Unluck

[Dust Raven]

What do you do with characters that have Unluck? Are they the ones picked on all the time? The ones the police immediately think is the killer in a murder mystery?

 

If there is a chance of failure of something nominal do you just have them fail automatically?

 

Or do you actually use the dice?

 

I hate rolling the dice and usually just pick on the character a lot with general "bad luck" stuff (like their paycheck bouncing, getting stuck in traffic, etc, or putting the trap right where they're standing if they have more than 2d6).

 

What do you do?

 

And speaking of unlucky events...

 

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 46080 bytes) in /home/dans/www/herogame/forums/includes/functions.php(2369) : eval()'d code on line 15

 

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 0 bytes) in Unknown on line 0

 

Too bad we have waite 'till the 17th for this to be fixed...

[pinecone]

Re: Unluck

 

I use Unluck as a general flavor thing and roll the dice...I roll Luck and Unluck at the begaining of a run and use that to set the tone. I use what I call "heroic actions" a lot, this something that if a hero does it it works, no roll...so if you want to entertain some orphans with your acrobatics and solicit donations it automaticly works......Unless you have unluck...then you must roll....sure you'll make it but even the possability of falling on your butt on stage is a stress builder. The general tone is stuff like the hero is on survalence and runs to a pay phone to call in...it's been vandalized....so run around looking for a working phone...if I rolled some actual unluck for the run...then the bad guy leaves while you're busy looking, if not it is just a pain...you know..."How come nothing is ever easy? Why? why?"

[ghost-angel]

Re: Unluck

 

Mostly we used Unluck as flavor, something just goes wrong, the "why me" syndrome. Sometimes we roll. there's not set forumla for either since un/luck is, by definition, a random factor sometimes it comes into play, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you never know.....

[austenandrews]

Re: Unluck

 

As a GM I use Unluck for random little happenstances. If I have to make an arbitrary decision, sometimes I'll favor a guy with Luck and disfavor a guy with Unluck. But really it doesn't come up much (though admittedly it's very rare to see more than one or two dice of it). Occasionally I'll make the player roll it at some critical moment, just to mess with them. Never maliciously, though. It just adds a fun bit of uncertainty.

 

As a player I take 2d6 Unluck for all my PCs, out of some twisted principle. In our last game I rolled it and unwittingly knocked a wall down on the head of the supervillain. Unfortunately, I had been trying to keep him from destroying that building. Oops!

 

-AA

[Dust Raven]

Re: Unluck

 

As a player I take 2d6 Unluck for all my PCs' date=' out of some twisted principle. In our last game I rolled it and unwittingly knocked a wall down on the head of the supervillain. Unfortunately, I had been trying to keep him from destroying that building. Oops![/quote']

I, myself, am unlucky. Bad things happen to me. This also reflects in my dice rolls. If I play a chracter, I'll usually take my "free" 2d6 Unluck as a Disad. I figure if something is always gonna go wrong with my character I might as well get the points for it.

[zornwil]

Re: Unluck

 

I roll when I feel there's a flavor opportunity or when the hero with Unluck is doing well, primarily.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Unluck

 

I would just try to apply unluck in situations that the affected character takes for granted as being 'a given', sort of like almost any time that you ever see Indiana Jones smile and he then gets smacked upside the head by the hand of fate ( reaching for his missing gun when facing several swordsmen, having the biggest german he's ever seen just happen to be guarding 'that' plane, etc...)

[Farkling]

Re: Unluck

 

I've experimented with the "chips" method for luck in the supers game...and let the lucky character trade chips to influence plot direction / random choices / rerolls / etc. But one of the players actually HAS a large amount of luck.

Not quite "Fate protects fools and ships named Enterprise... but competitive"

 

The same system works for Unluck...I keep the unluck chips with my books and toss them when I want to influence the story direction. Keeps me fair in my applications. After all, luck costs the same as an EB...they should be allowed to use it withthe same application and discretion.

 

And if the lucky character wants to roll again during a long gaming session...I roll again for the unlucky players too.