To start, this will be a long post as I'm dedicated to this game. I wouldn't reckon reading unless you have a lot of knowledge about the game, which could be helpful, or unless you are an enthusiast.

For those of you that took the time to understand Caravan (understandable if not) there are some issues that arise when playing the game in real life.

Really, it's not that hard to play in real life. If you completely understood all the rules when playing Caravan in New Vegas, then you will have little problem in executing a game in real life. For one, based on the rules of the game there are actually bugs in the Caravan game in New Vegas. This complicates things when trying to play a game in real life. And for two, there are rare situations that can arise when playing Caravan in real life that aren't explained in the rules, and are seemingly not consistent when testing it in-game on New Vegas. It doesn't help when, like I said, the game is bugged.

There are a couple bugs that are obvious - in New Vegas you can continuously discard your cards in the opening round, which isn't allowed, as a discard counts as a full turn. You're actually not even supposed to discard during the opening round. Also, if you have sold 3 caravans (2 are winning with higher bids) and your third caravan is tied with your opponents, the game doesn't end in New Vegas whereas it should. To get around this, you simply discard your entire tied caravan, and then you will automatically win.

In New Vegas, your deck is custom, and you can use any and all cards you find in the Wasteland. To prevent cheating and card markings, when you play in real life you simply use cards from the same deck. The best method is for each player to get a 54 card deck (jokers included). Each player starts with the same amount of cards, and the same deck.

Now getting to the main issue when playing in real life. This is really nit-picky. The main question mark during game-play is when a jack is placed on a card with a queen, causing two of the same number cards to be placed on one another. For example: Your current bid is ascending, a 5 then a 8. You place a queen on your 8 to reverse the direction. You then put a 5 on your 8 - completely legal since the direction has been changed. A jack (or maybe even from a joker) is placed on your 8, removing that card (plus the queen of course). You are left with a 5 on top of a 5. Now, what the hell? What direction am I going? You can make fair assumptions based on previous cards, or directions, but you can't be 100% which is the right action. I've tested this on New Vegas under different circumstances, and I'm pretty sure the direction is down, but I don't believe it was consistent. Plus, with the game being bugged you just can't know for sure what the developers intentions are in this situation. A rare event like this - and yes, the even is pretty rare - is of course not covered in the rules.

It's not a big deal at all. It's a minor part of the rules, and it will rarely be of occurrence. I kind of have OCD when it comes to playing exactly by the rules.

One other thing, is the "not so obvious" bug that's in the New Vegas game. I mentioned the obvious bugs above. The rules state that a joker placed on any ace will remove all cards in the game numbered 2-10 of that suit (saving the ace). So a joker placed on an ace of spades removes every card in play that is a spade, and that is numbered 2-10. This does not happen in the New Vegas game. If you do this in New Vegas, it always keeps some of the cards in play. I think it will only remove a maximum of 3 cards total. I've done this numerous times and it always keeps some cards of the same suit that are numbered 2-10. The cards are always random too. I'm thinking it must be a bug, but what if it's not? The developers maybe wanted a limit on the amount of cards that can be removed? It's really annoying, and every time I play in real life it feels cheap when I'm removing 6+ hearts from play, when I know in the New Vegas game only around 3 would be removed. Like I said, I think it must be a bug, as it states nowhere in the rules that there's a limit. I guess I can look at it like, "screw the buggy new vegas game, it's says nothing like that in the rules." It would make me feel better at least .

So those are my concerns. I know nobody will have any definite answers for me, but I am wondering if anybody else has played this game in real life. If so, you must have come across the same number-on-number situation. If so, how did you handle it? Once again, it's that, as well as the joker on an ace. Do you think this is just another bug in the game?

To conclude, I'll share a post I found online that covers Caravan in real-life:

EDIT: I can't share links. GOOGLE, exactly "caravan - irl play guide" to find the post I'm talking about, as it's the first link. The website should be gamesas.

It explains a bit more in-depth about the bugs in the game . It doesn't cover anything about the rare event in which two number cards are placed on another, nor does he acknowledge the potential bug in which not all suited cards are removed from a joker. I couldn't find anything on this online, and that's the main reason why I created this topic.

Thanks for your time!