Gambling in a fantasy world with divination magic

[Cor Azer]

Can it be done?

Well, certainly it could be done on a small scale, but could something like a casino work in a world where a simple augury spell can tell you not to go out gambling on any given night?

 

[pawsplay]

That depends. Is paradox possible? Because if I cast augury and decide not to go out, that would probably affect other people's destinies as well.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

Good point pawsplay.

I would say that depends a lot on your world. How common is divination magic? Are there local diviners who walk around all the time? Most of the games I've played in, there are only a handful of people who have foresight, and they spend their time focusing on far more important things than making a few coppers at the local casino.

So, if your world is more "realistic", then I would say: yes, gambling is possible and in all likelihood common. Even gambling on combative things, like tournaments, gladiator matches, and even beast fights.

 

[Celebrim]

In my current campaign, I've hinted to the players that the secret cabal of clever cultists are funding themselves in no small part by gambling on what is essentially the world's nascent commodity markets using divination to predict which commodities will be scarce later and in what locations and therefore in high demand.

 

[Asmor]

Generally speaking, when it comes to divination, the future is not set in stone. In many cases, knowledge of the future changes the future (i.e. I see that I'm going to die tomorrow on my motorcycle; I take my car instead. Thus the motorcycle prophecy is now invalidated.*).

To extrapolate from that even farther, the future's change is directly related to your own power to change it and the event's volatility. If you foresaw a tornado, there's not much you could do; that tornado's happening. On the other hand, if you walk into a casino having seen that a dealer's going to deal a blackjack on the fourth hand after 9pm to the third seat, your simply showing up changes everything. The dealer notices you, for example, as she's shuffling, she washes the cards ever so slightly differently, and the deck is no longer the same as it was in your prophecy.

It's even more apparent in a game with dice, for example, since everything from the height they're dropped from, the air turbulence, their velocity, the way the thrower's holding his hands, etc will lend significant impact to the roll.

So, in short, while this is of course all a matter of fiction, it really doesn't make any sense that a divination would even be able to predict the roll of a pair of dice the moment before you throw them.

*And of course there's the whole "you can't cheat destiny" trope where, in my example, I'd still die in my car. But even then, the prophecy was invalidated. I saw myself die on a motorcycle, but I changed the future and died in a car). More interesting, to me, is the idea of a (literal) self-fulfilling prophecy, where your actions to avoid a prophesy directly lead you into it, exactly as was predicted. Not really the sort of thing that's feasible in D&D, though, so it's stuck in the realms of traditional narratives.

 

[1Mac]

Think of how card counting works in the real-world, and what casinos do to counter it. I think a similar dynamic between diviners and fantasy casino bosses could be fun.

 

[nedjer]

PCs are welcome to try out divination - so long as they don't mind clear-up the goat's entrails afterwards.

 

[Stormonu]

I could see divination spells working, and some of the more successful places being on guard against "fraud", ranging from disallowing known spellcasters and their associates in such establishments to using countermagic (via spells or items) to prevent divination from working.

And besides divination magic, there are many alteration spells that work with gambling (prestidigitation and cards are one example, telekinesis and dice might be another). These might be watched for as well.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

The games might simply be different, possibly even relying upon the divinations.

For example, a tribe of orcs straps an elven diviner to a great rotating wheel, then asks the diviner which orc will hit him first with a thrown axe. Bets are then made on how loudly the diviner screams when the augury is fulfilled.

 

[Stoat]

The devil is in the details.

Any given divination may or may not help you, but Augury probably isn't a good way to clean up at the casino. "Weal and Woe" is an acceptable response, and the spell is only able to see about a half hour into the future.

Augury :: d20srd.org