[JKilla]

As the GM, not a player.....wierd question but this happened to me last night. 

Running On the Run, my team is at the Coda looking for Loomis make a scene and now they piss off the Thrashers...well the Troll angers them in particular. (talked to loud....and agressivley) I have to basically combat MONSTERS and a "support" woman. I figure that doubling the amount of Gangers in the bar would be a fun challenge...then the dice decided, "no, I don't care".

Like this example, Luitenant with a cyberarm machine pistol has a 9 DP to hit our assassin vs. his 6 Dodge. Sweet, he had been giving me problems ALL NIGHT now some sweet GM revenge....or not. Roll 9 dice......................1 hit. He rolls and gets 5, kid you not 5. And that was pretty much the story all night.

I hate the dice sometimes....I really do.

[Makki]

-As a GM I once critical glitched on a melee block by a troll pit fighter. around 10 dice I guess. Well, I didn't use edge, that way my players had much more fun seeing the big guy tumble and fall apart.
-As a player I once critical glitched on a toxin resistance with 10 dice (bod 3+ edge7!!!). that was less fun.
but I never had a bad streak, if that was your topic.

[James McMurray]

Last Friday. The big boss pseudo-spirit is looking to knock the PCs out so he can take their bodies and give them to his people (who have been bodiless for centuries). For some strange reason the PCs don't like this idea and they fight back. The group's primary gunner rolls his 22 dice and gets a bunch of hits. The boss rolls his 15 dodge dice and gets 2. He spends a point of edge to reroll the 13 failures and gets none. Moments later he goes from 12 physical boxes to 1.

But it's just karmic backlash. My dice tend to look like they roll much better than average since they seem to go in streaks and the bad rolls are rarely for memorable occasions (whereas ever time you roll 5+ hits against a PC it's memorable).

[Chaemera]

Last session, I have a trio of decked-out prime runners (we're talking 500 BP + karma and gear to match) against the runners and, short of soak rolls (where they reliably averaged 7 or 8 hits), they couldn't get more than 2 hits on anything, even with 16+ dice pools.

That combat was painful, it dragged out so much, neither side landing a meaningful hit for a good while. Finally, the NPC troll cyber-naut was taken down (at least 3 rounds from the team's sniper + close-in support + Stick-N-Shock before he crashed). This gave me an excuse to have the mage run in terror (she'd already taken a short-burst of capsule rounds loaded with CS Gas). The melee-adept surrendered when faced with the full force that had taken down his decked-out troll partner.

Did I mention that the actual runners were netting 4+ hits on everything? I almost wish the soak rolls had been as bad as the dodge, spellcasting, attack, and perception rolls.

[Stahlseele]

Troll Combat Monster.
SR3, maxed out body to 18 i think.
Has to resist 3 Deadly damage after Armor and Dodge.
Meaning he has to roll 18 dice and has to roll a 3 8 times to get no damage . .
GM:"That is a LOT of ones!"
Player:"Karma! I'll use Karma!"
So he rerolls failure. GM repeats:
"That's an awfull lot of ones"
Result: One maxed out Troll Combat Monster . . killed outright by a silly Pistol . .
One pissed of player, one thorughly amused GM, a snickering group of players and a molten set of dice minutes afterwards
Bastards took the Gun and named it the Trollslayer . . Told everybody and their mom about it . .
Hat it mounted on the wall above the Bar in their favourite watering hole too . .

[Tagz]

My dice betray me in the opposite manner.  They're too good in my hands.

My players have really started to fear my rolls.  We don't play with a screen, mostly because I don't like them, and they often times just stare at my results.  Things like 8 hits on 9 dice, no edge used, third time that night.  Because of this a few of my players keep some karma set aside to buy edge back up after they burn it to stay alive.

I'm thinking of using a screen so I can fudge my numbers down rather then up, but than again... this is a brutal setting is it not?

[James McMurray]

Do they track all of your dice rolls or just attempt to apply patterns to them? People have a tendency to remember the extraordinary and file away the average under "ignore permanently." I've got a reputation for having lots of high rolls as GM, but that's because everybody looks when it's above average, and only the person involved with the roll looks when it's below.

If you're tracking the rolls and consistently rolling much higher than average then you don't need a screen you need new dice.

[Dead Monky]

Do they track all of your dice rolls or just attempt to apply patterns to them? People have a tendency to remember the extraordinary and file away the average under "ignore permanently." I've got a reputation for having lots of high rolls as GM, but that's because everybody looks when it's above average, and only the person involved with the roll looks when it's below.

That's called confirmation bias.  It's one of the more common cognitive biases we humans have.  And one of the more problematic.

[James McMurray]

Confirmation bias requires a pre-existing belief, so would only apply here if they came into the game thinking my dice would be great (they didn't).  It's more related to several other biases and fallacies:

• selective perception: forgetting non-/oteworthy rolls
• availability cascade: repeating something makes it seem more true
• clustering illusion: seeing patterns where there aren't any
• gambler's fallacy: thinking past results change future probabilities
• maybe even the pessimism bias - the tendency to assume bad things will happen

[Dead Monky]

I was thinking of it more in terms of the bias taking over after the first couple times someone rolled shit.  You know, they roll crap for a game, start thinking they roll crap a lot, then pretty soon they only remember the crap rolls.  But I see your point.

[Coldbringer]

I have had my share of entertaining NPC critical glitch moments.  In last night's game a character who has moral objections to binding spirits he has summoned, as he views it as enslaving a divine being, summoning he views as striking a bargain with said being.  So to resist being summoned the spirit roll was a total glitch! five dice, all one, YAHTZEE!!!! So since the spirit could not resist the summoning and the player rolled a huge number of hits, BOOM instant bound spirit!!!

Its creating an interesting bit of cognitive dissonance for the character and a fun new story element as this overly eager spirit seeks to serve.

[Dead Monky]

Well hey, if there are humans that craze being dominated and subservient then I'd assume there are spirits that like the same.

[Mystic]

Not in Shadowrun, but in a game of Battletech. Was running a Shadowhawk and took out an ememy Thunderbolt with a lucky head hit and rolled well enough to kill the pilot in the first round of weapons fire. From there, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn! I would need a blasted four to hit and would roll a three. I failed a pilot check when running on pavement and fell on my face...I then failed a piloting roll to remain standing and took MORE damage to the pilot, at least it was on my back. Then to top it all off, I missed on a kick and...you guessed it fell on my face finally ending my misery not from the fall, but when the fall caused my remaning ammo to cook off.

To this day, I REFUSE to play Shadowhawks.

[CanRay]

Vehicles and I have a love-hate issue.  They love to hate me.

I've wrecked more wagons, sedans, pick-ups, shuttles, starships, and everything else in between by bad dice rolls than all my group's combined have had to deal with enemy fire.

I had one character that was the highest paid wheelman to be ordered to never drive again.

[Simagal]

I roll well as a GM, but as a player I only get one good roll on a turn.