As a cap to the first adventure, Ares newest Blacklight team of troubleshooters hit the town to celebrate their mission's success. Inspired by an episode in Unknown Armies "To Go" campaign, the team found themselves with an invitation to a very exclusive, very high stakes poker game on Lake Mead (a nod to Tim Power's Last Call). Hosted by a free spirit that thrives on chance, the team got the opportunity to bet money, abstracts, you name it. The bets escalated quickly, starting with knowledge skills, to skills and cyber, and finally to attribute points.

At the end of the evening, one unfortunate PC was gutted to the point of retirement, a handful of languages changed hands, a NPC Toxic Shaman got detoxed when he bet his mentor spirit (and subsequently driving the NPC who received it to suicide), and a NPC Sioux Wildcat PhysAd walked out gaining the skills & attributes of the unlucky Rigger PC.

Thanks to previous dumpshock posters- I used your advice to create the rules to represent the actual gambling. Here the rules:

GAMBLING / POKER RULES:
• Buy in costs $500 per hand. (House takes a single chip for its cut)
• In SECRET all players- Roll INT + EDGE + SKILL(Gambling). Based on hits, decide to stay in or not.
• If stay in, raise stakes verbally (bet something else of value; additional money, stats, items, skills, gear, lifestyle, contacts, abstracts- anything of value. Group must agree that item is of sufficient worth, and raise accordingly.)
• Reveal Hand.
• Take the hits, and add to 7 dice pool.
• Make second and final roll in Public.
• Highest number of hits win the pot.
• If tie, winners reroll.

5 NPCs / 3 PCs (with two PCs sitting out)

Overall, it worked. Some won big, some lost everything, and a few broke even or came out slightly behind. Aggressively stressful .... especially when gambling 3 or 4 points of your guy's REA.

Some of the items the NPCs put into the pot as bets (thanks to Missions for some of these ideas):

Delta Clinic Appointment- Chiba, Japan. 1 week from today.

Executive Financial Consultation- One-hour private consultation with “onyx class” wealth management and private banking services professional with State Bank of Bern.

“Air America” Shadow Flight- Commlink code, within 12 hour of call, pick up at any airfield with transport anywhere in the world.

CIA “Bulletproof” SIN – Rating 6, UCAS Citizen w Rating 6 Drivers License. Name: “Avery Madison” Metatype: To be filled in.

EXCHANGE Commlink- Solid-state credit card sized text pager.

24.5% Share of “The Reef at the Oceans” - An ownership stake in a nightclub in Baltimore.

Skeleton Passkey- Single use brute force Maglock Passkey. Opens any maglock without a roll. Must have network access.

Ares TALOS Drone Backdoor – Compatible with the latest OS version of the prototype TALOS, this exploit instantly cuts through the drone’s firewalls.

Zazen Formularia- A simple Koan that may be applied to a single spell, permanently reducing the drain by 1 (cannot go lower than zero).

Gridlink Helpdesk- (1/1) Contact- A commlink code to a faceless, morally flexible level III tech at Gridlink Corporate support.

Wuxang “Wildcard” Hard Nanites Prototype m34.f.8133.07.01.72- Hypospray of injectable Wildcards, rating 1.

The Zazen Formularia is better than all the other rewards put together...just saying.

Intesting concept, I may have to steal this.

This is pretty interesting. In part of a run I did a while back we did blackjack, though we used cards for it this seems pretty cool. Like the extra items idea too. Don't think I'd play though as the dice generaly hate me, I am not lucky lol

i have already stolen this. As of now.

Makes me want to put together a (likely one-shot) of Take the Money and ShadowRun.

Steal away, chummers. That's exactly why I posted. It's the NeoA way.

A few other notes:
• The actual INT + EDGE + SKILL(Gambling) roll combines three stats and skills. INT represents your ability to read opponents. EDGE is your inherent luck. SKILL is how well you understand the game. Weird to put three things together instead of the normal two, but it seemed to work well.
• We played a two sample hands before starting the actual game. Players picked up on it quickly.
• I advertised "Poker Night" fairly heavily before sitting down; players were sent the rules ahead of time, had a chance to think about what they'd be willing to bet (or if they wanted to play at all). This is definately NOT something to spring on the PCs if you're playing for more than money.
• Players need to understand the level and stakes (effective TR of the game). If you're playing for characteristics it is very High risk, high reward.
• The group decided against being able to use EDGE to modify rolls- that would cause too great a swing, and the game would quickly turn into "whoever uses edge wins that hand." In retrospect, disallowing EDGE was certainly the right choice.
• The Free Spirit hosting the game allowed the ability to bet and transfer stats and attributes and other intangibles as her special ability. The transfer ability only worked in the confines of the game- for example, I think a Non-mage ended up with the "Flamethrower" spell when the night concluded. He'd understand the spell, but not have the ability to actually cast.
• Everyone played at a single table. House did not play, just took its cut from the initial buy-in.
• Players had to agree on the value of the bets (for example, NPC-1 bet a "Beat up old Ford Americar", PCs said that wasn't enough to match the language skills that the previous PC-1 had bet. NPC-2 then added an additional knowledge skill. When PC-2 bet three points of attributes, NPC-1 and PC-1 both had to add in additional goodies if they wanted to stay in that hand).
• It was alot of fun, but also very dangerous.

I'd give him the Spell Knack quality, or let him pick it up with karma later. That seems like the perfect excuse why a non-mage can cast (a) spell.