Premise
Heroes, not just in cinema but also in literature, video games, comic books, etc. have luck. Sometimes they rely on enormous amounts of luck. Therefore, any RPG that tries to capture a genre (at least genres like fantasy, sci-fantasy, action, comic book superheroes, etc) or any specific IP within such a genre needs to account for heroes' luck. Heroes don't just get by with their wits and skill alone. Even better yet: having enormous luck elevates them further above the rest - it makes them appear destined for greatness, chosen by the gods.

A brief look at old-school games
This heroes' luck isn't very well reflected in D&D or most OSR games, as far as I can see. First, hit points represents general survivability and as an abstract stat it mixes luck with meatpoints, skill, etc. Secondly, sure, there's other mechanics, like saving throws. But the whole thing isn't intuitive at all and, as we've seen in a previous thread, requires a skillful GM with deeper understanding of the system (and apparently its history ) and creative interpretations. That's what makes the design, arguably, cumbersome to use for genre simulation. Plus, heroes in fiction tend to have more types of luck than what HPs and saving throws normally provide - they usually do have that crate to dive behind when they need it; the world works in their favor. Yes, you could interpret a successful saving throw as such - but it's, again, not intuitive and it's probably not clear if you were saved due to agility or luck in that instance.

So how to address heroes luck in the context of genre sim?
First of all, we got to recognize that this is a bit of a paradox of genre simulation: you need heroes' luck to emulate Conan or Frodo. At the same time, the more your PCs have plot armor the same way they do, the more boring and unchallenging the game becomes. So, there are diametrically opposed forces at work here, which means you must be careful about striking the right balance.
Secondly, we observe that fictional heroes have at times dumb luck saving them when they dun goofed up before and subsequently find themselves in some kind of calamity. This goes somewhat counter to the assumption that when the players blunder, luck shouldn't be able to help them out. In genre simulation it should - while being mindful of the first item above!
Thirdly, luck needs to be its own dedicated property in whatever form. Whether as stat, skill or metacurrency - you want to know whether your character has been saved by coincidence or by his own capabilities. It lends itself to characterization, making your characters more distinct from one another.

Luck as metacurrency
Now, metacurrency has its detractors. Let me make a pitch in its favor by addressing some concerns raised in another thread:

• Violation of the Czege Principle: Giving players control over anything beyond character intention undermines  any sense of challenge. Yes. But that's what we're not talking about here if the GM retains full veto rights. It's not classical player agency. This matters because it turns any need for crates to dive behind into a request, instead of having control over the game world. I can request that Chancellor Merkel steps down as well but it's not anywhere near the same as mandating/ordering it. It's not like I spent a Fortune Point and then whatever I want is definitely going to happen. It only happens if the GM approves of it, so the Czege Principle is upheld. (And the GM is not generally expected to say "Yes" and handwave all requests through. It's up to him.)
  
• Luck as metacurrency undermines immersion: Luck as metacurrency isn't about creating a specific NPC or object. It gets used to suggest events (lucky breaks) that would be helpful. So if you wish one of the random bystanders would distract the enemy wizard, you don't get to choose what kind of NPC and how. You merely get to suggest what kind of lucky break you'd like your hero to have at this point in the story, subject to GM approval. And in-game meta considerations over this don't break the immersion anymore than over, say, combat modifiers do. Gaming is a constant stepping in and out of character anyway. It's just "Would be great if X happened." And maybe, just maybe, the GM will make it come true.
  
• Metacurrency as luck either leads to hoarding or spending like crazy: This is not a principle objection but a matter of skillfully setting the system up so that a fine balance is maintained. We'll briefly look at it next.
  

So how do we implement it with metacurrency?
Obviously, metacurrency needs to be limited in number: heroes rely on luck only a couple of times per story/film/etc., generally. To neutralize spamming, there is a simple trick: make repetition in whatever pattern the GM recognizes (and finds boring/unimaginative) more costly with each repetition. And to avoid hoarding, you could be generous with your allocation of metacurrency - however that raises a new issue: the price of usage (see below).

First, a key observation: Presumably, the party only needs luck when they made a tactical blunder before or they have been rolling badly.

And with that I'll leave you with two question deriving from that observation:

• If luck only gets invoked when you rolled badly or acted stupidly, can't the luck property be used to as a metric to keep track of player(! not PC!) performance? If so, fun stuff can be done with that.
• Should helping the party out with luck each time come with a long-term cost for short-term help? Could that be fun?

Why don't you just film a movie or something instead of trying to mold a game into a movie?

The heroes in the genre are not aware of their luck in the way metacurrency works.

A better way is for the referee of the campaign to track how lucky each character and at semi-random intervals just contrive things so the players find what they need fortuitously or succeeds where they didn't.

This better reflects the genre as players know their character is lucky but never know quite when it will kick in or what form it will take.

Fictional characters are almost never aware of having a spendable luck metacurrency.

I used Fate Points and they don't harm immersion too much. But I find just having the GM adjudicate appropriate to genre norms works best.

Quote from: S'mon;1077603Fictional characters are almost never aware of having a spendable luck metacurrency.

I used Fate Points and they don't harm immersion too much. But I find just having the GM adjudicate appropriate to genre norms works best.

Greetings!

I completely agree, S'mon. I have done exactly as you have.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Brad;1077594Why don't you just film a movie or something instead of trying to mold a game into a movie?

Nothing I have said is specific to cinema.

Quote from: estar;1077601The heroes in the genre are not aware of their luck in the way metacurrency works.

Quote from: S'mon;1077603Fictional characters are almost never aware of having a spendable luck metacurrency.

Neither can they calculate how likely they're to hit enemy A versus enemy B. Nor do they know they have a 10% higher skill in Land Navigation than ally C.
Nor do they know how many hitpoints they have left and if they are certain to survive another critical hit by that enemy with that sword.

The situation with luck as metacurrency is somewhat better: they cannot be sure that the GM won't reject/veto the request.

Quote from: estar;1077601This better reflects the genre as players know their character is lucky but never know quite when it will kick in or what form it will take.

Well, yeah, the GM forcing luck is also an aspect (which I didn't tap into yet). For example, when stuck in an investigation indefinitely, the GM can drop a clue that way. Only, under the approach proposed, it would come at a price: losing metacurrency carries long-term consequences (item #2). And since the GM can reject request for luck, the players never can be quite sure when Lady Luck will smile at them.

I disagree regarding the form of luck however: players can be very creative about that and it's pretty good to tap into that; it enhances play if the GM adopts a suggestion that is better than anything he has come up with spontaneously. Case-in-point: RPG systems in which the use of Fate/Hero Points to avert certain death requires the player of that PC has to describe what lucky circumstance saved his PC's ass. It's tried-and-true. Nobody I know has ever moaned that such a rule gives that player too much control.

The main thing is that players don't have control over the world (inventing NPCs) and about the challenges they're facing. Then we'd be dipping into FATE territory.

Quote from: S'mon;1077603I used Fate Points and they don't harm immersion too much. But I find just having the GM adjudicate appropriate to genre norms works best.

Which brings me to item #1: taking stock of how many times which side needed the help of fate or fortune. You can build challenges around that concept instead of handing it out for free. Particularly with investigations.

I don't know that luck NEEDS to be divided out into a separate aspect or meta currency. You just need the rules to account for some people having the edge that luck gives them and others do not.

Personally, I treat all Hit Points beyond the first hit die as 100% non-meat... a mix of skill and luck that keeps you from tiring or suffering serious injuries so quickly (you parry more efficiently so get less tired from each one). Thus, being of higher level than your species base hit dice already represents luck.

I also rewrote the falling rules so that damage is based on the difficulty to catch yourself and unless you're out of hit points you generally end up clinging to a ledge instead of falling lethal distances.

By the same token, improving saving throws, particularly 2e and earlier/OSR saves where the difficulty doesn't generally increase with the power of the caster/situation also models higher level characters having a greater degree of luck (in addition to skill and developing a tolerance to less pleasant things).

As to pushing things, I think that could also be accomplished without resorting to an external meta currency. In the game system I'm using we have two resource pools, Focus (representing smaller pushes) and Heroic Surges (which resprent deep endurance reserves). You can burn focus to improve the results of an action (though you generally have to spend it before you roll... just because you're putting more than typical focus into something doesn't guarantee success, just better odds). You burn surges to take extra actions on your turn, hit really hard with an attack and rally to regain non-physical hit points, but surges are also your death save reserves... each time you fail a death save at zero hp you lose one; no surges and no hit points means you die... so the more you pull upon your deep reserves the closer you're putting yourself to death.

But even though you could say those things are "luck-like" both of those are still resources internal to the character. You know when you're choosing to push yourself, you know you can only push yourself so far before you're spent and pushing yourself only affects the outcome of your actions; unless you're an actual conjurer, boxes for you to hide behind will not appear to save you... but you could burn a surge to get extra movement and that let's you run far enough to get yourself around a corner or to wherever the GM says actual boxes are.

The distinction here is that not everyone HAS focus or surges. The average goblin infantry has neither. An orc might have a point of focus or two. An orc chieftain might have a couple of surges and a little focus. The PCs (and PC-like NPCs) start with both and their numbers grow with level as they are better able to take advantage of the opportunities luck provides them.

In other words... Conan has levels in a class. This gives him non-physical hit points as plot armor, better odds when bad stuff happens (better saves) and more reserves to draw upon to overcome the obstacles in his path.

Remember, just because it could end up being a story... that doesn't mean it's YOUR story. You may have set out with the intention of telling the story of how you heroically rid the pass of the ogre, but the actual story could be the ogre's story about how the silly human's skull made a funny noise when it popped (no one said Ogre stories are particularly deep).

Maybe your only purpose in the grander picture is demonstrate for the heroes who later recount the story that the hallway had a deadly scythe trap.

Not everyone gets to play Conan in a Conan story.

Quote from: S'mon;1077603Fictional characters are almost never aware of having a spendable luck metacurrency.

I used Fate Points and they don't harm immersion too much. But I find just having the GM adjudicate appropriate to genre norms works best.

I'm not convinced that spendable luck currency is the always best way to handle this. However, I do think that in many genres, characters act like they are aware of their luck - and also that they can't push it too far. Just like characters aren't aware of hit points or initiative, but they are aware of the consequences, like a character saying "She's tough - she can handle that." Characters are never aware of mechanics per se - but there are kinds of player behaviors that are encouraged by particular mechanics.

I think it's no coincidence that Hero Points were pioneered by the James Bond 007 RPG. I felt that they worked great there, because using them meant that the PCs regularly had a assuredness and confidence similar to James Bond as a character. Lots of similar fictional characters act in a very confident way that is hard to simulate in systems where the player could roll a critical failure at any point. (James Bond 007 is also interesting because Hero Points are gained by rolling a critical success naturally - which are most likely from rolling on a high chance. So players are encouraged to show off, rolling at simple tasks with their highest skill. Showboating in non-critical situations is also very James-Bond-ish.)

Conversely, this sort of Hero Points are less fitting for everyman hero genres, where the protagonist acts like an ordinary person who is in over their head - like Dorothy in Oz or Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589Premise
Heroes, not just in cinema but also in literature, video games, comic books, etc. have luck. Sometimes they rely on enormous amounts of luck. Therefore, any RPG that tries to capture a genre (at least genres like fantasy, sci-fantasy, action, comic book superheroes, etc) or any specific IP within such a genre needs to account for heroes' luck. Heroes don't just get by with their wits and skill alone. Even better yet: having enormous luck elevates them further above the rest - it makes them appear destined for greatness, chosen by the gods.

The problem is heroes in fiction do not have luck. They have writer's fiat. Any metacurrency should model writer's fiat to simulate fictional "luck".

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1077613The problem is heroes in fiction do not have luck. They have writer's fiat. Any metacurrency should model writer's fiat to simulate fictional "luck".

I concur. And most notably, writer's fiat is (or should be) limited by what he thinks his audience will find plausible (and even more narrowly: limited by what the audience probably will find appealing).

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077614I concur. And most notably, writer's fiat is (or should be) limited by what he thinks his audience will find plausible (and even more narrowly: limited by what the audience probably will find appealing).

Interesting take. If we continue the analogy: I, as a player (audience) find it most appealing that in an RPG, there is no writer's fiat.* The difference between an RPG and a piece of fiction like a book or film is that the player have agency, and that agency can involve taking risks that may or may not work.

*Fiat for outcomes. The GM, of course, has to set up the scenario, which does give him/her some input on the character's odds of success.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077610Neither can they calculate how likely they're to hit enemy A versus enemy B. Nor do they know they have a 10% higher skill in Land Navigation than ally C.
Nor do they know how many hitpoints they have left and if they are certain to survive another critical hit by that enemy with that sword.

Players in my GURPS games usually don't know those things either.

When I do know those things in games, I tend to relate to the game mechanics rather than the situation, and tend to wish I were playing a game with rules and/or GM that support a higher level of non-gamey modeling and uncertainty.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077610Neither can they calculate how likely they're to hit enemy A versus enemy B. Nor do they know they have a 10% higher skill in Land Navigation than ally C.

But they are likely, just as we are in the real world, to be able to assess or rank character skill to some extent. Sometime even with great precision.  Knowing skill levels is, in part, a rough proxy of this real world ability
.
And of course the GM could keep skill levels, number of hit points, and such hidden from the players. In the early days of my D&D play we talked about doing exactly that. But, rarely is this done because the added burden on the GM is usually considered excessive and players like to track and see their character's improvements. So we compromise and allow the player some knowledge that his character does not have. And some people object to increasing that out of character, system knowledge any more than is really necessary.

QuoteNor do they know how many hitpoints they have left and if they are certain to survive another critical hit by that enemy with that sword.

As mentioned, the number of hitpoints could be hidden from the player. And there are certainly systems where the player can never know with 100% surety that the character can survive the next hit.

QuoteAnd since the GM can reject request for luck, the players never can be quite sure when Lady Luck will smile at them.

You don't need metacurrency to do this. Players can already request things that GMs may then allow or include in the world. Most GMs have always done this at least to some extent.

QuoteI disagree regarding the form of luck however: players can be very creative about that and it's pretty good to tap into that; it enhances play if the GM adopts a suggestion that is better than anything he has come up with spontaneously. Case-in-point: RPG systems in which the use of Fate/Hero Points to avert certain death requires the player of that PC has to describe what lucky circumstance saved his PC's ass. It's tried-and-true. Nobody I know has ever moaned that such a rule gives that player too much control.

Moaned? No. But when playing Honor & Intrigue (H&I), which uses Fortune Points, both I and some of my players have complained about that exact aspect of Fortune Points.

I find that the more a metacurrency changes during play, the more attention I need to invest as a player or a GM in tracking that metacurrency. I find it to be an unwelcome distraction from what I do enjoy about play. For example, Force Points in D6 Star Wars don't get used too often in play and typically are only awarded or renewed outside of play. Therefore little attention is required to track Force Point accumulation and expenditure. H&I, on the other hand, presumes that Fortune Points will used and new points awarded during play. Perhaps frequently during play. For me that is often too distracting.

QuoteThe main thing is that players don't have control over the world (inventing NPCs) and about the challenges they're facing. Then we'd be dipping into FATE territory.

That is to you the main thing. Some players just don't want a world that is at all jointly created even if the GM has a veto over player creation.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589Premise
Heroes, not just in cinema but also in literature, video games, comic books, etc. have luck. Sometimes they rely on enormous amounts of luck. Therefore, any RPG that tries to capture a genre (at least genres like fantasy, sci-fantasy, action, comic book superheroes, etc) or any specific IP within such a genre needs to account for heroes' luck. Heroes don't just get by with their wits and skill alone. Even better yet: having enormous luck elevates them further above the rest - it makes them appear destined for greatness, chosen by the gods.

A brief look at old-school games
This heroes' luck isn't very well reflected in D&D or most OSR games, as far as I can see.

Note that you are making an unstated assumption that, in an RPG, every PC is a "hero".  Old-school RPGs frequently do not share that assumption, which is why they do not model heroes' luck.  As an earlier comment in this thread pointed out, there are a lot of people in Conan stories who aren't Conan.

Even if they are heroes, they can still die in genre fiction, and even die in an "unheroic" fashion.  I'm told that Clark Ashton Smith's The Seven Geases was one of Gygax's favorites.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589First, hit points represents general survivability and as an abstract stat it mixes luck with meatpoints, skill, etc... Plus, heroes in fiction tend to have more types of luck than what HPs and saving throws normally provide - they usually do have that crate to dive behind when they need it; the world works in their favor.

I've seen several discussions in OSR and OSR-adjacent circles of allowing players in D&D-type games to burn HP as generalized "luck" rather than restricting it only to combat survivability.  The game Scarlet Heroes even has a rule for this, called "Defying Death".  "A hero can Defy Death any time they wish to avoid the consequences of a failed saving throw or escape a situation of otherwise certain catastrophe. They may also Defy Death to overcome some insufficiency of skill."  When you choose to Defy Death, you take 1d4 damage per level of your character.  If you still have HP left after taking this damage, then you somehow miraculously succeed in handling the situation; if you are reduced to 0 HP or less, you are left with 1 HP remaining and have to find a different way of dealing with the situation.  If you Defy Death more than once in an adventure, you take 1d6 damage per level the second time, 1d8 per level the third, and so on.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589Violation of the Czege Principle: Giving players control over anything beyond character intention undermines  any sense of challenge. Yes. But that's what we're not talking about here if the GM retains full veto rights. It's not classical player agency. This matters because it turns any need for crates to dive behind into a request, instead of having control over the game world. I can request that Chancellor Merkel steps down as well but it's not anywhere near the same as mandating/ordering it. It's not like I spent a Fortune Point and then whatever I want is definitely going to happen. It only happens if the GM approves of it, so the Czege Principle is upheld. (And the GM is not generally expected to say "Yes" and handwave all requests through. It's up to him.)

You're just playing semantic games with this argument.  If I say "there are crates there" and the GM says "ok", then I have, for all intents and purposes, created the crates, GM veto power or no GM veto power.  To say otherwise is like claiming that, if I have a gun to your head, I don't have the power to shoot you because someone might grab the gun out of my hand - while it's certainly true that someone could grab the gun and stop me from shooting you, I still have the power to shoot you right up until the point that they actually do take the gun.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589First, a key observation: Presumably, the party only needs luck when they made a tactical blunder before or they have been rolling badly.

These situations can be dealt with through the use of a metacurrency which can only be used to reroll dice, and perhaps also negate "character death" results, without also giving it general-purpose narrative declaration powers.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589If luck only gets invoked when you rolled badly or acted stupidly, can't the luck property be used to as a metric to keep track of player(! not PC!) performance? If so, fun stuff can be done with that.

Too metagame for my taste, but, if it's what you're into, knock yourself out.

I suspect it's kinda niche, too, given that, when I ran Savage Worlds and allowed bennies to only be spent for rerolls (no Soak rolls, no narrative declarations), nobody at the table ever even hinted at the idea of the number of bennies left at the end of the night being a measure of players' relative skill levels.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077589Should helping the party out with luck each time come with a long-term cost for short-term help? Could that be fun?

It certainly seems to be a common aspect in many "player-chosen 'luck'" systems, usually implemented with something along the general lines of "each time you spend a 'good luck' point, you also give the GM a 'bad luck' point to use against you later in the game".

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077610Neither can they calculate how likely they're to hit enemy A versus enemy B. Nor do they know they have a 10% higher skill in Land Navigation than ally C.
Nor do they know how many hitpoints they have left and if they are certain to survive another critical hit by that enemy with that sword.

Those are not dissociated mechanics in the way luck points are - they connect to in-world features. Luck Points are dissociated unless characters have luck in-universe (like WEG d6 Force Points), and know they have it. For that to be true, I think they can't allow for the creation of in-world elements like boxes - they are not box-summoning magic. So you need to restrict them to a more general lucky break/not die yet function, like WHRFP Fate Points or OGL Conan Fate Points, to name a couple. Or the Fighting Fantasy Luck attribute.