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Article Synopsis
Baranor writes about numbers and the almighty die, and
how both contribute, as if by magic, to many popular games. | |
Column number 13
Yikes! Thirteen has arrived, and it’s a mightily leaden number, being the bad luck number an all. Walk under ladders, kiss the black cats! Appropriate for an article about gaming superstitions, methinks. Apart from pc-gaming I am heavily involved in tabletop wargaming like WARMACHINE and Warhammer 40K. Rolling the dice is one of my favorite things to do. Obviously, rolling the dice involves luck, and lady luck usually shines on me. If I need to roll one six with 4 dices to kill an important piece of the opposition, I get 4 sixes. If my opponent needs to roll three 1’s in sequence to see his cannon explode, explode it will. Does my opponent need to roll 11-12 on 2D6 to see his units flee? Wish granted, he rolls 11-12, for three different units, and they all run, and get trampled by mine in their attempts to escape. Easy, and flat, as pie. Once upon a time my Werebear needed a Ravenfrost in order to stay warm… and lo and behold, some random monster dropped me one just about the time I was thinking about it. And a 20 dex 249 AR one too, almost perfect.
The above however, are mere examples of luck. Do not ever confuse luck with superstition. Superstition is (in this case) about how you attempt to get that luck, as well as silly things you do for said luck. Whenever I play with my Khorne (an army dedicated to the Blood God of Chaos, Khorne) army on the 40K battlegrounds, I always say “Thank you Lord Khorne” both before and after my dice rolls, regardless of what the result is. Frequently, my dice rolls are good. But even when bad, I thank Lord Khorne. My army is still undefeated, despite the fact that its army composition is a) crap and b) known to the other players. On the rare occasion when I forgot to thank Lord Khorne, my dice rolls were invariably crappy. Of course, they are chance cubes, and thus this was a mere stroke of bad luck… right? I never play with the dice of someone else. I don’t mind if someone else uses my dice, in fact, my dice have a reputation of being mean bastards to others, but I don’t use other people’s dice.
I am 100% sure there are plenty of people who have peculiar habits when it comes to pc gaming too. When I was out hunting other players in the Hardcore world of Diablo II, I always repaired my equipment before every single assault. Never told this to anyone, mind you, but when I entered the game, I went to the smith first and clicked the “repair all” button. After all, your opponent, who’s foolhardy ear you desire to take, deserves nothing but the best, cleanest and crispiest equipment to be set against him. I did not like killing players with tarnished gear. They deserved better than that. Also, in a peculiar way I felt I would do less damage with damaged gear. This is of course absolute and 100% bollocks (most of my weapons were of the unfixable ethereal kind anyway), but still, I did it in order to get some more fortune. In Diablo I, whenever I saw one of the burning crosses that did fire damage when you walked through, I walked through them for good luck. Especially in the Chamber of Bone. When playing Unreal Tournament, if I pick up a rocket launcher, I never fail to dedicate a single shot to a wall first, with no opponent near, just to celebrate the fact that I got a Rocket Launcher. And to improve my aim of course.
There are plenty of silly superstitions around. During the heigh-days of the Diablo II Cow Level (and beyond, I have no doubt), the common belief was that a full tome yielded more cows. If you didn’t use a full tome, you were a nooblar not worthy of attention other than getting pk-ed. Good items only started to drop after 100 runs of Mephisto. Crossing your fingers helped. Uh-uh.
The problem with gaming superstitions is not that they exist. Some gaming companies actively add to the gaming superstitions in the form of lame jokes. Yup, mr Blizzard sir, that perfect gem activated was a pretty lame joke. It didn’t send any packets. It was client-side only. And it spawned numerous stories, legends and superstitions about your luck rising whenever it was activated. Same went for people thinking better items dropped on hardcore, because you had a real chance of loosing it all. Well, I can guarantee you, since my best finds in 6 years of DII were an Eaglehorn and a nifty Wizardspike (and an Ist, but ok) that this is total bollocks. Then again, I didn’t really believe in MF either. Battlenet was there to provide me with whatever I needed, like a benevolent god, and as long as I didn’t spend hour upon hour of doing useless runs, it would be kind to me and give me nice, shiney itamz. Well, battlenet and those twenty friends that did in fact do mf runs. 
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