Caravan (game)



Caravan is a card game played by caravan guards and travelers in the Mojave Wasteland.

Background
Text below in monotype font is verbatim transcript from the Collector's Edition vault playing cards deck.

Obtaining a deck and additional cards
A free 54-card Caravan Deck and game instructions can be received from Ringo in Goodsprings. This deck comprises 53 of the 54 cards from the the Tops' set with two King of Diamonds, the King of Clubs is missing. Additional cards can be obtained from various merchants and corpses across the Mojave Wasteland, by beating Festus at Lucky Horseshoes, or found in the Sierra Madre.

Bidding
At the outset of the game, the opponent will place a bid. The player can then either match or raise. Non-player characters will not match every bid, only raising to about 50% of their initial bid. The player can bid any amount they want, limited only by their opponent's bid and the amount of money they have.

Building a custom deck
Prior to beginning the game, the player is presented with the deck creation interface. This interface consists of two rows of cards, both representing every card in the deck. The visible cards in the top row represent the playable deck, while the bottom row are the unused cards. Any duplicate cards purchased by the player are automatically filtered out of the selection process.

A deck is created by moving cards from the bottom row to the top row using the add button. Cards can also be removed using the remove button. The Randomize Deck button will randomly select cards, creating a new caravan deck each time from all the available cards in your total card pool. Once the player is finished creating their deck, they can move on to the game. The finished deck will be saved and cannot be edited until the next time Caravan is played.

Caravan players

 * 1 Merchants who play Caravan will use one quarter of their currency as starting bid. Spending caps with them increases the amount they hold and the amount they bet, and vice versa. Merchants may also pay out in any alternate currencies they have in their inventory, including any you had already exchanged with them.
 * 2 Certain merchants have a limit on the total number of times they will play Caravan against the player. This limit is absolute and does not "reset" at any point during the game.

Behind the scenes

 * The achievement/trophy names Know When to Hold Them and Know When to Fold Them (in game challenge) are references to the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers.
 * Both Klamath Bob and Melissa were at one point intended to be Caravan players. Their Caravan decks are in the game's resources, but the dialogue options do not exist. Additionally, Poindexter appears to have been intended to be a Caravan player. In this case the dialogue option is present, but the associated dialogue script, caravan deck, and necessary faction assignment are missing.
 * Regarding the development of Caravan, Joshua Sawyer stated that the team wanted more testing and iteration on the game, but there were too many more important issues to fix, making Caravan a lower priority that they never got around to. In terms of those improvements, Sawyer would have wanted better tutorialization for Caravan, to simplify the deck, and to eliminate the "meta" of loading everything up with sixes, tens, and kings.
 * Jon Burke created the Caravan menu.

Bugs

 * Playing with any no-game-limit non-player character when they hold 59804 caps will result in the player winning up to 52029 caps. Dale Barton will fall back to 59804. This action is repeatable. Also, the game may crash when the non-player character holds more than 65,535 ((2^16)-1) caps in their inventory.
 * Though the rules state no discarding may occur during the initial round, it is nonetheless possible to do so anyway. If the player does so, their opponent does not get a turn and the player gets to go again. The non-player character will also use this bug to their advantage. This is likely due to the fact that if you started with (for example) all queens, you could not make a move and the game could not progress.
 * After the game ends:
 * When it says to press any button to continue pressing start and then hitting start again will cause the game to become unresponsive, while party chat still works.
 * The button to continue will sometimes lag over. (Pressing (O) to exit will sometimes cause the Pip-Boy to open and pressing (X) will sometimes trigger dialogue with the opposing player).
 * It is not possible for the player to discard cards once their main deck is empty. The opponent will still be able to do so once their deck is gone.
 * When putting a card onto any pile, the green validation card will show upside down
 * A bug may occur where the non-player character will not bid any caps even if the player wagers caps. If this happens, the player may lose their wager if they lose and won't win anything if they win.
 * Some caravan card games may not load up a screen, but rather load up the options to choose cards. The screen will remain with the player looking at their opponent.
 * When drawing or discarding, some cards may change to a different card (ex. 7 to a 10) for the duration of the animation and then change back.
 * Once the game starts and the non-player character places their first card for their caravan, you're not able to select any cards to be placed in your caravans
 * There is a possibility that you will not be awarded the trophy/achievement "Caravan Master" upon reaching the 30 wins required to get the trophy.
 * When playing Caravan, the game may end abruptly even when the win conditions are not met. Either the player or non-player character can win.
 * When playing Caravan, if you remove an opponent's card, lowering their score below 21, the game can still end as if the column is still sold prior to enough cards being re-added. This is a bug, as this does not happen when a column is removed to try and restart it, nor is the column value noted anywhere.