There have been a couple of occasions where, in an RPG context, the player characters were involved in some kind of game.  This happened a few times in my campaigns for card games or other forms of gambling, and once (in my Qin campaign) with Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), where we actually paused the RPG and played the game in question.

Have you ever done that?

Didnt we have this conversation a month or two ago?

Lets see.

Xiang-Qi here too. For an OA campaign.
Shogi - hand made - Also for OA.
And an epic self made "Three Kingdoms" version of Xiang-Qi. It a 3 player version on a sort of triangular board. Also for OA. Think its called Sanguo Qi?

Dou Shou Qi - AKA: Jungle. Played this on a BX D&D session.

ive never seen it but it must be fairly common as wizards put out some rules for some tavern games for 3e

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/dg

I can't remember any incident - so I guess it's a no.
It would feel too metagamey, I fear, if a dumb barbarian would beat an npc just because the player happens to be a chess talent.

There were games in my games, like the chess-like Khas and the Talis card game in Dragonlance or a nameless card game modeled after the Ardan deck in ICE's Court of Ardor. But I never made players play an actual game (which would have been hard with no actual rules...).
I used cards as props, and card-based systems (Savage Worlds, Falkenstein, Lace & Steel).

In one campaign there is a card game that the players found in the backpack of mercenaries from a distant land, and they wondered what the rules to the game would be ("a game without numbers and suits?").
For me, stuff like that is mainly color.

But there are games that grew out of rpg backgrounds, like Pathfinder's Harrow deck, D&D's Three Dragon Ante, or Das Schwarze Auge's Red and White Camels.

One I wanted to try to assemble and never had the chance was Dragon Chess from that issue of Dragon Magazine.

Something like that would annoy the heck out of me. I'm there to roleplay, not play fucking cards or chess. Just ask for some die rolls and have it over and done with.

Mostly gambling games, not the ones in the 1st DMG but various novelties in dungeons. Betting on arena fights, races, etc. Very rare strategy games abstracted to a few choices and dice rolls.

One dungeon room that was basically a Pac-Man imitation. A few Chess problem type rooms in dungeons in magazines and modules.

I leave games with games to background color, or a quick roll on a relevant ability, percentage roll or whatever method the game offers if it is about gambling to make/lose money or somesuch.

on quite a few occasions....
but having the players be giant figures on a board, and not able to be in the room with each other when they moved, so they could not work together, and had to figure how they each moved...that was a good time.

Yep.

In our Star Wars game one character had a gambler, so I invented a simple dice game with bets.  The other PCs agreed to be NPCs in a gambling game for ten minutes or so.

During the game one of the PCs slipped me a note "my guy is going to cheat."  He got caught and thrown out of the game.  Then he slipped me a note "My guy is going to hire some low level thugs and try to ambush these guys and get their money."  The other PCs won but it was a fun little fight.

This is the same player that as a Wookiee refused to speak English if any PC present couldn't speak Shriwook.

I love that guy.

Quote from: Phillip;801490Mostly gambling games, not the ones in the 1st DMG but various novelties in dungeons. Betting on arena fights, races, etc. Very rare strategy games abstracted to a few choices and dice rolls.

One dungeon room that was basically a Pac-Man imitation. A few Chess problem type rooms in dungeons in magazines and modules.

oh pack man dungeon that sounds interesting

Quote from: Phillip;801490Mostly gambling games, not the ones in the 1st DMG

Speaking of that, one of the earliest AD&D game I played we played a lot of slots machines based on those rules in the DMG

Quote from: tuypo1;801524oh pack man dungeon that sounds interesting

We did a whole session based on the Atari 2600 game Adventure.

Sometimes.

Where we play a different game/sport, we use a skill to resolve the outcome - Play (Chess), Play (Backgammon) or whatever.

We also use HeroQuesting a lot, which itself is a game within a game.

I've done it, on rare occasions.  There's a chess-like game in my setting called Jikaida, for which I do have the rules.

About the only times where I've played out a whole game of it are when the variant "Blood Jikaida" is being played -- effectively, combat chess, where the "pieces" are decked out with arms and armor based on the strength of the pieces, and "captures" are played out with combat on the contested squares.  Using chess as an analogy, a pawn can try to take a queen, except that the pawn's a schmuck gladiator in a loincloth with a spear, and the queen's an expert swordswoman in full mail, wielding sword and board.