Rat-Snake Rules Clarification

Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar setting, home to the legendary Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, is the first officially licensed setting for the DCC RPG.

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Gutmust
Gongfarmer
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:13 pm
FLGS: Palouse Games

Rat-Snake Rules Clarification

Post by Gutmust »

Hello! I recently got Rat Snake and had quite a few rules clarifications questions after reading the rules over and over and playing it a couple times. To help clarify I think it's a bit hard for me to understand a handful of rules in this game because I don't really have any real world gambling experience.

1. Is there a difference between "bowing out", "leaving the ring", "passing the dice", and "starting a new round"?
These may be just used interchangeably but they do seem a bit different. Leaving the ring makes sense to me as it is literally "quitting the game", however I'm confused if "bowing out" means that you also leave the ring? or is it just a different way to say "pass the dice"? maybe they're both part of "starting a new round" and not actually terms. the rules in a couple places seem to support all of these ideas but I'm not sure which one is correct.

2. When can you leave the ring?
This relates to the rule clarification I asked above, the way I see the rules at the moment you can "leave the ring" whenever you want after you finish your rolling except when you roll double snakes. But then again this is dictated by if "bowing out" and "leaving the ring" are different. It's even a bit unclear to me if this is sort of like an elimination game like poker.

3. Can anyone make side bets?
It seems like in the rules, only the people in the ring can make side bets. It sort of alludes to this in the rules written under what happens when you roll two rats. But further down it seems like it was starting to make more sense that anyone could when getting to the last page on having "no house with side bets".

4. If you make a side bet against another player does that player pay the wager out of pocket? can they refuse it?
When wagering against the "house" it makes a lot of sense that they pay you or take your money, but if you do it against another player do you pay them / do they pay you if you win or lose? and if so can they just reject your offer?

5. What defines your grain silo?
As I imagine the game it's sort of like how I see poker games, everyone in the ring has a stack of money that is unrelated to the game (pocket), and they will pull money from that stack when they put money on a bet (silo). However, I'm confused as to where the "grain silo" starts and ends. Some rules (such as the one for rolling two snakes) say "...the thrower wins a number of coins equal to the current stakes in his silo." That rule doesn't necessarily mean that money goes into their silo, so does that mean they take it directly to their "pocket"?

6. Does the grain silo stay with you as long as you're in the ring?
I imagine the ring as a dynamic table where people are constantly coming and going. With this in mind, does a "thrower" go up to the table, put 6 coins in their silo and continuously add or subtract from that silo no matter how many times they pass the dice until they "leave the ring"? or, does the thrower put the money they won in that "round" back into their pocket at the end of step 4 and just continue going through the cycle of putting up 6 coins and getting money to put directly into their pocket until they leave the table.

I know that honestly the answer to all of these is just that I need to research gambling more and house rule things as I think they should work, but I just wanted to check with the community to see if their is a glaring idea/rule I'm missing to play the game in a way that it was supposed to be played by the designers at Goodman.
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