Comments on: Blessing of the Dice Gods

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:53:11 +0000

This has inspired me to try something wacky. Everyone rolls for the player to their right, see what happens.

By: Triem

Triem — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 05:04:10 +0000

Call of Cthulhu: The Masks of Nyarlathotep…

The party has encountered the Black Sphinx of Nyarlathotep, and the GM is ready to kill us all… He grins and rolls… a 96. Fumble. He rolls a clarification roll–the house rule is that when a fumble is rolled, a second roll determines how bad the fumble is–a second 95-100 indicates one’s attack hits oneself…

GM’s next attack… 97. Fumble. Clarification roll, 100. Strike self.

GM changes dice.

Fumble. Strike Self.

GM changes dice again.

Fumble. Strike self.

This continues for awhile. The GM changes dice, and the creature fumbles every attack and hits itself every time, beating itself to death…

Nyarlathotep arrives, and, in a stunning display of the GM altering fate to avoid the dice, resurrects the Sphinx, which, promptly beats itself to death again.

I don’t remember exactly how many rolls this involved, but I know over 20 attacks were involved. Plus a clarification roll. This is like rolling over 40 natural 20′s in a row for you D&D and d20 players.

I doubt I will ever see rolling like that again. 1/((1/400)^20) is a damn big number.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:05:25 +0000

This happened to me in a game once. I had my pet do a full attack. “My pet lunges at the thief and wraps its jaws around its head while slashing at his chest. The force of the blow is strong enough to rip his head off.” Rolled three dice, one for each claw and one for his mouth. All 20′s

By: Artemis

Artemis — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:00:21 +0000

My favourite “dice” moment involved a giant snake.

We were playing DnD and I had just rolled a critical hit on the giant snake. I rolled to confirm and my confirmation roll was a 20. I asked the DM what to do. Some groups have an instant-kill rule in situations like this. The GM vetoed that idea and suggested increasing the multiplier from 2x to 3x, if I made another roll to confirm. Well, the next confirmation roll was also a critical. So, the DM increased the multiplier again and made me roll another confirmation roll. It got up to x6 before I finally didn’t roll a critical on the confirmation roll.

It wasn’t technically at instant-kill, but it was effectively. I knocked the snake down to -30something HP. The GM said I decapitated it.

By: The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Tabletop Dice Luck | Socialist Gamer Review

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:18:54 +0000

[...] random old blog posts in cool sounding blogs” thing today and came upon this post titled, Blessing of the Dice Gods. In it, the author notes the effects upon players when cool dice rolls happen at cool [...]

By: Scholz

Scholz — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 09:24:39 +0000

"Is that the same snake?"
Sometimes it is more than lucky or unlucky die rolls. Sometimes randomness seems to work into our actions as well. The above quote came out of no where in a Fantasy Hero game I was in also very long ago. I wasn't thinking of anything to justify the question, I didn't know where I was going with it (consciously at least). But the revelation that it was NOT the same snake, basically set the wheels in motion that resulted in our party solving one of Kareem's impossible mysteries. It was an awesome adventure, but that is all I remember.
And how many times do the players almost ask that question, but choose not to, or almost try their rarely used backupon the villain (or monster), but opt for their old reliable attack instead?

So relatedly.. how do you manage the situation so as to promote the good luck, and banish the bad luck... Now I don't let people touch my dice, and that works pretty well. But it is entirely irrational.

As a GM and a Player I die a little whenever a GM (me included) seeing things going in the wrong direction...says something like "Make a Notice check. You see there that their armor is not A I R tight."
Oh I'll use my gas attack on him. Surprise it works!

One nice thing about M&M with GM Fiat and Hero Points is that you can moderate the effects of luck. You can still let miraculous good luck be miraculous good luck. But you can make bad luck less painful.. and likley to continue.
Any other methods?