Hi everyone!

With the demise of Helera, Elder God of Fortune, the curse plaguing the Izu-Ari Casino is no more and with it comes the long awaited update to the Gaming skill!

Before I get into the specifics, I want to stress that this is a major upgrade. Gaming now has around 30 abilities in it, making it a full skill in its own right compared to its original incarnation, including many new mechanics and features that cannot be obtained through any other method!

As such, from 4th April, we will be increasing the cost to learn it from 1000 lessons -> 1500 lessons, which I feel is a more accurate reflection of its value given the changes. Before that, you can still pick it up for the initial cost of 1000 lessons if you're interested, with COMMIT FREETIME TO GAMING!

Onwards with some of the details!

First and foremost, advancement in Gaming is no longer an endless grind. Instead, it can be progressed by completing a series of advancement tasks in any order (see GAMING TASKS for the list). Each task advances the skill by one rank, and involve things like solving crosswords, scoring at Farkle, and beating several new NPCs at their challenges in the Izu-Ari casino.

It is also no longer possible to lose lessons in Gaming and have your skill rank deteriorate.

A slew of bugs have been fixed in the original skills, and there are no more 'hidden' abilities. What you see is what you get, and what you get should be polished and fully functional.

The following changes have been made to existing abilities:

- Cheating skills are now subject to deceit checks (see HELP DECEIT).
- Summoning game tables now costs gold outside of a pub or tavern common room.
- SURVEY will now reveal whether a location is a pub common room for this purpose.

As for the new additions, here are some highlights of what Gaming will now allow you to do:

- Create tournament brackets.
- Devise wordsearches and crossword puzzles.
- Summon a greater variety of game tables including Farkle and Abdication.
- Multiple tables at once are now possible, allowing for tournaments or contests.
- Host public lotteries.
- Commission the Esterport arena for global games.
- Arrange wagers.
- Host pub quizzes.
- Create elaborate scoring sheets.
- Open public betting books.
- Host card games with decks that follow real rules, allowing you to shuffle, deal, and interact with a deck in all the ways you would expect.
- Various tricks and games with dice, coins, and cards.

Some of these new abilities are extremely in depth, and I strongly advise reading through the updated AB GAMING <ability> files to get a fuller picture of how they work.

Enjoy!

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 12th of Khepary, in the year 501 MA.
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