We had a discussion going earlier about the 'minimum requirements' of the system. I think the only solid requirement was that it had to be at least zero-sum, where no bet exists that guarantees a gain (such as what several people keep trying to do, and keep getting PW declaring bounties on them 
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Other than that, it would be nice if the odds reflected somewhat the state of the game. So, if Blue team is fully equipped in olympian suits, and red team is a bunch of 0-point noobs, the odds should be setup so that a blue team win pays out far less than a red team win.
If you want some help, I could probably scrounge up enough time to make a simple program to calculate odds based on some arbitrary 'power' value. So, feed the program some arbitrary power level of each player, and it will feed you back an odds chart to use for betting.
The main thing I was strongly considering was what actual gambling of this sort tends to use, wherein the odds depend on how many people are betting for a given thing. So for instance, you remember the Silent Auction challenge where everyone and their dog bet on the wrong one, and one person bet on the right one? At the moment that was just a straight payout or loss, but in a more realistic setting the house would basically say "okay, everyone's betting on this, that makes them more likely to win/will be more expensive if we lose, so obviously it's worth less if/when they do." The lone guy who bet on the underdog, on the other hand, would have been rolling in it.
The advantage of this kind of a thing is that it's more or less automated. Disadvantages include less satisfying rewards if you guess correctly but aren't the only one (which isn't always going to be a function of picking the most powerful or maimed to win/die), and the fact that it works a lot better the more people you have wagering.
"Power" functions strike me as a poor idea mechanically, but a far more interesting one. The main issue I have with... actually, I guess you could calculate their odds to hit or something and get a nice spreadsheet of everyone's eventual odds of winning based on various criteria (rolling a 5 followed by them rolling a pair of 1s, rolling higher than them enough times that they're probably maimed or something, etc).
Anyway, even with that a "power" function would probably be a bit arbitrary, especially once we get into chunky salsa differences rather than numerical bonuses. That said, I do like it because it gives a nice shiny number to display in front of everyone, as opposed to just the current odds or something kind of clinical like that. Might go for something simpler, though, like their total useful actions minus their harmful actions, or some known-to-be-useless "+1 for having all limbs, +1 for having a weapon, +1 for killing intent" type thing.
I
probably don't want to get fancy enough to give each contestant their owns stat card, but it'd be very thematic.
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Topic: ER: Dead Man Running: Episode 4: Get in here and vote on some Murder. (Read 290261 times)