How to Play (Forums) Higher Lower

For fun, easy card games there are few easier and quicker than Higher Lower!

You will need:

• a Dealer using random.org's playing card shuffle feature
• Players!

The Goal:
The players bet on whether the next card the Dealer draws is Higher or Lower in value to the previous card. The players who guess correctly win!

How to Play:

1. The Dealer deals one card to the table.
2. The players choose whether the next card to be dealt will be higher or lower in value than the original
3. The Dealer deals the next card and reveals whether it is higher or lower

Card Values:
Ace < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 6 < 7 < 8 < 9 < 10 < Jack < Queen < King

Dealing Cards:
Much like with Kabu, use the random.org playing card shuffler featured to draw cards. I would suggest drawing 2 cards from 1 deck so that you're ready to post the result quickly.

Betting:
The game is Player vs Dealer and bets are the same. A player who wins gets double their bet from the dealer. A player who loses gives their initial bet to the dealer.

Optional Rules:

• Making "tie" an option to bet on for triple the bet

How to Play (Forums) Blackjack

Following on from my last post about how to play Kabu, here's a quick guide on how to play Blackjack on the forums as well.

You will need:

• a Dealer using random.org's playing card shuffle feature
• Players!

The Goal:

The player with the largest value hand wins but you instantly lose if your hand values 22 or more! Aim for a hand that totals 21!

How to Play:

1. The Dealer deals everyone two cards, with the Dealer receiving their cards last
2. The players choose in order the cards were dealt whether to receive another card (twist/hit) or stay with their current hand (stick/hold)
3. Repeat step 2 until everyone is holding.
4. Everyone reveals their hands

Card Values:

• An ace can be used either as a 1 or an 11 as decided by the player
• Jacks, Queens and Kings all value 10
• The value of a hand is decided by addition (eg a hand of 4 6 8 values 18)

Dealing Cards:

Much like with Kabu, use the random.org playing card shuffler featured to draw cards. I would suggest drawing 16 or 20 cards from 1 deck in order to have all of the cards available at once. Distribute them in sequence. All cards in Blackjack are dealt "closed" so they should be posted in spoiler tags marked with the player's name.

Breaking a Tie:

More than one player can achieve the same value in Blackjack and this can lead to ties. In order to have an ultimate winner for betting and gloating purposes, a tie is broken like this:

1. The player who achieved the score with the most cards is the winner
2. If both players had the same number of cards, the Dealer will draw two cards to the winners in order and whoever has the highest value card wins

How to Play (Forums) Kabu

It's the first of May and that means it's time for Zoofights Roleplay! Since this time around I'm roleplaying a character who canonically is all about the card game Kabu, I thought it would be fun to learn about the game and maybe roleplay playing it with everyone's characters. It could be a lot of fun to have rankings with small prizes (nothing at all on the scale of the derby that CW is organising - I have some simple ideas for this if we ever get that far!).

With that in mind, I've been reading bits and pieces on the game and trying it out myself over the last couple of days. I hope you will all experiment with me on this one and that we can all have fun with this. :)

There is surprisingly little information on the game in English and I can't find an English website that has rules for the game without it being part of some larger game. When I ended up checking the video games that feature Kabu, the rules used in Suikoden differ slightly to the rules used in Yakuza 3 which are again a little different to the Oicho-Kabu android app that I downloaded to actually have a go at playing.

In order to have a stable set of rules to play the game with, I have taken elements that align from the different sets of rules I found. These are the ground rules which I have written out below. I believe the game should work correctly and everything should be explained but let me know if anything isn't clear and I will revise it!

Kabufuda - the Kabu card deck 

Kabu in a Nutshell

Kabu is a Japanese card game that uses a 40 card deck. The simplest description is "a combination of Blackjack and Baccarat" and I think that fits it pretty well.  The game pits a dealer against up to 3 players who are each trying to beat the dealer's hand. The best normal hand is "Kabu", where the cards added together equal a number with a final digit of "9".

How to Play (Forums) Kabu - Updated 11 May 2015!

You will need:

• a minimum of 2 players (ideally 4)
• random.org playing card shuffler for the Dealer

Gameplay: 

1. Decide on the dealer (Mike!).
2. Choose the turn order for the players - the dealer will always go last.
3. The dealer deals 3 cards to the board and 1 to himself. The cards are open/face up.
4. The players choose a card each and make their wager within the bet limit. This is done in turn order.
5. The dealer deals everyone 1 card. This card is closed/face down.
6. The players and dealer may choose to hold/stick or twist/hit for 1 additional card in turn order.
7. Everyone reveals their cards. The scores are noted and wagers completed.
8. Go back to 2.

The Dealer's Role:
The dealer is responsible for drawing all of the cards in the round and choosing whether to receive a third card for their own hand.

The Player's Role:
The player is responsible for choosing an initial card, making a wager, choosing whether to receive a third card and collecting winnings.

The Kabu Deck:
Kabu is played with a deck of 40 cards called Kabufuda, although it can be played with normal playing cards with some adjustments. A Kabufuda deck has four sets of cards numbering from 0 to 9. For the purpose of playing online, the Dealer can use the random.org Play Card Shuffler. They will need to ensure Jacks, Queens and Kings are turned off in order to simulate a Kabufuda deck - Aces will be treated as 1s and 10s will be treated as 0s.

Drawing Cards:
The Dealer will set random.org to complete a card draw of 12 cards from 1 deck. This will give the Dealer all of the necessary cards to complete a game without the possibility of drawing the same card twice. Each time a card is drawn in the game, the Dealer should refer to the next card in the sequence given. Drawing an "open" card means posting it directly for all to see. Drawing a "closed" card means posting it in spoiler tags marked for the specific player.

Winning:
Each player is competing directly against the dealer only. The player wins if their hand is of higher value than the dealer's hand. The player loses if their hand is of equal or lower value than the dealer's hand. Winners receive double their initial wager as winnings and losers give their initial wager to the dealer.

Common Hands:
The following hands can be made with non-specific combinations of cards and are sorted in value order, from lowest to highest. The value of a hand is determined by the final digit of the total sum of the cards - for example, receiving cards 3 7 5 would give a sum of 15 so the value of the hand would be 5.

• 零 - Buta - A hand with a value of 0.
• 一 - Pin - A hand with a value of 1.
• 二 - Nisou - A hand with a value of 2.
• 三 - Santa - A hand with a value of 3.
• 四 - Yotsuya - A hand with a value of 4.
• 五 - Goke - A hand with a value of 5.
• 六 - Roppou - A hand with a value of 6.
• 七 - Shichiken - A hand with a value of 7.
• 八 - Oicho - A hand with a value of 8.
• 九 - Kabu - A hand with a value of 9.

Special Hands:
The following hands can only be made with specific combinations of cards. Special hands also have an order of precedence. The highest level special hands also boost the winnings received.

• シッピン - Shippin - A player-only hand made with [1 and 4] or [4 and 1]. Beats any common hand.
• クッピン - Kuppin - A dealer-only hand made with [1 and 9] or [9 and 1]. Beats any common hand and Shippin.
• アラシ - Arashi - A hand made with three of a kind (eg 3 3 3). Beats any common hand, Shippin and Kuppin. Tripples the initial wager.

Example Game:

1. Mike is chosen as the dealer.
2. Sarah is Player 1, Alex is Player 2, Sine is Player 3.
3. The available cards are 7, 4, 1. Mike is dealt 9.
4. Sarah choses 4, Alex choses 7, Sine choses 1. Each gamble 1 point.
5. Everyone is dealt a card face down.
6. Sarah, Alex and Mike chose to receive a third card.
7. Result! Sarah's hand is 4 7 2 - Santa. Alex's hand is 6 9 1 - Roppou. Sine's hand is 1 4 - Shippin. Mike's hand is 9 4 2 - Goke. Alex and Sine win 2 points each!

*dusts off blog*

Thanks to JRM for reminding me this thing exists and Gooper for reminding me how to actually access it, I am now up one blog!

Now's probably as good a time as ever to go over what I'm planning for the new/current Zoofights RP. Which is to say, very little. I'm not planning anything other than a couple of rough character outlines and I'm just going to wing it from there.

I'll be starting with a single character. Someone a bit more suited to the setting and a bit more normal. He's not an important character and there's very little established about him so I can be pretty flexible and develop something with him without having a completely blank slate.

This is Mike.

Pictured: Mike not breaking a sweat in two shirts and a waist jacket.

Mike is a minor character from Suikoden III. He is a gambler who is recruited either by the mercenary leader Geddoe or the Fire Bringer (sometimes one and the same) by beating him repeatedly at Kabu, his card game of choice. As Mike has a lot of in-game Tractor Factor, beating him soundly enough to recruit him can be pretty frustrating and it's the main reason he's memorable to me. Once recruited, Mike relocates from Caleria to Budehuc Castle and helps to frustrate motivate and entertain the troops with gambling. During the Second Fire Bringer war, Mike is known as one of 108 stars of destiny - the Chisu star or mathematical star - and helps the Fire Bringer in the field to trade items and utilise runes.

Mike comes across as a friendly, laid back guy in the few interactions you have with him in the game. However, notes from the game's detective reveal that perhaps there's something more to Mike than first impressions would suggest and playing the extra chapter as the game's antagonist just makes Mike even more of a mystery. You can see more information about him here if you care to: http://suikoden.wikia.com/wiki/Mike

So that's the Mike of the game in a nutshell.

In ZFRP, a post-Suikoden III Mike somehow turns up in Vegas a few days before the usual suspects arrive. Initially Mike plans to casually gamble and get to know folks as he always has when he finds himself in a new area. Once he's done that, who knows? I'm sure Mike will be happy meeting so many new people and I'm looking forward to playing silly card games with you all.

The Unholy Trinity

Yesterday, I was posting about what would happen should the regular Walter turn up in the mirror!bar and I mentioned multiple Walters. You've seen two of them around a fair bit during RP but another Mr Sullivan has graced the bar with his presence on a couple of special occasions as well. So who is this guy and how many more Walters are there?!

 Oh god don't tell me--

Luckily for all, there's only three: the corpse, the ghost and the little boy.

The ghost is the main Walter Sullivan from Silent Hill 4 and the one the Bar is most acquainted with. Past the 11th Sacrament, it is Walter's ghost who commits the murders and drags those he has chosen into his Otherworld. He is the enemy that chases you through Silent Hill 4's levels during the second half of the game and is one half of the final boss (the other of which is his developing 'Mother'). You probably know the most about this Mr Sullivan so I shan't go on.

The little boy is what the ghost refers to as "Little Walter". Little Walter is (debatably) the manifestation of Walter's younger self - some see him as the manifestation of Walter's conscience. He's turned up a couple of times in the Bar looking for his mother. Little Walter is a character you see fairly regularly in the game but he barely says a word because he's scared and shy. He comes across as very innocent and lacking the malevolence of the older Walter. He attempts to stop Walter from committing at least one of the Sacraments, saving Eileen from the initial attempt on her life. Later on he is kidnapped by the ghost Walter and is not seen again until the end of the game. You never fight him but achieving any of the endings other than the 21 Sacraments kills him along with the ghost... :<

Which leaves us with the corpse. ...Unsurprisingly, it's the corpse of the real Walter Sullivan. After Walter had committed the first 10 Sacraments, he took the hearts he had gathered and performed a ritual suicide within a sealed section of Room 302 (which is how he became a ghost). In the Bar, the corpse is hanging out in the back of Walter's creepy room protecting the entrance to the place that Mother sleeps. When I wrote the de-possession of the Spy, the smell and the humming of the fridge were actually little references to this, and if the light had've been on then the Spy would have seen the corpse of the real Walter hung on his cross on the back wall, complete with his carved 11121 feet and fridge full o' hearts and ceremonial oils. The corpse once made a proper Bar appearance as well as being a lurking menace though! Using his god-gifted powers, Walter sang Bohemian Rhapsody together with Little Walter and Corpse Walter. Somehow. Because I thought it would be funny at the time.

And fun times were had by all (except Henry).

So now you know! Info post over.

I thought it might be interesting to post a little background since any Walter turning up is kind of an irregular thing at the Bar and I thought no-one would really remember the poor corpse. That, and I'm always looking for an excuse to post silly fanart. Always! :D

Commenting request

So I tested some things regarding commenting since I'm having difficulty commenting on everyone else's journals when I'm at work.

I have discovered that I can properly leave a comment on a blog as long as capcha text is turned off in individual blog settings. That is why I could comment on my own blog but not on anyone else's.

I've turned off the setting for capcha text and have also enabled anon-posting on this blog to make this easier for anyone else who might be experiencing problems but at the moment I still can't post on your blogs! So I have a request:

Please could you turn off your capcha text in your blog settings?

Thanks!

- Rose / BK

Stupid anti-tapogre devices...

Oh god damn. I thought I'd found a way round my problem with commenting at work but it turns out that only works with commenting on my own blog which really isn't that helpful. On everyone else's blogs, it won't load the iframe for the anti-spam captcha and it eats my comment so I guess I'll just have to save what I'm going to say for when I get home.

I'm going to start writing the RP story tonight! I've an outline of what I want to write now so I'm going to send that to the other person involved and see what they think. Things are a bit awkward in that I seem to be out of time with everyone else due to timezones and being unable to stay up to RP due to work so it might be that we write it out through PM and then post it up once it's done. Thankfully due to the nature of the story, it can be written independently of the Bar reacting to it so it doesn't need to be written 'live', so to speak. :)

On another note, I think Race Yer Mates will be pretty interesting - I'm definitely looking forward to Father Squid and Sister Alice's enlightening commentary! I'm still thinking on my (well, Walter's) vote though. Sarah, Rainbow Dash and Kirby are instantly ruled out because Walter. I'm pretty sure Zeph's armour is actually made from wet paper so that's a no. Erebus and Del will probably have issues in Silent Hill since I imagine they've seen some pretty terrible things. Eddie might find some problems there too since Ophelia could easilly become something like Maria. That leaves Gamera and Rebecca, one of which is on a comically undersized bike (which I would totally vote for if I didn't have to factor in Walter's personality here!) and the other of which is riding in a not particularly robust mech. Gamera will be slow but will have staying power. Rebecca will be fast but the obstacles of Toon Town could present a problem for her. I'd probably vote for Del if I thought he'd lack issues but otherwise I'm really not sure. Someone help me make my mind up!


EDIT: Looking at the comment settings for my blog, it looks like you can turn the captcha off and allow anon posting. I don't know whether other people doing that would allow me to post or not but I've turned it off on this blog regardless. I might try and test things out later, see if I can figure something out.