What Lotteries Exist?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


I am going to open my home game with the players winning a lottery to see who would inherit an estate. What are some forms that lottery could take? I am thinking something along the lines of who has the right color of paper in an envelope.

Scarab Sages

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Draw a shaped ceramic token from a bag of holding.
Most coinage of a certain year minted.
Guess the number of rocks in a jar.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Nohwear wrote:
I am going to open my home game with the players winning a lottery to see who would inherit an estate. What are some forms that lottery could take? I am thinking something along the lines of who has the right color of paper in an envelope.

You do understand what the original medieval purpose of the lottery was for? Let me give you a hint.. you did not want to be the winner.

Lotteries were held when food supplies were running low. The person who drew the black spot was then stoned to death to get rid of another mouth to feed. There's a novel scene where Spock refuses Scotty's offer of a cigar when his nephew was born, and he makes this reference to the origins of the custom.


LazarX wrote:
Nohwear wrote:
I am going to open my home game with the players winning a lottery to see who would inherit an estate. What are some forms that lottery could take? I am thinking something along the lines of who has the right color of paper in an envelope.

You do understand what the original medieval purpose of the lottery was for? Let me give you a hint.. you did not want to be the winner.

Lotteries were held when food supplies were running low. The person who drew the black spot was then stoned to death to get rid of another mouth to feed. There's a novel scene where Spock refuses Scotty's offer of a cigar when his nephew was born, and he makes this reference to the origins of the custom.

Lottery for prize was long established practice. Chinese had lotteries during Han dynasty and Ancient Romans had lotteries as a form of entertainment for higher classes in Imperial period not long after the Chinese.

More widely speaking about drawing of lots - yes, it has been used as a way of selecting religious and economic sacrifices, but it has been also used for selection of governmental officials in Ancient Athens.

BTW: Zeus became master of the Olympus and leader of Greek Gods by drawing lots with his brothers, thus technically inheriting the role of the head of the family (and gods, and universe) from Chronos by lottery.


Depending upon culture they live in: the person overseeing the lottery frees a domesticated animal that will capriciously walk around the lottery participant and the person that the animal will fawn to (cat for example) or land upon (if bird) will be picked. Or maybe having each of participants catch a common local animal (maybe an insect) and have them participate in races of the animals (obviously all the animals would have to be of the same type, like frog races, beetle races, etc).

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