit may discard a card into the trick or play a trump. The trick is won by the highest card of the suit that led, or otherwise the highest trump card. After a trick is won, the player turns the cards face down into their pile. Play continues around to the left until all 13 tricks have been played.

After the tricks have been played, players count up the value of their cards, and the player with the highest point total wins. Cards are scored as follows: All face cards and 10s are worth -1 points, the 8s and 9s are worth zero points, and all 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, and 7s are worth one point.

A canny observer might notice some parallels; other scoring systems are occasionally used.

Poker in the 19th century

James McManus's essay "What Poker Can Teach Us" in the Chronicle of Higher Education is an OK essay, but for some reason it sent me trudging through the murky history of poker. I tend to be more of a fan of the whist-family of games, not so much for the current rage for Texas hold'em. But antiquarian variants sometimes hold interesting gameplay, which is usually somewhat unrefined.

Pagat.com has an detailed overview of the game's history:

Original Poker, a game in which four players received five cards each from a 20-card pack and vied as to who held the best hand, evidently originated in the New Orleans some time between 1810 and 1825. Its gaming milieu was that of French-speaking maritime gambling saloons, especially those of the Mississippi steamers. Its name suggests that its first players felt they were continuing the tradition of playing a game called Poque in which one said Je poque to open the betting. At this time and place, and before it underwent development, Poque probably denoted a five-card vying game consisting of the central section of a formerly tripartite game of the same name.

...In the 1830s, having spread northwards along the Mississippi and westwards with the expanding frontier, Poker had adopted its anglicized name and become increasingly played with 52 cards to accommodate a greater number of players, thus also giving rise to the flush as an additionally recognized combination. Under the influence of Brag, its three-card British equivalent, it adopted the draw. This led to its further and more rapid expansion of popularity, as Poker-players preferred the additional round of betting after the possibility of improving a promising hand, while Brag-players preferred the wider range of combinations offered by a five-card hand.

British Brag certainly looks like an interesting game, with a similar style but somewhat different wagering and gameplay; American brag is often described as different from contemporary or modern English brag. Edmond Hoyle published his first treatise on whist in 1742, and his 1750 compendium of treatises described backgammon, brag, chess, pique, quadrille, and whist. These original volumes are apparently mostly held by collectors, and I can't find online copies. Hoyle's work became genericized and republished in increasingly-unrelated editions, which aren't on Project Gutenberg, but Google Books has some copies.

The American Hoyle (New York, 1864) has good descriptions of poker, brag, whist and faro as played in America at the close of the Civil War. The description of brag seems very similar to the English game, except the Knights and Nines are known as "braggers", which are ranked much like wild cards. However, vying appears to be much the same as in the English game.

This work describes poker as a straight game in which the players wager on the hand as dealt, without drawing. The cards are ranked from a pair, two pair, three of a kind, flush, full house, and four of a kind; it describes the straight as a regional variant. Draw poker, the historic "twenty-deck" or twenty-card poker, and (five-card) stud poker are all variants.

Other Hoyle-derived texts on Google Books include

• An Epitome of Hoyle (Dublin, 1791), which includes thirteen games, "with an account of the present fashionable Game, called E-O, played at most of the polite Chocolate Houses, never before attempted in print".


• Hoyle's Games Improved (London, 1814) includes essays on horse racing, skittles, and other games.


• Hoyle's improved edition of the rules for playing fashionable games (Philadelphia, 1838) includes a description of brag seems mostly similar to the English game, but makes clear that the Knaves and Nines (the "braggers") are wild cards. It's also one of the editions that contains a treatise on cock-fighting and breeding gamecocks.


• Hoyle's games (Boston, mid-19th century) describes billards, games for "Yankee-notion cards", and Thomas Frere's chess handbook (which includes a four-handed game on a Dessau board).


• Hoyle's games (New York, 1887) briefly describes poker as straight poker, without draw or stud variants or the straight. "Twenty-deck" poker, with a 20-card deck, remains a variant.

Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains (1836) is the first printed reference to poker; it has a handy footnote to explain it as "a favorite game of cards in the south and west." Jonathan Harrington Green's 1843 anti-gambling screed describes it as a game for a 20-card deck "that is immensely destructive—perhaps more so than any other short game of cards now in use..." Joe Cowell's 1844 memoir relates a legend that it was invented by Henry Clay in his youth. Professional gambler and con man George Devol's 1887 memoir "Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi" is at both Google Books and Project Gutenberg.

Later, poker entered literature. The most significant description of a poker game in Mark Twain's Life on the Missippi is Chapter XXXVI, "The Professor's Yarn". It seems Stephen Crane's story "A Poker Game" was posthumously published in "New York City Sketches" in 1966. This book anthologizes some of the above, as well as 20th-century stories from folks like Bertolt Brecht, W. Somerset Maugham, John Updike, cryptologist Herbert O. Yardley and Truman's White House Counsel, Clark Clifford. McManus reports that Obama is the most recent poker-playing president.

Three-card poker is a modern poker-like game influenced by three-card brag, but without the distinctive vying element of either game, and a good house edge. A three-card straight poker could be an interesting toy poker, though, with fewer and simpler hand rankings.

Converting to the Pathfinder RPG

It's been a long month!

Some time after the release of 3rd edition D&D, "Dungeon" and "Dragon" magazine were spun out to the newly formed Paizo Publishing from Wizards of the Coast, and published under license. When Wizards announced 4th edition D&D, they terminated Paizo's license, ended the the 29-year print history of "Dragon" and folded the magazines into an online feature of their Web site. With the rug pulled out from under them, Paizo launched the Pathfinder adventures subscription to replace their flagship product and support their customers. As 4th edition D&D was promoted, and the 3rd edition rule books went out of print, Paizo found that it was difficult to get distributors to stock game materials that supported an out-of-print rulesystem. Consequently, the company announced the Pathfinder RPG to bring the 3.5e rules back into print, which offered a chance to refine some of the rules after nearly a decade of play.

Now that the hardcover Pathfinder RPG book is out, it's time to begin planning to convert characters. The company's
Welcome to Paizo post is a good introduction to support for the game, although d20pfsrd.com and Pathfinder Wiki are also good references.

Paizo offers the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Conversion Guide PDF which covers conversion from 3.5e characters to Pathfinder characters. In the leadup to the release of the game at GenCon this year, Paizo previewed each of the character classes by looking at the game's iconic characters.

The series highlighted the harcover's table of contents and races and the fighter, sorcerer, ranger, cleric, paladin, bard, druid, monk, barbarian, rogue, wizard, and eldritch knight, as well as the game's most important rule.

The previews also highlight some of the other rules tweaks. The rogue preview discusses how poisons are handled; the druid preview notes some changes to wildshape/polymorph, animal companions, and the Fly skill; and the cleric preview describes domains, channel energy, and concentration checks. Check out what a 14th-level fighter can do with a single swing.

Chess Variants 2

It's probably because chess variants are so easy to invent that there are so many of them. Luckily, I have discovered this extensive collection of chess variant-playing applets. Luckily for my wife, anyway, because I will stop pestering her. I have never been a fan of playing chess versus computers, but some of these are merely interesting, trivial games.

That category would include Dunsany's Chess, Joust Chess, Narrowness, and Peasant Revolt, some of which are games that are almost chess problems. Maharaja and Sepoys aptly demonstrates the overwhelming might of the amazon. It's also useful to have chess for four players, as well as the truly bizarre.

I remain fascinated by the toy chesses: Miniature Chess (5x5), Mini-Shogi, Toystore Chess, Petty Chess (5x6), Speed Chess, Dragonfly Chess (6x6), and the 19th-century Diana Chess. At the least, they seem like interesting ways to teach or learn chess, and games are very short.

There are a few variants inspired by fantasy or fiction, including Alice Chess, Gary Gygax's DragonChess, and Edgar Rice Burrough's Jetan, possibly the first fictional chess in speculative fiction.

Historical forms of the game and their derivations are represented by Chaturanga, Shatranj, Shogi, the circular Byzantine Shatranj, and its contemporary revival as Circular Chess.

Some of the modern chess variants like Berolina Chess aspire to be a serious direction for orthodox chess to go forward in the future. Aside from Fischer Random Chess, the most common variation of chess invented by skilled players for serious play includes two pieces, one that combines the moves of the bishop and knight and the other that combines the rook and knight, and a consequently larger board. These combination pieces date to at least 1617, but there is no consenus on whether to use one or both pieces, nomenclature, castling rules, initial setup, or board size. Capablanca Chess, developed by world chess champion José Raúl Capablanca (and played with Emmanuel Lasker), and Grand Chess are important contenders, although there are several others (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Dandelion mini-shatranj & mini-chaturanga

Chaturanga, of course, is the medieval Indian game that became contemporary chess after it passing through Persia as shatranj and into Europe. Dandelion shatranj is a minimalistic miniature shatranj inspired by mini-shogi (tho with somewhat less interesting gameplay) and named for the small, weedy flowers that pop up everywhere so easily. Gameplay and moves are exactly like shatranj, but occurs on a 5x5 board with only six pieces and a somewhat modified setup.

5  r e n c k
4  - - - - p
3  - - - - -
2  P - - - -
1  K C N E R
   a b c d e

King (K): Moves as in orthodox chess.
Counselor (C): Moves one square diagonally in any direction.
Knight (N): Moves as in orthodox chess.
Elephant (E): Moves two squares diagonally in any direction, jumping over the intervening square.
Rook (R): Moves as in orthodox chess.
Pawn (P): Moves as in orthodox chess. When they arrive at the last rank on the board, pawns promote to counselors only.

Miniature shatranj has very limited play, but may be fun for a few games. There are only three or so viable opening moves, for example, and the elephant can only visit three squares on the board including its starting square. The king is fairly powerful, often threatening as many squares as the rook.

Mini-chaturanga is a group of variants on mini-shatranj, offering different early historical versions of the elephant's move. Standard mini-chaturanga is essentially the same as mini-shatranj, but the first player to expose a bare king wins without exception.

War Elephant Mini-Chaturanga: The elephant can move two squares orthogonally in any direction, jumping over the intervening square. This is the move of the Dabbabah, or war engine.

Silver Elephant Mini-Chaturanga: The elephant can move one square diagonally in any direction, and one square orthogonally forward. This is the move of the silver general of contemporary xiangqi and shogi, but in mini-chaturanga this piece does not promote.

Double Happiness Mini-Chaturanga: The elephant can move two squares orthogonally or two squares diagonally, jumping over the intervening square. This unhistorical move, as the alibaba, combines the move of the elephant and the dabbabah.

Chess Variants

I think the first chess variant I was seriously interested in was Gary Gygax's dragonchess. It seemed like it'd be hard to get a set together, and gameplay'd be outlandish and complicated. And it is!

There are plenty of others, but I've played almost none of them. By far the most interesting, for a number of reasons, is Alice Chess. The pieces go through the looking glass every time they move. The most worthwhile is Fischer random chess or Chess960, invented in 1996 by Bobby Fischer.

Chess with different forces also looks interesting, especially Dunsany's chess. These are probably in the "a game or two would be fun" category.

There are a couple of four-handed chess games, aside from stuff like chaturanga and Enochian chess. I think the Dessau chessboard looks the most practical, as it eliminates pawn capture problems. Four-handed competitive play sounds more interesting than cooperative play. The Battle of Four Armies: capture an enemy king to force that player out of the game (their pieces cannot move or threaten, but are not removed from play until individually captured) and the last king standing wins.

The miniature shogi variants look like they give quick and elegant games. There are a couple of miniature versions of orthodox chess: HP Minichess, apparently presented by Marvin Gardner in Scientific American, is played on a 5x5 board. Toystore Chess is essentially miniature chess with placing. Quick Chess and Speed Game Chess are played on a 5x6 board.

The shogi variants are wild and impressive. Five-minute poppy shogi and mini-shogi are beautifully minimalistic, while taiyoku shogi is epically huge and unwieldy: there are 1296 squares on the board and each side has 402 pieces of 209 different types, totalling 253 different moves. Totally crazy.

My First Dragonchess Set

About a year ago, I made a set with which to play dragonchess, the three-dimensional fantasy chess variant invented by Gary Gygax for a story in the 100th issue of Dragon magazine. I made the pieces out of polymer clay, painted gold and scarlet. Rather than copying the conventional Staunton chess piece design of the 19th century, I based the design on the original Persian designs that entered Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages.

Although the first chautaranga pieces from India were representational, Islam's proscriptions against iconography caused the pieces of shatranj to assume a very abstract, nonrepresentational form. Since chess came to Europe through the Islamic world, the earliest Spanish, French, and Viking chess sets had more abstract shapes. I thought it would be an interesting variant—especially with my primitive sculpting skills. Also, I gave the pieces for the lower, upper, and middle boards different shapes (cubes, cylinders, and pyramids respectively) to help distinguish the pieces. The boards are posterboard and watercolor.

Rather than the 8x8 board of chess, dragonchess uses three 12x8 boards. Each player, both Gold and Scarlet, has 6 Slyphs, 1 Dragon, 2 Griffons, 12 Warriors, 2 Oliphants, 2 Unicorns, 2 Heros, 2 Thieves, 1 Cleric, 1 Paladin, 1 Mage, 1 King, 6 Dwarfs, 2 Basilisks, and 1 Elemental. That's 15 unit types and 42 individual figures, compared to the 5 unit types and 16 figures of orthodox chess.

I've played a few games of dragonchess since putting the set together. It is a very complicated game. Some of the pieces move similarly to orthodox chess; others move slightly differently; and nearly every piece that can move around the board does so in a different way. These moves are not at all systematic. It is confusing to keep straight the moves, blockable and unblockable and special powers of each piece, and it usually involves a lot of referring to the instructions.

Apparently Gygax didn't spend a lot of time playtesting this game.

The Lower Board...


The Middle Board...


The Upper Board...


The pieces of conventional chess...


Arranged for a game of conventional chess...


The lower board pieces (basilisk, elemental, elemental, & basilisk; dwarves in front)...


The dragonchess-specific middle board pieces (thief, paladin, cleric, & thief)...


The upper board pieces (griffin, dragon, dragon, & griffin; sylphs in front)...