Come one come all, bring your buttons

[tinstar]

Who: Raylan and whoever wants to play some cards!!
What: Button Betting Poker
When: Early August
Where: A random house in Milton

Content Warnings: None planned, will update if needed

[OOC NOTE: This will be used as a party style post. Use of an RNG is encouraged to determine win/loss, but if players want their character to lose, it can be worked out between said players. As this is the first instance of Poker night, Raylan has not assigned anyone to any one of the two tables or any of the hands that may happen. Standard poker rules apply, IC conversations can be had about worth comparisons for players with alternate formfactor of betting (IE - if someone wants to bet a singular pearl, the group may determine it is worth 10 buttons).
 
IC disruptions, (violence, table tossing, screaming, ect) will be responded to by Raylan as a peacekeeper. Cheaters, if found, will be expelled from the poker game and the cabin.

[There's no dinner bell, so this will have to do]

Raylan had posted a note on the Community Board about when he planned on having poker and as the days crept towards it, he kept himself busy making sure that the little cabin he'd chosen for the game night was clean and ready. Two tables stood in the open plan loft bearing house, each with a beaten and weathered deck of cards and five or six mismatched chairs around them, some in better shape than others. What got used would depend on how many people showed up - Raylan wasn't sure they'd get more than one table's worth but if he was wrong, he was prepared for it. A small fireplace was already lit and stoked on the night, bearing a tea kettle on its flattop that was warming some birch bark tea he thought might at least serve as refreshment.

It was a real shame they didn't have any wings or chips or something.

When he figured it was about time, he steps out onto the porch and pulls his gun. A shot is fired in the air and when the echo of the bang fades out, Raylan takes a deep breath and yells booming words out over the cold, drawl significantly more noticeable despite his efforts for it. Those who couldn't hear his voice would have heard the shot and those that could, would at least have some context for what it meant.

"Y'ALL WANNA PLAY SOME POKER?"

Comments

Table 1 - Game 1

[tinstar]

[tinstar]

Raylan leans back in his chair, cards tucked away in his fingers with a sly smile on his face as he tosses three buttons onto the ante pile and eyes the rest of the players.

"I see your button and raise you two more. You gonna call or are you gonna match?"

[D20 roll = 15]

[salamanca]

[ Lalo watches when Raylan raises him a button. He grins, and gently tosses in three more buttons of his own. The shiny ones he'd shown Raylan before. ]

Raise.

[ His hands are folded on the table; he's completely unbothered. He stares Raylan down with a sense of playful fire in his eyes. ]

[tinstar]

[ Raylan's eyes narrowed playfully in return. This was the juicy fun part about this game. Was Lalo bluffing or confident? He was unwavering without a doubt, but that didn't tell Raylan much.

But he wasn't going to back down from the bait, tossing in his additional three to match.]

Call. [Okay Mr Smart ass, lets see what you've got. It would be the first of many hands, he thought and hoped, where he could pick apart the other man a little more.]

Table 2 - Game 1

[tinstar]

Mingling around, between or before

[tinstar]

[tinstar]

Raylan vacated his seat after the first game, letting folks who wanted to switch up who they were playing against or who wanted to get in on the action the space to do so. While others played, he tended the birch bark tea. Good tea still ready to be consumed was poured into a glass jar and screwed shut and a second batch was started. What wasn't drank here, Raylan would happily take back to his own cabin to enjoy.

Better bark tea than just hot water, since he didn't have any coffee on hand.

Goose, the little fluffball of a puppy, was more than happy to follow Raylan around and take to leaning on his leg when the man would stand still enough to allow it, dosing before eventually finding a spot near the stove to sprawl out, exhausted from running around all day.

[questioningmermaids]

Kind of hard not to hear the freaking gunshot out in their little cozy hellhole hamlet, but the relief is immediate once he realizes what's happening. Poker? Poker sounds great. He's a poker guy in the sense that he knows how to play and he looks like a card shark, but he doesn't actually do any. That would require not working or rotting away in a bar, both things he enjoys very much, and having actual friends, which he does not sans Healy back home. But here? In Milton? Yeah, he's gonna play poker.

"That alcohol?" He's asking about the tea to the guy with the gun and cowboy hat. What a freaking combination, thinks the man wearing burnt orange with pink-tinted aviators as he puts both hands on his hips. But if Raylan's organized this little shindig, he's already winning in March's heart.

More so if that's alcohol, of course. March, through his shades he's wearing indoors, squints expectantly.

[tinstar]

New faces get welcoming smiles, especially when they come bearing questions that he so desperately wished he had the correct answer for, questions he would totally ask himself. What kind of party didn't have a little booze? Dry ones. Boring ones. But they would have to deal with what Raylan had access too, which was sadly very little.

"God I wish," he responds with a scoff. "Birch Bark Tea, but if you close your eyes and wish real hard, it almost tastes like whiskey."

He hands March a cup and watches him expectantly. Of course, the assertion was bullshit but Raylan was good at selling that.

[sputnik]

Perpetually torn between his desire to socialise and the feeling that he should be staying as far away from people as possible, Konstantin only gives into the former when he's extremely sure that it's safe to. The alien entity that has made him its home has been fed for the night; there should be no reason for it to make an appearance. Besides, it's much colder outside with the sun down, and the thing can't handle the cold well at all. No, it should stay nice and quiet and maybe, just maybe, that means he can actually have some fun poking around the Poker Night that he'd seen an announcement for.

Which is off to a start with a very colourful bang — literally — as the host of this little evening puts on a show from the start. Konstantin's delighted by the energy of things already, and spends the first round making his way around the Community Hall catching up with anyone he knows and watching games take place, but he doesn't actually play just yet, merely observing from a comfortable, easy distance.

At some point, he makes his way over to where it seems drinks are being served, approaching the man who'd put this all together. There's a friendly smile on the cosmonaut's face as he draws near, accent strong and Russian.

"Manning the bar, as well?" He asks with a playful brightness to his eye. "You're too good at this hosting business."

[tinstar]

Raylan had meant it when he left the proverbial door open to anyone who felt the need to play card shark for a while and he had no objection to an audience. That was half the point of this; give people something to do that wasn't just surviving. To give people a reason to amble around and mingle, exist with others without it being hiding out of fear or necessity..

.. and he really wanted to play poker.

He smiles at the new comer, brow flinching towards a brief furrow at the strong accent - Russian, huh? This place brought in all sorts.

"It's very generous to call this a bar, but I'll take it. May have run a few neighborhood barbeques, seen a couple book clubs run in my day." He was pretty sure that Winona would be a new level of miserable out here in the middle of no where. Not a white wine or a fancy restaurant in sight.

"Raylan Givens, pleasure to meet you. You here to play or are ya just spectatin'?"

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe’s been around for a while, all over the place. She’d played for a bit, then floated between the tables, stopping by the table where Raylan had been playing to whisper in Lalo’s ear. She’d seen something that amused her there, though she's certain that neither man knows what it is.

“Hey,” she says, approaching the drinks table. “Not a bad night so far.”

[tinstar]

"Hey," he greets back with a smile and a glance around the room. "Not bad at all. More people showed up than I thought, new faces, old faces and not a lick of trouble as of yet. I'm hesitantly callin' it a success." He lifts his little cup of tea like its a cheers and takes a sip.

"You leavin' with more buttons or less button's than you came in with?"

[solitarysoul]

Levi's got a pocket full of buttons, a jar of jerky and is ready for cards. He's not sure if the jerky is snacks or to bet with, since they wagered rations sometimes during the war. He'd go by whatever the others seemed to want on that, but if he was the only one bringing food they were probably snacks.

He arrives not that long after the shot and call went out, and once inside he rest his rifle against the wall near the door. He doesn't need it here, its just outside where it might be dangerous. At least he hopes cards don't get heated enough that anyone would want to go for it.

He gives Raylan and everyone else a smile. "Finally time to play, huh?"

Its early in the month, so word of his assassination attempt likely hasn't spread that far yet. But if anyone wanted to look into that gun shot near the gas station at the end of July they could have figured it out.

[guidemyway]

Ruby sees Levi.

She points to her eyes, then she points to the jerky, and then makes a motion as if she's eating it in one gulp.

It's not too son to make that joke, right?

[solitarysoul]

Levi gives her a flat look that indicates that yes, it's too soon to make that joke.

[meadqueen]

Randvi had not managed to find very many buttons - it had taken her some time to learn what a button even was - but she had been collecting small stones for talisman production for some time, and not all stones made the cut for one reason or another. A little bag of rejected stones hangs at her belt for betting purposes.

She also carries a small pouch of dried meat for the puppy gambolling around her legs, and she’s offered a small piece every time she spends enough time at Randvi’s right side.

She opts not to play in the first round, watching intently to try and absorb the rules, but she's still available to chat with anyone else not playing yet.

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey's not fond of dogs. He's especially not fond of people bringing dogs to places where they shouldn't be. And at least in his mind, bringing a dog to a poker game counts. Why's it here, anyway? What's a dog got to do with a poker game?

It's in between rounds that Hickey walks over to Randvi, giving her a little nod, before looking down at the dog and pointing out, "Y'know this game involves concentration. If you split your time between the cards and your dog, you'll lose every round."

[salamanca]

Lalo spends some time sitting with Randvi and the puppy before the games start. He watches the little creature hopping around, not straying too far from Randvi. For once, he's quiet, careful not to rile up or distract the puppy.

"You're gonna get killed in there," he teases her. "You've never played poker before."

[solitarysoul]

Levi notes Randvi sitting out of the first round, and after it heads over to her. "Did you have anything like this where you came from?"

Did they even have playing cards? He's not sure how old those are.

[desperate_times_right]

When she shows up, Chloe looks a lot more confident than Raylan might have guessed from their earlier conversation. Yeah, she's still a bit nervous about being so publicly associated with Hickey after everything, but probably no one’s going to beat on a woman in public over it.

She's got a plastic bag full of buttons and bottle caps and she's here to win.

[guidemyway]

Look Ruby's more interested in all the buttons that Chloe's got on her hands than any sort of drama going on around town at the moment. They needed moments like this to chill out and relax.

She holds up a bag with nuts and bolts she managed to gather up at the scrapyard.

"You can kiss your BUTTons goodbye."

[salamanca]

Lalo is already seated at the table when Chloe walks in. He lets out a long, low wolf-whistle, when he sees her. Deep down he's nervous, after everything that's gone down between them, but like hell he's gonna let that show. Never let your opponent see your weakness.

[satanicpanics]

Eddie look tired when he drags himself in. He alway feels exhausted and on edge these days, like he never fully recovered from the glimmer fog sickness. In truth, this place is finally catching up to him. Some may have noted that he and his guitar have been absent for the last several Auroras—probably a welcome change, but he looks so gaunt and hollow that it may be a cause for concern.

He’s still himself, though, with full dramatic flair. He’s collected buttons and bottle caps for this event, sure, but he’s decided they need to follow a theme. They’re all exclusively red and black and silver, and it’s pretty clear that some of them have been painted with little pictures to match his theme—bats and gravestones and skulls. It’s all very metal. All the same, before the games begin, he’ll slide up to several people who happen to have a few really cool buttons in their collections that he wants.

“Hey,” he quips with a wide grin. “How about a trade?”

Is he here to play or to just be a magpie? We just don’t know.

[solitarysoul]

Levi is sorting his buttons out when Eddie slides up. He raises an eyebrow. "Well, you could win it off me."