How to stop outrageous luck ruining the fun

[JMISBEST]

A group that I'm considering taking over as GM for booked working class passage on a way to somewhere whey they had enough credit to get a decent loan on A 4th hand battered but fully functional 200 ton trader, but it was A Pirate ship, they found out and the groups powerful Psion had the pirates kill each other thanks to very lucky rolls. The worse bit is that between the prize court value of the pirate ship, finders fee value for the stolen cargo and for the weapons, armour, ammo and explosives in the ships locker bounties on the pirates heads they can afford to fully buy a brand new 200 ton Trader or fully buy A 3rd hand 300 ton trader or pay 77.1% of the cost of A 3rd hand 400 Ton Trader and want to know how to stop their last GM's outrageous luck with the dice ruining most of the fun of the planned campaign

 

[M J Dougherty]

Nobody gets as many outrageously lucky rolls as you and your friends. I recall that in the past you've asked if it would be OK to ignore bad results, so I strongly suspect that there is a culture of 'accept the good rolls, invent an excuse to ignore the bad ones' that needs to be challenged.

There are other possibiities. One is outright cheating on the dice, the other is that you allow too much to be accompllised with one die roll (creating a 'Press X to WIN' scenario).

Seems like your friend who plays the game just like you do has given away a 45-50 million credit ship on a couple of dice rolls. I'm struggling to see how this troubles you since you do that sort of thing all the time.

I'm wondering why you suddenly care that someone got an extremely lucky roll and now has a pile of stuff. That's been your theme since you appeared on these boards.

But since you asked for advice, you could start by doing away with custom tables that give the players loads of stuff on a die roll, and stop allowing huge results for dice rolls in general. So the psion got lucky and made the crew kill one another? How about you limit what they can do? (What psi power allows that anyway? Are you sure you want players to wield that sort of setting-breaking power?)

For this sort of thing to happen, you need two things:

1. The referee has to create a situation in which a lucky roll has a huge payoff.
2. The players have to make those lucky rolls.

I detect a rodentine aroma about the latter; as I've said you and your friends are so lucky all the time that you should really just buy lottery tickets. As to the former, you could stop creating the opportinty to roll high and win big.

As to this particular incident, well, it's already happened. Live with the result and run a game around it or scrap it and start again.

 

[M J Dougherty]

Also....

A prize court will award a percentage of the value of the ship to the Travellers, but it's not going to be a big percentage and the ship is not going to be rated at full value - it's a pirate and probably in need of a LOT of work to be valuable again. Cargo is not likely to be more than a few hundred thousand credits at most.

So that means someone handed out multimillion credit bounties on a handful of pirates. That seems... rather high.

Also....

They killed each other. So who gets the bounties?. Or are the Travellers going to somehow prove their psion made them kill one another? Hard, and possibly a death sentence for the psion. 'That guy just proved that he can make us kill on another if he wants to'. That might not end well.

 

[MonkeyX]

Those fractions.....

 

[PsiTraveller]

Well since he is using Psionics it opens up the possibility of the Suggestion Power being used. In 2nd edition this can allow even suicidal commands if the rolls are lucky enough, and we are talking a roll of 18 or more on 2D6. That's what an Effect of 6 or more is on a 12+ Difficulty, which is what Suggestion is. So yeah, You are dealing with the Mind Lords at this point.

I mean it is possible, 12 PSi as your power score. You would need at least 4 levels in Telepathy or make the Suggestions in a TL 16 Psi amplifier equipped room(CSC pg 58) while touching the hub with bare hands. This will give +4 to your roll. This would give a +6 to your roll and if you rolled 12 that's an 18 and gives an Effect of 6.

But JMISBEST is only involved in Anime level campaigns. Mega wealth, mega powers and mega rolls. Then wonders why the modules are not a challenge.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

A group that I'm considering taking over as GM for booked working class passage on a way to somewhere whey they had enough credit to get a decent loan on A 4th hand battered but fully functional 200 ton trader, but it was A Pirate ship, they found out and the groups powerful Psion had the pirates kill each other thanks to very lucky rolls. The worse bit is that between the prize court value of the pirate ship, finders fee value for the stolen cargo and for the weapons, armour, ammo and explosives in the ships locker bounties on the pirates heads they can afford to fully buy a brand new 200 ton Trader or fully buy A 3rd hand 300 ton trader or pay 77.1% of the cost of A 3rd hand 400 Ton Trader and want to know how to stop their last GM's outrageous luck with the dice ruining most of the fun of the planned campaign

The problem is the Referee is trying to force a story onto the Travellers, rather than simply allowing a story to make itself during the game session.