[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Some characters are meant to die if they take a risk. One shot adventures, games where every player has many characters, etc. In every guide I've read how to make GURPS characters for ongoing campaigns with action-adventure elements, it's strongly recommended that they have Luck.

Basically, the protagonist of a single short scenario can get by without Luck, because it is entirely acceptable that he dies quickly. The protagonists of ongoing campaigns with action-adventure elements need Luck or a GM giving them the equivalent by shaping the world in their favour. Otherwise, the campaign won't be ongoing, at least not with the same protagonists.

I'm starting my fifteenth GURPS campaign now, and that has not been my experience. Your phrase "with action-adventure elements" sets the bar low, perhaps lower than you imagine. In my campaigns, I'd say that Salle d'Armes, Sovereignty, Fixers, and Water Margin were action-adventure and had players inclined to prioritize that aspect, and that only Uplift and First Contact almost entirely lacked action-adventure elements; the other nine definitely had such elements. Virtually none of the characters had Luck. The death rates were extremely low; I've seen only a handfull of PC deaths in running campaigns since 1992.

That's only if the game isn't set in a remotely realistic world. Yes, you can ignore Bleeding rules and have injuries that are actually lethal without medical assistance just get better on their own, without any explanation, but that campaign switch does a lot more damage to my suspension of disbelief than giving protagonists Luck.

. . . .

Note that I don't mind this being a possibility. I just prefer that characters have Luck so that this is a frightening possibility for PCs and something that happens to NPC, not a virtual certainty that will happen to PCs every few sessions, unless they don't act like PCs.

I think that you have now introduced a third category. I won't call it a straw man, because really someone might choose to run a campaign with bleeding rules and rules for risk of infection and so on. But my original distinction was between GURPS campaigns with Luck, and GURPS campaigns that use the base rules unmodified by anyone having Luck. The bleeding rules and such are not the base rules; they're an "extreme realism" option. The baseline rules are moderately realistic; Luck makes things less realistic. So in comparing how-thing-work-with-Luck and how-things-work-without-Luck-and-with-bleeding-and-so-on, you seem to be changing two variables, not just one. That doesn't make for an intellectually valid comparison. And you're leaving out the option that I normally take.