Luck Be a Lady Tonight
I’ve been thinking about the roll of luck in tabletop RPGs like D&D. I definitely like the element of chance in the game, and it’s not something I’d want to remove. At the same time having a run of bad luck end a character or entire game is something that’s anti-climactic, and can spoil some people’s fun.
One of the guys in our game group has rather bad luck – so much so that it’s noteworthy when he manages to roll anything resembling a good result. We actually took a photo when he managed to roll a 20 the other night. His frequent bad luck with dice has led him to choose strategies and even games that minimize the effects of the dice.
During our B/X D&D game we had one of the player’s character die when they made a single bad choice – entering a room filled with cobwebs. As it turned out the room also had a very large and poisonous spider in it. A string of bad luck followed with a surprise attack, a high roll for damage, and a failed roll to save against death. Bad luck turned a single bad choice into a game ending situation.
My first 4e character met his untimely end with a similar bad choice to stand too close to the edge of the water. A surprise appearance by a Giant Frog, a lucky attack by the beast and it’s “swallow whole” attack, and a series of unlucky saving throw rolls finished off that character as well. Again bad luck turned a single bad choice into a game ender. (Not that I minded really, but it’s a good example 
)
Today I read that Jeff Rients’ Cinder campaign wrapped up when the party encountered a Dragon, and made the bad choice to not run in abject terror from the encounter. The bad luck that followed left the entire party of characters slain, and the players talking about doing something different for the next game night.
While I like the idea of a strong element of danger in an RPG, and definitely want character fatality to be something that stays in the game, I don’t think having a single bad choice turn into a game (or campaign) ending situation is ideal.
You can attempt to minimize the effects of luck by stacking the odds in the players favour, or increasing the number of dice rolls. This approach still leaves things in the hands of the dice though, and as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discover each new flip of a coin has the same probability for success as the last.
What I’ve decided to do then is add Luck Points to the game. A player starts with a small number of Luck Points, and gain additional points during the course of their adventures.
A Luck Points can be spent to:
- reroll any dice in the game (either the player’s own or the GM’s)
- take the maximum result on a dice (if the Luck Point is spent before rolling)
- safely remove a character from the game upon reaching 0 hit points *
* This last point is something specific to a certain style of game, and might not be appropriate for all groups, or even all games run by the same group. It allows a player to have their character “die” in an ambiguous manner, such as falling off a high cliff, disappearing in a cave-in, appearing to be disintegrated, or some other mysterious ending. The character is out of play as if they had been killed – but the possibility of them returning at a later date is kept open, which may help avoid characters who are central to the story-arcs in a campaign permanently disappearing and the game grinding to a halt.
In the Lord of the Rings there are multiple examples where the characters believe one of their comrades had been killed – only to later have them return to continue their part in the story. These would all be good examples of where a Luck Point could be spent in an RPG and how that characters death / disappearance could be handled.
It’s worth noting that if a player chooses to spend that last Luck Point on a re-roll instead of removing their character from the game, then they’re working without a net and being reduced to 0 hit points means a final end for that character.
If a player chooses not to use their Luck Point(s) to save a character, they may instead use those points during the creation of their next character. This is an option some players may prefer, so not every character in the campaign will be meeting a mysterious ending.
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I have no problem with luck systems. I’ve used them in the past.
I’m reminded of my first Twilight 2000 campaign where I killed all the characters in the party during the first encounter. One guy didn’t even get off a shot from his gun. The problem in that case was as you described in one of your stories, one of surprise.
Character death especially at low levels or in situations where the balance of the party to the encounter is too far off will result from bad luck from time to time.
My thoughts on the subject are as follows:
1. Don’t use the tactical combat system to tell the story when the party faces an obviously tougher encounter. Like facing an over powering dragon. Instead let the party realize that this part of the adventure is not an “encounter” but an “ENCOUNTER.” Set this kind of situation management up ahead of the time so the players and the DM can agree to how these situations will be managed. Then you script the “ENCOUNTERS” letting the parties role play instead of Roll Play. If the encounter is not meant to serve Role Playing then my question is why is the party facing this “ENCOUNTER.”
2. Give the party ample time or ability to detect traps like the spider. Which is sounds like you did. “Room full of cobwebs.” If they don’t and die, tell them the encounters I design are deadly. You should always consider the fact that I design a deadly game. I think it adds suspense and a sense of accomplishment to the story so beware. Also, you may need to watch The Lord of the Rings again.
I love your articles btw. Well done.
I use fate and destiny points for what you are describing.
Fate points are easy to stockpile and get, you gain them for adhering to trope, doing spectacular things, witty lines, being voted MVP, etc. Rolling for “New Fate” at the end of a session is a big dose of fun.
They allow you to : Re-roll a die or set of dice
Gain back some Luck Points (Hit Points to D&D)
Add something plausible to the scene
(ie, declare there is a suitable club behind
the bar without needing to check for one first)
And then GM assigned “Destiny Points” that allow you to:
Declare the results of a without rolling
Regain all Luck points (hit points)
Deus Ex Machina to save the day
The net result being the same, luck is important, but if you play the game to everyones enjoyment, you can overlook a few examples of bad luck without needing constant GM Fiat or suspension of disbelief.
At least in the examples you gave, it was the bad choice that killed them…the bad luck was at most a contributing factor. The “luck” mechanism you propose is essentially one of letting them get away with bad choices. It may be that’s required for everybody to have fun, but if that’s the case personally I’d rather do it through explicit script immunity. That is, in most of my games I actually tell the players the characters won’t die no matter what the dice say unless that’s what they want to happen or they do something blatantly suicidal.
Look at it this way: there’s nothing that would prevent the GM and players from mutually agreeing to retcon the death away. “Ok, let’s resume from before you attacked the sleeping dragon. What do you do?” The purpose of having a game mechanic that the players can call on to accomplish that seems to be to encourage the players to rely on being able to retcon in the ordinary course of things and be able to gauge exactly how many times more they can get away with it, rather than having to propose and get buy-in to revising the “unlucky” event each time. Failure and its reversal becomes an intrinsic part of the game, and part of the planning process, rather than an extraordinary action taken once in a great while to prevent the campaign from crashing.
I would stipulate failure and reversal are ALREADY a part of the game.
The whole notion of a die roll itself boils down to a chance you won’t die from the poor choice you made. The spider MIGHT miss instead of just automatically hitting once you walked into the room without checking.
I don’t think it changes anything except the prevalence of one bad roll. Which given how many zany adventures characters go through they will always die in some stupid way. Even the most grizzled veterans haven’t slain over a hundren men in hand to hand combat in the same manner as a 15th level character.
I am also of the mind that Luck/Fate/Destiny pts. are, in general, less than helpful. I say that after having run several different game systems with some mechanic like that.
Anything else that I could say would require more knowledge of your players and your GMing style and intent. It does seem that you follow a more ‘narrativist’ path than one of a ‘gamist’.
Best,
@Joshua: I think there’s a happy medium between 1 wrong choice = death and complete script immunity. The examples given were all cases of a single bad choice followed by a run of bad luck ending the character and / or game. I’d prefer to see it take more than one bad choice to get to that point.
@Zzarchov: It all depends on the type of game you’re looking for. We played Dungeonquest and had characters dying in the first turn.
@Timeshadows: I don’t subscribe to that theory. I don’t think it’s a very good way of breaking down game styles… at least not for me.
@Stuart – yeah, I don’t really get that. If it’s unacceptable that attacking the sleeping dragon results in a TPK, I don’t see exactly why it’s better if the TPK happens only after all the PCs have gotten to spend a Luck point, which still seems quite likely even if it doesn’t happen in a single round. It’s still the one bad choice that doomed the party. And I definitely don’t see it as better for the players to be weighing attacking the dragon and considering that they’ll certainly survive the first breath attack, even if it costs them a luck point each. To the extent that the game is about making good or bad choices, that seems to me to subsidize (as it were) the bad choices. I don’t think Luck points and the like solve the problem: eventually the party will have run out of them and you’ll still be faced with the dilemma that bad decisions and/or bad die rolls will kill them and the players will be bummed; in the meantime the party is encouraged to engage in reckless behavior.
[...] discussion over at Robertson Games about using Luck points or the like to reduce the impact of a series of bad [...]
In the case of attacking the Dragon it might allow the characters to burn their resources (Luck Point) and retreat. It’s still a loss, just not a game ending one. Of course a single re-roll might not be enough to save a character from an angry Dragon either. It certainly doesn’t change the in-game effect of it being a bad choice.
The examples of the Spider and Frog attacks are a bit different. In neither case was it as clearly a “bad” choice as disturbing a dragon.
The mechanic isn’t about removing the effects of bad choices – it’s about shifting things from a purely luck based resolution system to one where players have the option to use up a finite pool of resources.
Luck points or Karma are found in other systems I’ve played like like Shadowrun, Marvel Superheroes, Fighting Fantasy – so it’s not a completely novel idea I’m suggesting.
This is one of the most psychologically intriguing aspects of gaming, specifically with “fair dice”. Chronic bad luck suggests that what we believe to be random is, in fact, not. And I’m claiming to know enough about the universe to be certain that good and bad luck don’t exist (as evidence makes compelling arguments) – but it is a fascinating conundrum.
As for 4e, LFR handles it by letting you pay 500gps to get resurrected. A similar approach can be adopted for any sufficiently high fantasy setting. But that really doesn’t diffuse the frustration of rolling poorly several for an extended streak.
The luck mechanic of Fighting Fantasy is a nice one, and I’ll be interested in using your application of it. While I enjoy randomness (even the bad kind), it is nice to have something to break the streak.
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