Luck: Mundane or not?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Pahn

Luck, to me, affects me somewhat regularly (not frequently). I drive daily, yet I've never had a critical failure on my driving roll. .

It's likely that you've never made a driving roll. I do not make players roll for their character's daily commute.

[Pahn]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It's likely that you've never made a driving roll. I do not make players roll for their character's daily commute.

I grew up where it snows. Trust me, I've made driving rolls.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

[...] but also dice rolls, player banter around the table, what time the game session started and when the GM has to go pick up his nephew. Oh, and of course the concept of there being a (at least partially) pre-written story arc that the GM is presenting. Simply playing an RPG injects this sort of "supernatural" phenomena into the game world, because character actions are being influenced by entities from outside their world.

Exactly! I've been saying pretty much this myself. While I "get" the classic jokes about the GM being the Supreme Being and the players being lesser gods or demons or guardian angels, and also humor about thunder being the rolling of dice, I don't like that as a serious approach. I prefer to view meta-game influences as paralleling in-world events but not being perceptible in the game world. Thus, people and mechanics and events in the real world aren't supernatural to characters in the game world; rather, they are extra-universal, or perhaps at a cosmically small scale below perception.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Nah, this is just the granularity problem. If all pilots were rolling to land airplanes every time, we'd have vastly more plane crashes than we do. Instead, the cause is that GURPS exaggerates extreme results if used for routine tasks in the interest of exciting outcomes, and the expectation that you WON'T be trying to use it to simulate day to day life, but rather for things like cartel thugs trying to force you off the road.

This is why GURPS very often uses one roll for dozens of instances: An airline pilot, for instance, rolls against Piloting once per month as a job roll, a taxi driver rolls against Driving once per month as a job roll, and so on. Individual rolls are required only in extraordinary (adventuring) contexts. Most people do not roll against any skills in the run of the typical workday. Between extreme familiarity, extra time, good tools, assistants, complementary knowledge, and very routine tasks, they're at or above +10 and just don't have to roll . . . in the average 21.7-day work month, with a modifier that large ensuring a 98.1% chance of success for anybody with skill 6+, mean odds of failure are 33.3%, or equivalent to rolling against skill 11-12 once a month. That's why skill 12 is deemed "professional" level.

[GodBeastX]

What I was trying to say in my post is "Luck" doesn't have to be the word "Luck".

I tend to look at it as simply "POsitive things surround this person more often" and leave it at that. Whether magical, the universe at large, or history seeing all the positive stuff that happened to them. That's just how I see it.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

.... Then how would I model a person in a realistic game who is lucky? Aside from "hope the dice break my way"?

Just that way, IMO. What's 'realistic' seems to be more subjective than I would have thought, though, so YMMV.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Also what about fictional examples? Do you suppose that Melville's intent was that Ishmael had a power to manipulate probability? What if I want to make a character in GURPS that has that kind of "narrative protection" and is not a wizard (or psi, or super, ect.)?

You mentioned Ishmael before, didn't you? What in Moby-Dick shows him as being someone you'd call lucky? Being the lone survivor of the Pequod seems to me to be just happenstance, or maybe an authorial contrivance to explain the existence of the narrative. That latter (contrivance) is often all you need to explain fictional characters seeming to be lucky.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

That latter (contrivance) is often all you need to explain fictional characters seeming to be lucky.

Yes, that's my point. Is that a supernatural ability of the character? What do I do if I want my GURPS character to benefit from that kind of thing (in a way that the game mechanics reflect) but not be a wizard, psi, or super?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

Just that way, IMO.

So make a dozen USMC privates in 1900 and only name the one that makes it to the 1930s unscathed at the end of the campaign? Why should I have to do this?

I can choose to write a fictionalized story about Dan Daly without having to write about a dozen less fortunate characters and only keep the one that happens to survive. Why can't I choose to play a fictionalized version of Dan Daly in GURPS?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

Just that way, IMO.

Game mechanically, "Luck" of course need not necessarily represent anything except "He's good at thinking on his feet". There's nothing in there that really suggests that any kind of odd coincidences occur around him. Just that occasionally, when it's really important, they do a bit better than their typical capabilities would suggest. For actual control over things that the character doesn't actually control, you have to look to Serendipity.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Game mechanically, "Luck" of course need not necessarily represent anything except "He's good at thinking on his feet". There's nothing in there that really suggests that any kind of odd coincidences occur around him. Just that occasionally, when it's really important, they do a bit better than their typical capabilities would suggest. For actual control over things that the character doesn't actually control, you have to look to Serendipity.

That seems to be officially sanctioned, but I think it's a really terrible way to go. If you put luck at the diegetic level rather than the metagame level, all the reasons people are calling it supernatural apply. The Luck mechanics are not representative of any realistic ability.