(Un)Lucky with the dice - How can it happen?

[Rel]

I think this is an interesting topic, not so much from the standpoint of what the dice actually do, but from how those results are interpreted by different players. Personally, I'm not a very superstitious guy. And yet, I often find that I behave in a superstitious manner when it comes to dice. I think this is largely motivated by a frustrated inability to actually DO something about something that I clearly have no control over.

As an example, on Tuesday we were playing and it was one of the more combat intensive sessions that we've had for a while. I was making lots of rolls. After a few "average" rolls early on and one really nice critical hit with a dart that took out an enemy Sorcerer in one hit, the dice "turned on me". I rolled three 3's in a row from the primary d20 that I use (a big speckled one that is an inch and a half across). Objectively I knew that this sort of thing happens all the time statistically but it was still frustrating. Feeling powerless, I exerted my human will power in a fruitless gesture: I switched to a different die.

On my next roll, my new die mockingly rolled a 4 followed by another 4. Again, I ascribe no mystical significance to this from an intellectual standpoint, but the pattern emerging was not encouraging (3,3,3,4,4). Again, I changed dice.

My next roll on the third die of the evening was...you guessed it, a 5. My reptilian hind-brain ordered me to hurl this die across the room into the brick fireplace. It appears that I've matured a bit over the years however and I restrained myself pending the next roll. Next roll was a 17. Among the next several rolls were another 17, an 18, a couple of 15's and a 20. Mixed in that batch were a few lower rolls (nothing below about an 8 if I recall). I stuck with that die for the rest of the combat.

The point of my little anecdote is that I think we often do things that don't actually change anything because there is nothing we can do that will really change our circumstances. Perhaps if I'd stuck with my original die after the third 3, my next 3 rolls would have all been 20's. Perhaps not. The underlying point is that if doing something "useless" actually makes me feel a little bit better because I THINK I'm improving my odds (even when I'm not and deep down I know it) then shouldn't it be considered a "Good Thing"?

 

[Dark Eternal]

I have occasional strings of luck that, while not necessarilly good or bad, are very... well, strange. Like rolling 5-14 sequentially on 10 successive d20 rolls. Or following a critical hit immediately with a critical failure in each of nine rounds of combat. Or on one particularly memorable night, rolling a critical threat on every attack (but not always confirming for the hit), then rolling minimum damage on each and every hit.

Very odd.

OTOH, there is a player we used to game with who has become absolutely legendary for his simply unbelievable luck. Chris had some kind of mutant power to 'psychically load' dice... seriously, this guy routinely rolled strings of 10 or more maximum results at a time, no matter how closely he was watched, how many sides the dice had, whose dice we made him use... hell, in one game that I can still recall, where there was a system that rolling maximum entitled you to roll another time and add the results (so if you rolled a 10 on a d10, you'd roll again and add results for a total of 11 to 19 - and if you rolled a second ten, then you'd roll a third time, etc...) Chris hit one enemy with a dagger, entitling him to a d4 for damage. By the time he rolled something other than a 4, he had stacked up 67 point of damage...

God, we hated playing with him.


EDIT: While we're on the topic of strange (or just unholy) luck... I am reminded of one night - when the omens must have been aligned against us in every conceivable fashion - that our DM (who is absolutly opposed to the concept of a TPK) was driven to near incoherant frustration by the apparant impossiblity of not wiping out the entire party. We clearly had the advantage over the group we had encountered... but somehow, every single player kept rolling impossibly low numbers! After the fifth round of combat, we were half dead and none of us had landed a single blow on the critters we were fighting! The greatest miracle of the evening was probably how low the overall property damage to the living room was... seven players who are getting massacred while their dice continue to roll 1's through 5's can be a frighteningly destructive force.

 

[Black Omega]

I'm generally the opposite. I usually roll very well indeed. I've had my bad moments, though. A couple of weeks ago I was rolling poorly and with the game getting late I was ready to call it a night before the final combat, since a couple of players don't like the game running late when they have to work the next day.

My players unanimously decided to stay up as late as it took to run the combat and to take advantage of my bad rolling since they knew it would be a tougher battle if my luck had time to recover. Bastards.

 

[Taloras]

We have two LUCKY players. One has rolled 3 20s in a row (out of about 20 20s that session......he only rolled a 1 once). The other is always scoring in the 30s for attacks. He has a dice that rolls an 18 or 19 so often it isnt funny...but only rarely gets a 20. And we watch him roll. Me, i cant roll good to save my life. Ive been gaming for a year now, and while i can roll decent when it doesnt matter, in that year, i have only rolled 2 20s for attacks, and never for anything else. I change the way i roll, change where i sit, everything. Ive got 13 d20s and one night, one will start rolling good, the next, it sucks. I just have to find the good one for the night (im starting to think it has something to do w/ the phases of the moon lol)

 

[Henry]

...Personally, I'm not a very superstitious guy. And yet, I often find that I behave in a superstitious manner when it comes to dice. I think this is largely motivated by a frustrated inability to actually DO something about something that I clearly have no control over.

LOL! You reminded me of my favorite experience with a player and his dice. One of our players is a very "science and science alone", atheistic person, who refuses to believe in the existance of luck. The first few times he played, he used to chide other veteran players who would "talk" to their dice, who would change dice after bad rolls, and do other superstitious things.

Fast forward about two months, and the same player who scoffed is now getting visibly upset when he rolled 12 rolls with nothing larger than a 5 on each, and is changin dice after every two or three new rolls to change the results.

We never let him forget about it, either. At least until a few months ago.