The most popular card game of the American West was faro. This is followed by instructions on how to simulate a faro game in a Deadlands campaign, with suggestions on relating faro to a player character’s Gambling skill, and making this “game-within-a-game” more meaningful for the players themselves.Īlthough most Western movies show gunslingers and cowboys hunkered over a poker table, poker was fairly obscure until after the Civil War.
After a discussion of the game’s importance to the Wild West, the rules of faro are explained, along with some ways to cheat at faro. This document describes the game of faro in the context of Deadlands. John Neville Maskelyne, Sharps and Flats, 1894
The methods of cheating used in connection with it are so numerous and so ingenious that it becomes really necessary to devote an entire chapter specially to them.
Faro may almost be said to occupy in America the position of a national game.
