Goodman Games

So I get that the Thief/Halfling entries have been clarified, but it looks like a lot of questions remains. As noted earlier, no official answer seems to be coming....

I may be off-base here, but it seems like an official answer needs to be given. I get that this is all very "Old School" and so the rules are not set in stone.

But I also get that presumably a great deal of actual PLAY TESTING was done with these rules, and I also believe that Luck is something that could severely unbalance/wreck a game if done incorrectly...Thieves and halflings could become greatly overpowered, or could be vastly weakened. Because it is a stat that can be applied to anything and everything (as noted in an earlier post), and to high levels of impact, doing it wrong could really hose your game.

How could we go about getting the way it is supposed to work, as reflected in how it was run in playtesting?

Yes, I could absolutely house rule it, but generally speaking I like to understand the actual base rule that I paid for in the book before I go off fiddling with things.

Everybody who says that Thieves and Halflings "could" become "greatly overpowered" and ruin a game necessarily assumes a completely passive Judge, or an idiot Judge. I just don't see it.

Well, in the thirty years I've been running games, I don't think I've ever been called 'passive', and never 'idiot' by my players....though for DCC I could certainly be called 'NEW", and one problem I've encountered is that this stat seems to be (not just to me) poorly defined.

Yes, CAN I balance it once I understand the game, but right now I don't know enough...so at this point my players impression of my game, and DCC in particular, can be greatly influenced by something as trivial as "I have a stat and the rules don't tell me how it works"...or the resulting issues

If I wanted a game that was left completely up to me, I'd play minimus or Fate....with nearly 500 pages of rules in DCC I would have hoped that the rules for regaining/increasing Luck would be in there. I can absolutely fudge/house rule areas of uncertainty. I am always house ruling things....It's just nice to actually HAVE a rule to start with.

Failure to be able to run a situation where a player wants to try to spit a ruby into the open maw of a titan as he strikes would indicate I can't DM well - I can come up with the roll and the results....but I can see problems with Luck happening BEFORE I know enough to properly fix them...and I'd like to not have them become problems in the first place.

Again, I'd love an OFFICIAL answer...if there isn't one then that's fine. Back in the 70's I didn't have direct contact with TSR people to get answers, either, so maybe that's part of the 'old school flavor'

Yeah I'm not calling you passive or an idiot. I'm just saying, for this to turn into a problem, you'd have to be. In other words, you'd have to be not actually running your game. Which, in my mind, just doesn't make sense.

I think this is somewhat of a case of a solution in search of a problem, frankly.

Well, I guess we disagree, and in all likelihood once I've run more than three sessions perhaps I'll realize my folly. But - and here I'm not focusing on the thief/halfling thing - it has already caused confusion. My players ask "So if I don't spend any of my luck how high can it get?" - as the DM I can give the standard answer I should give in cases like this "Here is my ruling now, but I reserve the right to change it", but I do think that it doesn't reflect well on the book. The question came from a NON-thief, because they need to be more careful with its use.

We ran into the issue with "Ego checks", but luckily I have four editions of D&D experience and winging it was no issue. Luck as implemented here is not like anything I've seen before, and because of the lethality of the game, I feel like at this point I can either err on the side of giving too much, but if I err on the other side suddenly I'm killing characters when I don't let them exceed some number by 'saving up', and suddenly we hit an adventure where the designer assumed they have higher Luck scores.

It's just a case where it seems like GG erred on the side of too little information - they have provided a mechanic for regaining/adding Luck, but have not explained how that should work (particularly for non-thieves). The game has some spells for which there are complete pages of detailed results on exactly what happens. I would have given up a spell or two for more detail on one of the core abilities.
Now, returning to the thief/halfling - that aggravates the lack of info because this incompletely explained attribute is one of the core / most valuable traits of two classes.

I think that GG tried to be clear, but didn't consider that people would think "natural luck" meant anything other than what was rolled.

In any event, yeah, there are some ambiguities in this ruleset. Some of them are fine, some of them are unfortunate. But, compared to other rulesets I could be running, I will be happy to deal with what ambiguities occur in this one.

Well, I'm not throwing out the fun baby with the incompletely described bath water, either.

So as mentioned I'm loathe to house rule a rule I don't understand. But I can probably hack together some of the bits here.

Natural Luck: The ORIGINALLY-rolled value at character creation. It implies some folks are 'born lucky', and further implies that you can't really become more or less LUCKY, you can just get temporary boosts (four leaf clovers) or decreases (burning, walking under ladder)

"Current" Luck: The score you have now, which can get as high as you'd like, but if it's far higher than 18 then you may either draw the attention of strange forces (if you haven't already), or your DM needs to put in more challenges for you.

"Current" Luck, when lower than Natural Luck, implies that you've been using your luck, and someday you may run out.

When it becomes HIGHER than Natural Luck, it does NOT mean you are now more 'inherently lucky' than normal, but you're carrying the favor of the fates or gods with you.

Basically Natural Luck is analogous to hit points, and luck above the Natural Luck score is considered in a way similar to temporary hit points - used first, and not regained normally once used.

What you have described above, phloog, is precisely how I interpret and implement the Luck rules. And even if we hear differently it's probably how I'll continue to run them. Though I do understand your desire to get an official answer.

I just don't understand this, really. IMNSHO, the answer is "18, like any other stat." Done. Why is this such a big deal?



Hmm, I disagree. The mechanic is explicitly detailed... Luck exists to ensure characters are played consistently with their alignment. Non-thieves spend Luck on a 1:1 basis permanently, and only GAIN Luck when it's granted by the Judge for... ARRPEEING their alignment. For example, there's a +1 bonus to Luck for certain actions in Sailors on the Starless Sea. There's also a -1 penalty to Luck for a certain curse in People of the Pit.



So, if I understand the complaint/question, it's something like this: What happens when a Thief/Halfling earns a +1 Luck bonus as a result of good ARRPEE? I think Raven_Crowking's answer is to just give them a +1 like any other class. Typically, because a Thief or Halfling will have spent Luck in the course of the adventure, this is unlikely to result in them earning a permanent +1 bonus to Luck (i.e. the max increases by 1). I think that's the way it's supposed to work, and that will serve to keep a Thief from maxing Luck out at 18 relatively quickly. But, again, as you say... the game is deadly, and a Thief is very likely to have been spending Luck left and right. So it's already balanced. A Thief who can refrain from spending Luck and still survive long enough to max out at 18 deserves everything he's got (again, it's just +3! bonus for him, but could be made more advantageous if you allow Lucky Rolls to float with modifier [I do]). Again, IMNSHO, YMMV, etc.

In my opinion, this is more complex than the rules as written, and more to the point, doesn't follow the rules. I think it's more appropriate to think of it as permanent_stat_burn, with a heal_condition of (Judge Discretion Only). Saying it's analogous to hit points is way off, IMO. (Thieves and Halflings having different heal_conditions, obviously.)

Well, I guess we will continue to disagree on a few things. One of them would be faulting me for not following the rules as written when the issue is stemming from the fact that DCC has this situation where a rule is NOT written. If GG comes on and tells me what that rule as written is, then I'll likely follow it. But to have a thread where in one instance I'm being told that I'm unreasonable to want an official explanation because a good DM will just judge or house rule his way through, then in the next I'm told that my solution's no good because it breaks the rules as written (again, in part because I can't FIND the rule in any complete form)...

I was really comparing it more to a combined set of hit points and TEMP hit points, but clearly no analogy withstands much scrutiny. The point not being that they are like hit points, but that the comparison in MY house rule would be to the DIFFERENCE between hit points and temporary hit points.

To address the question of why I don't just go with 18, it is for admittedly what could turn out to be a corner case, but what if a character HAS an 18 to begin with? I guess there's kind of a weird logic you could apply to this, but you'd end up with:

"You have well and truly served me this day, and have lived up to your duties as a servant of our Greater Powers. Sadly, you are already WAY too lucky, so here - I got you these steak knives"

" Non-thieves spend Luck on a 1:1 basis permanently, and only GAIN Luck when it's granted by the Judge for... ARRPEEING their alignment"

Also, not to nitpick, but this is not completely correct. According to my reading of the rules, there are LOTS of ways for Luck to change beyond just RP-ing their alignment.

And in fact, more critically, my understanding of the rules is that GOOD Role playing of your CHARACTER could actually COST you Luck points or be a net zero.

You get a penalty of -1 Luck for offending a demon...what if that's EXACTLY the kind of thing your character would do? If he's not aligned with that demon's enemy, he will lose a Luck point for doing this bold move. If he's aligned with a power that's opposed to that demon, he's RPing his alignment properly but there's NO Gain..

I've had characters that weren't religious, but loved to spit in the face of the powerful. And maybe they should pay with penalties to Luck, but RPing those characters properly will get you to zero Luck pretty quickly.

Now that I say that, I may have to eventually house rule a LOT of this, because it seems to potentially lead to a lot of demonic/deity rumpsmooching.

If it's any consolation Phloog you aren't the only one that has issues with the way luck works in this game. There are lots of great ideas and rules in this game but sometimes (in my opinion) they don't work so elegantly together and require a lot of DM discretion and player buy-in.

For instance the luck stat on it's own is a cool concept. I instantly fell in love with it but when combined with the various stat burns, the rogue luck dice mechanic and so on it starts to feel "broken" or clunky to me. I find it odd that so many posters here are so quick to suggest you should play the game as written when DM discretion is pretty much required to keep things working as intended.

I, for one, think that you should try any game as written before deciding how to change it. It seems to me that trying the game as written provides greater insight. Of course, I have read far too many posts about "broken" games where the "breaking" is clearly a result of changing how something works before the poster understands why the RAW were written that way/how the RAW works when played by RAW.

DCC is going to require rulings, but that is not the same as taking away or changing rules.

IMHO. YMMV.

Hey Folks, please forgive me for stating the obvious, but has anyone sent JG a PM asking about these issues? It may be a more direct approach than hoping he reads this particular thread.

Can't argue with that. Sometimes rules don't make sense until you see how they play out.



Fair enough but if I can find a more elegant rule that remains thematic and doesn't require rulings or DM interference to keep things from getting out of whack than I would much prefer that.

Perhaps beermotor nailed it:



The problem is I want to be a passive judge (I prefer the term impartial though) that provides my players with an ever changing sandbox to play in. I don't want to be a story teller that will address things if I find my players luck scores getting out of whack.

Note: I don't want to debate styles of DM'ing, they are all valid. That's just mine.

I'm with Raven Crowking on the play it as written first...that's actually what I was hoping to do...my issue is just that the part that I'm uncertain about doesn't seem to be written.

Actually I think I already basically said that - that I'd love to know the REAL rules first from people who designed and playtested it. I want to house rule things that don't work for our group/style....if I have to create a rule that isn't supplied, that's not so much creating house rules as it is creating the rule in the first place.

Does JG accept PMs? I didn't want to commit a serious breach of playground etiquette.

Mr. Goodman is pretty cool. I don't imagine he'd be offended at all that you are interested in his game...


(I seriously almost typed "he's a regular joe" until I realized what I was about to type. )

I think I see what your problem with it is now... it doesn't address this outlier. But my point is, I just think the probability of you ever having a 0-level character both (1) roll an 18 Luck and (2) survive without burning a single point before they earn, through their actions, a +1 bonus to Luck, is so exceedingly small as to be unimportant. If the probability in any particular Judge's game is nontrivial, or even likely, then I suggest the problem is not with the rules but with the Judge. In any case, you could follow Gygax (though in truth I'm no fanboy of his) here very easily, scribble your ruling in the margins of your book, and move on. And even if it did, somehow, miraculously occur, then I'd probably just bump Personality or Intelligence for the guy and move on.

Hmm, well I think semantics matters, and passive isn't the same as impartial. In a table top game, the guy running the game (Judge, DM, storyteller, whatever) is the director of the movie. We've all seen movies that were very poorly directed: they suck. A director has to direct. Even the ultimate in "passive" Judges - the computer in a computer game - isn't all that passive, because they're completely constrained by whatever story has been hardcoded into the game. No such thing as a complete sandbox, passive judge game. In fact, I would wager that the MORE sandbox-y a game is, the MORE active a judge will end up having to be: they've got to react to the players, and direct the movie. Not railroad the players, of course... but they cannot truly be passive. The fact is, gear, bonuses, xp, challenges, etc, all of these things are placed there for the players by the Judge, they have no existence until the Judge says "here it is." If the Judge says "man this kind of sucks, I wish that PC didn't have that +5 sword versus everything" then I think they shouldn't be blaming the rules, heh. If the Judge says "why does everybody have 18 Luck?" then I think the answer isn't "the rules don't prevent it," the answer is "you're giving out too many bonuses and your game isn't challenging enough to require the USE of Luck."

Reading this entire thread has made say WOW to myself, and I mean "WOW" as you guys are thinking about this whole thing way too much. I have been running my DCC campaign now for about two and a half months. We just completed our 5th session of about 4-5 hours worth of play.

From day one the LUCK score the PC's rolled is the highest I allow it to go. Even thieves and Halflings will NEVER get higher through luck regeneration. The ONLY way to increase a LUCK score is to quest for greater Luck. This has caused no problems for me or the players. Players can get a luck point or 2 from the DM if during play they do something awesome, that means in description or a couple of nat 20's in a row, or really role-play a situation out that just is, well awesome.

Now none of my players even own the rules, nor do they want to. I realize too, that after reading the thread I have apparently been doing LUCK "not" the way the rules intended, or should be done. But again I think sometimes you can get too wrapped up in what the rules do or don't say and your game isn't fun any more. That goes for the DM too.

So in the end relax, try luck my way. Maybe you can just go back to playing.

I think you're doing it exactly as the rules are written, FWIW.

Hrmmm.....I have been running my own game as well, and we have been having fun as well. Go figure.

I think you have to differentiate discussions of rules on a forum with whether or not you are having fun at the table. I don't think that the rules were intended to prevent PC Luck from rising beyond its initial value. I do think that the rules intended that Halfling and Thief Luck not restore (as a class feature) beyond the initial value. Am I right or wrong? It probably doesn't matter....but that doesn't mean I can't have fun discussing it!

For what it's worth, I don't think Phloog's breakdown is more complicated than the rules as written....I think that he has just parsed out the intent and implications of those rules.

There is some "talking across each other" going on in this thread, and some (intentional or not) disparagement of other viewpoints. Telling other people to relax and try it your way, or insinuating that they are somehow not able to play the game because they would like a rules clarification, is something we should probably try to avoid.

IMHO. YMMV.

You are correct on every point, and now what I wrote makes me sound like I'm a total D%%K! None of what I wrote was meant to sound like that at all. Of course you all are having fun!

I apologize to everyone.

Don't worry about it.

I think that there was some tension on this thread, not because people were trying to be total D%%Ks, but because InterWeb discussions lack inflection and gesture. Most big flame wars on the InterWebs would have been settled in three minutes over a pint in the real world, and this is a far, far cry from a flame war.

We've got a good crowd on this Forum (so far at least, knock on wood ), and I don't think that anyone here was actually trying to convert others to the One True Way of DCC. Fear no rule, and all that, right?

Besides, if I let the number of times I came across as a total D&&K on the InterWebs get me down, I'd never get back up again. Nothing to worry about; nothing to forgive.