[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unluckiness

[johndallman]

Unluckiness [-10] is a mundane mental disadvantage. You have bad luck, imposed by the GM once per session in any manner they like, as long as it does not kill you. This disadvantage appeared during the 3e period, although I’m not sure just where.

The kind of bad luck that kills you is Cursed [-75]. Unluckiness is the kind that makes life very hard, but is survivable: an enemy shows up while you’re in the bath, your name is the one the informer remembers, your password gets leaked, and so on. I’d consider it poor GMing style to override the player’s dice rolls; there are more elegant ways to use this disadvantage. If you’d like it to operate in a particular way for characterisation purposes, so that machines hate you, or your plans always fall apart, you can specify that. The GM should try to make it work that way, but is not constrained to do so, unless, presumably, you take an Aspected limitation to reduce the disadvantage value.

If you have a disadvantageous Destiny, and survive its fulfilment, you need to pay it off. If you can’t, you acquire Unluckiness, and it’s up to the GM if you can pay that off. The same could apply to other situations where there’s a sudden character-point shortage, a flaw in reality or a generic curse. Many GURPS supplements have cheerful suggestions about things that could happen to Unlucky characters.

Unluckiness is quite common on character templates for Discworld, but much rarer in other settings, although it shows up on sidekicks. Action 2 offers a way to take a brief episode of Unluckiness in exchange of an extra use of Luck, and Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout offers a radiation-specific version. Fantasy-Tech 1’s astrology rules are full of Luck and Unluckiness, and Power-Ups 6 has quirk-level versions.

This is another disadvantage I’ve never used; tragedy is not something I want to act out, since I have enough of it in real life. How has it played in your games?

[Otaku]

I don't think anyone ever used it in one of our games, at least on a PC. I'm not sure if any of the GM's even inflicted it on a PC even though there were times when it would have been rather fitting.

As a player, it can do a bit too much, because it seems to be an inverted combination of Luck and Serendipity. Part of me wants to see Unluckiness operate a bit more like Luck and seem "Zemblanity" as an actual Disadvantage. Granted, I also just learned Zemblanity was a thing, and a very simple origin for the word "Serendipity" so... yeah. XP

Of course, the nature of being a GM means this entire trait is... a bit awkward. Do you take Unluckiness because that way, while "bad stuff" seems to hit you first and/or worst, at least you got some CP back for it. Everyone else is accepting such grief just for playing the game.