9.5. Dice and Playing Cards

| Chapter 9: Props: Food, Clothing, Money, Toys, Books, Electronics |

| 9.5. Dice and Playing Cards

Most toys are single things, and no harder to create than any other small items, but games often require a multitude of tokens to be combined, and this can be logistically tricky.

The classic example is a pack of playing cards, where the player must individually control 52 items but without fussy commands or verbose text being printed back. Jokers Wild provides a simple "one card at a time" approach; Tilt 1 is more sophisticated, with 52 independently accessible cards; Tilt 2 can further judge the value of a selection of cards - the ranking of a poker hand.

Drawing cards from a shuffled pack is only one source of randomness. Games of chance also involve items drawn from a bag: Wonka's Revenge provides just such a lottery. More often, dice are thrown. A single die is easy enough:

> The die is carried by the player. After dropping the die: say "It lands with [a random number from 1 to 6] uppermost." Understand "roll [something]" as dropping.

Quick, but not very good. Most dice games involve rolling more than one die at a time, to get a more interesting distribution of outcomes: they may also involve special rules applying to doubles, for instance. See Do Pass Go.

See Typography for on-screen notations for chess and card games

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| Example Jokers Wild A deck of cards which can be shuffled and dealt from. |
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306
| Example Tilt 1 A deck of cards with fully implemented individual cards, which can be separately drawn and discarded, and referred to by name. |
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389
| Example Tilt 2 A deck of cards with fully implemented individual cards; when the player has a full poker hand, the inventory listing describes the resulting hand accordingly. |
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| Example Wonka's Revenge A lottery drum which redistributes the tickets inside whenever the player spins it. |
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"Wonka's Revenge" The Caribou Lodge is a room. "Hundreds of expectant faces are turned your way from every table." A lottery drum is in the Lodge. "Before you is the lottery drum[if we have spun the drum], ready to disgorge a ticket[otherwise], waiting to be spun[end if]." In the drum are a red ticket, an orange ticket, a yellow ticket, a green ticket, a blue ticket, a purple ticket, and a ticket of pure gold. The drum is closed and openable. Understand "spin [something]" as spinning. Spinning is an action with past participle spun, applying to one thing. Check spinning: if the noun is an open container which contains something, say "[The list of things in the noun] would fly out." instead. Carry out spinning a container: shuffle the contents of the noun. Report spinning: if the noun contains something, say "You rattle [if the noun is transparent][the list of things in the noun][otherwise]the stuff[end if] in [the noun]."; otherwise say "Nothing results of your shaking [the noun]." Inform keeps track of the order in which things have been put into a container. If we want to change that order without the player's intervention, we can move the things ourselves. To shuffle the contents of (basket - a container): let moves be the number of things in the basket; repeat with counter running from 1 to moves: move a random thing in the basket to the basket. After opening the drum when we have spun the drum for the first time: if something (called the pick) is in the drum: try searching the drum; say "[The pick] it is, then."; silently try taking the pick; if the pick is the ticket of pure gold, end the story finally; otherwise end the story saying "Oh well, better luck next time." Test me with "open drum / look in drum / close drum / spin drum / open drum".

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| Example Do Pass Go A pair of dice which can be rolled, and are described with their current total when not carried, and have individual scores when examined. |
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