What sort of wild gambling games could I add to a barbarian camp scene for flavor?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846923What sort of wild gambling games could I add to a barbarian camp scene for flavor?

A guessing game: what did the halfling eat for breakfast.

For not so bloodthirsty Barbarians: games of dexterity, athletic competitions (throwing heavy rocks, log tossing, tug war, wrestling), all kinds of game of chance and strategy including dice games and comparatively simple board games like the mill game or hnefatafl. Backgammon is also really old and would fit, in either way dice are either cut from bones or formed out of clay.
It would be highly anachronistically, but kubb would also work.

For appropriately bloodthirsty Barbarians: dog fighting, cock fighting (with or without spurs), bull baiting, and pretty much all similar kinds of animal mistreatment for fun. Buzkashi ("goat polo") would work very well for nomadic horsemen and their ilk.

For really bloodthirsty Barbarians: see above, replace one animal with a captive. slave or voluntary young warrior who wants to prove himself.

My favorite was always betting on horse fights. Lead to one PC scoring a critical hit with a severed horse dick.

Also dice might to hard to make so maybe tossing sticks that work like throwing a handful of coins and counting the heads.

Quote from: Daztur;846938Also dice might to hard to make so maybe tossing sticks that work like throwing a handful of coins and counting the heads.

Yeah, I figured the manufacturing of game pieces might be a limiting factor, but maybe I'm underestimating people.

The vikings enjoyed tafl, a strategic boardgame superficially similar to chess. It could be a fun play on expectations to have a group of mighty, half-naked barbarians all sitting quitely in the noise of the war camp, focused on two master players finishing a long drawn board game.

I bet some variant of Mumblety-peg would fly.

For pure gambling, you could have betting that uses animals as the randomizer. Such as "Which hole will the rabbit run into?"

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;847011Yeah, I figured the manufacturing of game pieces might be a limiting factor, but maybe I'm underestimating people.

Was thinking of the Korean game yunnori  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yut which is a bit like Parcheesi and uses really simple to make equipment.

In my Viking campaign my players also really liked stick ball, which is basically like field hockey with an inflated pig bladder for a ball and lots of cheating and smacking other players upside the head with the sticks.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;847011Yeah, I figured the manufacturing of game pieces might be a limiting factor, but maybe I'm underestimating people.

Dice have been fabricated for at least 4,000 years. They have been cut from bone, ivory,  stone and wood; they have been cast in metals (often lead, as far as I know), or formed out of clay. The production of dice is not particularly difficult, nor is "a bloc, with all sides of equal length" a specifically esoteric concept. So, if your Barbarians can cut idols from amber, wood or the like, have access to molding techniques or know how to form and burn bricks, they will almost certainly know to build dice and are likely to do so, because Barbarians aen't any more immune to boredom than anybody else.
Other gamepieces are much, much simpler, as they don't require nearly as much precision as dice.

Football with the heads of your enemies.  >.>

Quote from: Christopher Brady;847118Football with the heads of your enemies.  >.>

... while still attached to their bodies

Quote from: Beagle;846932It would be highly anachronistically, but kubb would also work.

Not really that anachronistic.  "Set up some sticks, then throw other sticks at them" could easily have been one of the earliest games.

Quote from: Arminius;847104For pure gambling, you could have betting that uses animals as the randomizer. Such as "Which hole will the rabbit run into?"

There were a couple tribes of Plains Indians where such natural randomizers were indeed the source of betting games: guess the number of bison in that herd, which way will the prairie dog run if I shoot an arrow in its general direction, that sort of thing.

Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;847135... while still attached to their bodies

Now why would you ruin a perfectly good ball by not removing it from the extraneous bits?

Civilized folks, bah.