07-24-2014, 11:06 AM | #171 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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Immortal people do not exist. People who shoot fire out of their eyes do not exist. Strong people do exist. Charismatic people do exist. Lucky people exist too. Ergo, luck is realistic. Quote:
I don't think you can. I don't think you can know that my future isn't already set, that all my dice are all already rolled and my luck already set in stone. You choose to believe that it is not so, that events can go many ways, that we have choice. I happen to agree with that belief, but it is just a belief. It is not concrete, in the the sense that "1 inch of RHA is 70 DR" You're basing your argument on the fact that luck cannot possibly real, despite the fact that real life people get lucky. You're saying that luck is in the past, but the past is not privileged over the future. You're saying that people cannot shape their destiny by will, but luck doesn't allow characters to do that. In the end, you're just left with the murkiness of luck as your argument, but it's not good enough. It IS a good justification for slapping a modifier on it and calling it magical. It's good justification for removal from a gritty game (because you don't want people playing the lucky outliers, but instead you want them in the less predictable hump of the bell curve). But it's not sufficient grounds to call it supernatural.
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
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07-24-2014, 11:16 AM | #172 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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It's similar to the debate over whether dodging bullets is realistic. No you absolutely can't dodge specific bullets, but the simulation engine resolves the results of erratic movement *as if you had* and gives reasonably realistic results that way. It's a place the way the simulation rules diverge from the "reality" they are supposedly modelling.
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07-24-2014, 11:26 AM | #173 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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Luck is a metagame construct that allows you to build a character who is (probably) going to get a good number of lucky breaks during the campaign. Because there are people in real life who tend to get a good number of lucky breaks, this isn't unrealistic. Yes, this is something you grab ahead of time rather than something you look back on later, but that doesn't matter - if you really want to, just think of what's going on as someone telling a story about the past - "That orc was the best archer in the whole tribe, but they didn't call Lucky Pete lucky for nothin' - way I hear it, he near tripped on an old root just as the arrow was comin' at his heart, and the thing went right over his head. Lucky Pete heard it fly over and took out his sword and went screamin' into the bush and took that orc's head off before the pig-face could nock another arrow." |
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07-24-2014, 12:14 PM | #174 |
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
Luck CAN be a conscious probability altering capability the character has. But it doesn't have to be.
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07-24-2014, 01:04 PM | #175 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Schleswig, Germany
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
One special feature of Luck is that it is not a feature of the character, but of the player. Unless you make it into something psionic, superpowered or magical, which the character can consciously control, the character has no influence on the situation he gets lucky in - this is for the player to decide. It is the player who uses his metagame knowledge about what is an important roll and what is not. In most games - at least the ones I have participated in - the player would usually use Luck to further the game and not necessarily further the characters objectives. From the characters perspective, this doesn´t have to be really beneficial. If you use Luck to hear a noise that will lead to an interesting and potentially dangerous encounter, that´s not even lucky. If the character had conscious control he would probably spend much time in the casino or instead of adventuring were he gets to waste his precious luck for pointless dodging. As opposed to Serendipity, Luck has not the characters interest in mind. From the characters perspective, Luck might not exist at all, since it doesn´t make him more lucky, depending on the choices of the player.
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07-24-2014, 01:14 PM | #176 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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— Luck normally falls into a category that stands completely apart from mundane, exotic, and supernatural: "meta-game." Things in this fourth category do not exist at all in the game world, and therefore cannot be judged in terms of their relationship with the laws of nature there. They exist on the same plane as character points, disadvantage limits, and GM fiat, and serve story, not simulation. If you have no problem accepting that all the PCs have the same potential (points) or that nobody in the universe has Talents because the GM hates that game mechanic (fiat), then you should have no problem accepting Luck – it isn't any different. The fact that Luck costs points like in-world traits isn't a case against this. Luck costs points because it benefits the player, and everything that benefits the player costs points. This includes both things that make the player's character more successful because that fictional person is more capable (in-world traits) and things that make the player's character more successful because the mechanics favor the player (meta-game traits). In-world, there's no way to see meta-game effects, as they look like the randomness of the universe. Favorable ones like Luck are comparable to the "plot armor" of the protagonists of heroic fiction, and enable the player to buy a more-central role in the story, nothing more. I said a lot of this in the early days of this thread. Obviously, a player could add modifiers that move Luck into the exotic or supernatural category: Active, Costs Fatigue, Game Time, and just about any power modifier would do this. Then all the arguments about it being a strange ability would become valid. As written, though, Luck doesn't even exist in the game world . . . it just ensures that the player gets to play a slightly more positive story role. It's basically no less cheating and no more exotic than the GM being your buddy and giving you an extra 20 points without telling the other players; it's just more honest and structured than that, to avoid hard feelings.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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07-24-2014, 01:36 PM | #177 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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"Hey, I have Luck, so I'm going to bet all my money on this mob poker game!" is a good example of the mere presence of Luck hosing the PC: The character ends up sucked into a dangerous and risky venture because the player decides to make a meta-game bet ("Luck will let me win at an ill-advised card game."). If Luck fails to result in victory, the PC ends up broke. Even if Luck comes through, it hoses the PC because mobsters who expected this nobody to lose are now angry and want his head, and the player just used up her Luck on Gambling, so she doesn't have it for Fast-Talk or Dodge or HT rolls. This isn't a hypothetical example – it happened in play! Then there are dramatist players who like to use Luck to fail mandatory rolls that don't let the player opt out or "throw the match." They want to get spotted, captured, ill, or whatever because they find the idea of that adversity inspiring. It tells a better story. I've had a player use Luck to fail a HT roll to resist disease (a roll I required, because the body fights disease regardless of the subject's desires) so the PC could get sick and have an excuse to end up in a hospital for plot reasons. This didn't benefit the PC at all . . . Luck is really, truly a case of a player paying points to cheat a PC into a more-central story role – nothing more and nothing less – unless it's given modifiers that turn it into a power the PC can control.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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07-24-2014, 02:17 PM | #178 | |||||||
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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Luck (Active -40%, Game-Time +0%, Magic -10%) [8] is a conscious overtly supernatural ability of the character. Luck [15] is not that! Quote:
By using real-time Luck, you are tying it into a narrative condition: how important is the current action. The longer something takes to game in real-time, the more the players are focused on the outcome (like combat) and therefore the more the Luck matters to them. I suppose you could also have Luck that resets after a certain number of rolls, but it's a lot easier to use a Timer! Quote:
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If you set out to write a biography of Dan Daly, you will write a story about a man who was born on November 11th 1873 and died on April 27th 1937. You will write about the events on the 14th of August 1900, the 24th of October 1914, and June 5th-July 10th 1918. Daly will not be killed on those days, and instead will perform acts of legendary bravery under fire. This is despite the fact that one can say that there was fairly high probability of those acts resulting in his death when he actually did them. Does this mean that real historical Sergeant Major Daniel Joseph Daly had a supernatural ability to manipulate probability? Of course not! When Melville set out to write Moby Dick, he didn't write a bunch of books where Ishmael died, and then just published the one where he didn't. When Stephen Scott wrote Sergeant Major Dan Daly: The Most Outstanding Marine of All Time he didn't write a bunch of books about Lance Corporals that died in the Boxer Rebellion, or Master Sergeants that died at Belleau Wood and then just kept the one that happened to be about Dan Daly. You can't expect players who want to play Ishmael or Dan Daly to make a dozen different characters and then only name the one that survives at the end of the game. Melville chose to write about Ishmael. Stephen Scott chose to write about Dan Daly. In GURPS you can choose to be someone who was "lucky", in the same way. The "Game-Time" modifier for Luck. Last edited by sir_pudding; 07-24-2014 at 03:05 PM. Reason: Key verb missing. Whoops! |
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07-24-2014, 02:38 PM | #179 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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Being metagame and being cinematic are pretty much orthogonal, I think. But Luck being metagame is the more interesting point. And I'm not even sure I'd agree that Luck is cinematic. Even media that is in most respects not what we call cinematic is likely to use it.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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07-24-2014, 02:45 PM | #180 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Luck: Mundane or not?
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"I want to be one of the story's favored protagonists" is the player choice's. There's no requirement that a GURPS character be a schmoe who accepts schmoe-ness . . . the player has the option to take Luck, Serendipity, or another, similar trait and shed that state. Doing so doesn't make the character supernatural in any way – the heroes of adventure stories can live in the same world as schmoes and experience nothing that wouldn't make sense to a schmoe or to us in the real world. The character isn't even aware of the "plot armor" or whatever except in the sense that, looking back at a long career, he might say, "Gosh, a lot of interesting stuff has happened to me!" Granted, in real life, some people look back at their exploits and claim that a higher power had their back, or otherwise attribute success at long odds and any pattern of beating the odds to the ineffable. Such is their right. But a total atheist and metaphysical naturalist could as easily see that same life as totally within the realm of what randomness allows, and attribute no special meaning to the fact that aspects of that arc could be assigned such subjective qualities as "charmed" or "exciting." GURPS isn't a religious tract, so it takes the latter stance. Of course, some people prefer simulations wherein everybody has to take the same chances. I can see how that could make Luck seem supernatural. But I don't really spend a lot of design or development time worrying about that, because those same people aren't rolling randomly for starting points, to see who's carrying the gene for a mortal illness, and so on. They're spending points to craft their idea of a good protagonist, which is just as "meta" as choosing Luck for that purpose and stacking the deck via process (dice rolls) rather than by manipulating initial conditions (point build).
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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