I Am Not Interested In Your 20th Century U.S.A. Morality
				or,
	Why There's Nothing Wrong With The Card Games In Legends.

OK, let's clear the air here.

First: do the dealers cheat at their poker game?  I have no idea.  Have I
checked?  Of course I've checked.

But this is irrelevant.  Why?

Because it's called Business.  Specifically, Galenese business.

Galen is an island populated by thugs, criminals, and other sordid types.
It has the worst rep of all the nationalities in Areth.  Furthermore, it's
a part of Areth.

Just because you happen to be playing Legends in a place called
Massachusetts in the USA and the year is 2001 does not mean you should take
your liberal hand-wringing from Massachusetts, combine it with your
conservative self-righteousness from the USA, and inject it into the game.
The year in Areth is 1601, and that's a good indicator of where you should
be.

Powerful people do whatever they want.  Notice how the dark elves kill
anyone they want?  You don't see arrest warrants going out for them.  The
weak are overrun?  They form big mobs to get mutual protection.  But big
mobs are unwieldy, so as people get more powerful, they tend to split off
on their own or in small groups of 2s and 3s.

Talk is not free.  That's why you have to pay a price.  So there you are,
playing cards, and you think the dealer may be cheating.  Don't like that?
Then get out.  That's the price of business.  If you've won, then shut up
and count your winnings in private.  If you've lost too much, then you
should've stopped a lot earlier.  If you didn't know why you were playing,
then you're an idiot: why were you there?  These people are important,
busy, and don't want to waste their time.  At least they get some
compensation: namely, the money they fleeced from you.  That's why they're
cheating: they want to make sure they they get at least something for
spending time talking to you.  Not that what they got was probably worth
their time.  And the great thing is: it's a self-correcting system.  If no
one wants to pay the price, then the sellers lose.  But remember, the first
step is finding out what the sellers are offering, so sit down, ante up,
and be sharp in your cards and your talk.

If you do end up doing business with these people, you could even demand
more or less money for whatever you're selling or buying to take into
account what you've lost at the table.  But really, that's pretty stupid.
It makes you look petty, which means that you look like you have no style.
Also, if/when you win, you'll have to reciprocate.  After all, violating
quid pro quo is probably not a good idea.

You'll notice that I haven't specified if I'm talking about the Dark Tavern
or House Dandalo.  It's the same either way: it's about business.  House
Dandalo and the Dark Tavern are about characters of ambiguous morality.
Certainly there's a code of thieves they subscribe to: after all, pure
anarchy is untenable to the conduct of business.  You don't see people
randomly getting killed in the Dark Tavern.  This doesn't mean that you
don't see people getting killed for a very small reason: of course you do.
But I already said that these places are about characters with ambiguous
morality.

Life is full of bad people.  In Areth, they're called the Galenese.  If you
play with them, you have to play by their rules.  Not by yours.  Now, if
you don't like this, that's ok.  There's a very simple solution: don't deal
with these people.  Just don't whine that you've been cut out of the action
-- you did that yourself when you brought in all that moral baggage.

dave