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Old 07-29-2014, 08:35 PM   #231
LemmingLord
 
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Default Re: Luck: Mundane or not?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Questions that presuppose that predictive luck exists for real people are a bit...problematic.
Call it luck or probability, it is easy to see a pattern of bad dice rolling and want your next character to be less reliant on your luck (real or perceived!).

If the luck advantage seems unrealistic to you, you should consider calling it off limits in a realistic game you might run. Some claim luck as a matter of attitude.. Some people accentuate the positive in their life and call themselves lucky. Others focus on the negative and call it bad luck.

Maybe that translates to fearless or overconfidence instead. Or a delusion one way or the other on probability for the character.
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Old 07-30-2014, 07:35 AM   #232
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: Luck: Mundane or not?

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Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
If, for whatever reason, you didn't want any supernatural advantage in my game, then you wouldn't take Luck. Metagaming advantages are supernatural, AFAIC.
The two seem to have little, if anything, in common. From an in-setting PoV, metagame traits do not exist at all. Supernatural traits are those that exist within the setting but are beyond the scope of hard science (I'm simplifying, of course).

Consider the following two cases:
  • Throughout a time period, a person has no critical failures due to the way dice got rolled, and thus suffered no critical-failure in-game events.
  • Throughout a time period, a person has no critical failures due to Luck-granted rerolls, and thus suffered no critical-failure in-game events.
From an in-setting PoV, the two cases are identical; there is no difference whatsoever - they just didn't make a critfailure in that period. The former character is not supernatural in any way. And thus the second one isn't either.
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Old 07-30-2014, 09:13 AM   #233
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Luck: Mundane or not?

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Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
If, for whatever reason, you didn't want any supernatural advantage in my game, then you wouldn't take Luck. Metagaming advantages are supernatural, AFAIC.
<shrug> Ass long as you know that's your House Rule and not the RAW. Luck is not marked with a Lightning Bolt in Characters. Neither is Serendipity. I checked this last night.

No icon means "not officially supernatural".
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Old 07-30-2014, 09:37 AM   #234
Kromm
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Default Re: Luck: Mundane or not?

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
  • Throughout a time period, a person has no critical failures due to the way dice got rolled, and thus suffered no critical-failure in-game events.
  • Throughout a time period, a person has no critical failures due to Luck-granted rerolls, and thus suffered no critical-failure in-game events.
From an in-setting PoV, the two cases are identical; there is no difference whatsoever - they just didn't make a critfailure in that period. The former character is not supernatural in any way. And thus the second one isn't either.
That's pretty much the truth of it right there. Any outcome that could happen due to dice rolls and permitted player declarations on the meta-game level (and not due to special traits, spending points, GM fiat, etc.) is a natural outcome in the game world. It remains natural even when it comes about due to rerolls or point-spending to affect success on the meta-game level, because those influences are not character-initiated within the sphere of the game world, but player-initiated, which makes them indistinguishable from an ordinary turn of events in the game world. It isn't as if the character has knowledge of what could've or almost happened . . . from her perspective, things just worked out in a way that they might have done anyhow. There's nothing especially supernatural about it.

Now at the end of that character's career, it's quite possible that biographers and historians and those singing praises – or even the adventurer herself – might analyze her life and realize that it had more than its fair share of improbable (but still possible and plausible) events. Those people might call her "lucky," and start making claims that this was due to divine favor or a magic charm or whatever. But that's a retroactive perspective and, more important, pure conjecture . . . a hard-nosed secular rationalist and naturalist would just shrug and claim that since the odds weren't 0, what happened happened, and perhaps try to turn it into a lesson in probability for the less-enlightened.
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Old 07-30-2014, 06:43 PM   #235
Not another shrubbery
 
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Default Re: Luck: Mundane or not?

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Consider the following two cases:
  • Throughout a time period, a person has no critical failures due to the way dice got rolled, and thus suffered no critical-failure in-game events.
  • Throughout a time period, a person has no critical failures due to Luck-granted rerolls, and thus suffered no critical-failure in-game events.
From an in-setting PoV, the two cases are identical; there is no difference whatsoever - they just didn't make a critfailure in that period. The former character is not supernatural in any way. And thus the second one isn't either.
IF they were really the same, the character in the second case wouldn't have Luck, but would have succeeded the same way as the first, without any metagame advantage tipping the odds in his favor.
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Old 07-30-2014, 11:50 PM   #236
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Default Re: Luck: Mundane or not?

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Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
IF they were really the same, the character in the second case wouldn't have Luck, but would have succeeded the same way as the first, without any metagame advantage tipping the odds in his favor.
What do the words 'in-setting PoV' mean to you that allows the difference to fall within their scope?
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