Hi,

Teela Brown is a lady from Larry Niven's Ringworld books, who was bred over generations by aliens to be lucky...
...And she ends up being so lucky that she gets recruited for an exploration mission on an artificial megastructure [the Ringworld in question] onthe far side of the galaxy.

There's more to it than that, but I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't read the novels


Anyways, I was wondering if the same thing could happen in Shadowrun...
...Would a lucky person come from a whole line of lucky people ??
...If lucky people married and had children would the children be more lucky ??

If you could breed for luck, could you breed for other traits ??


On a related topic, there are super-Lucky people in some of the books I've read [notably a character in several of Piers Anthony's Xanth books] but things don't always go well for them...
...They have overall good Luck, but individual instances might not be the best for them [trip over and miss the bus = individual bad luck, misses bus crash = overall good luck].

How do you handle Luck in SR ??

High Edge - Karma

I'm familiar with the novels and indeed it makes for an interesting plot. Imagine a dragon breeding meta-types for luck (breeding just goes so much faster with Orcs don't you think?).

I would say that since Edge is a Special Attribute, like Magic and Resonance, it would be impossible to breed for said trait. There are no genetic markers known (as stated in Augemntation) and thus it cannot be planned for. Some people are just born lucky and some ain't. She's a fickle mistress

where do you think exceptional attribute comes from?
genetic predisposition . . but no, i would not allow that for special attributes either . .

... if they're lucky.


As for how I handle luck: I don't allow edge to be bought at chargen, or with karma. Everyone starts at 1, except humans, who start at 2. You get 1 edge point for every 10 karma points, just like in SR3.

Luck is very real in SR. Not even as a game gimick. Some of luck is really a sort of magical thing. Dragons can mess with it, you can gamble with weird bug things in the metaplanes with it.

But it seems that it's something you pick up as much as something you're born with.

of course luck is very real in shadowrun . . it's a game played by rolling hopefully not modified die ^^

BTW - you missed something about that character...

She was only lucky compared to normal humans - the other results of that experiment were so lucky that the puppeteers were utterly unable to contact them for the mission.

i.e. she was the unluckiest luck-bred human.

I could imagine a crazed AI or free spirit doing this.

Collect a bunch of humans. Randomly shoot half. Breed the rest. Repeat ad nauseum. Thanks to those special planes whose name I've forgotten, you can breed them in several generations in that timeline, and bring them back here losing relatively little time on ours.

The harder you work, the luckier you get

Actually, I did mention that I didn't want to mention too much about the character...
...because I didn't want to ruin it for people.


The whole unlcky/lucky thing depends on your point of view...
...Very longlived with access to Tree-of-Life and living on a huge artificial object that will be safe from a cosmic explosion, or a party girl - which is better ??

[sorry, I don't know hw to do the spoiler thing]

Personally, I can see this as something the Big D would have done...
...Maintaining the magical aspect of the DNA for thousands of years, so that Humans can use magic again when the Horrors come back.

well, I hope my comment was vague enough that it doesn't spoil anything for anyone.

(use spoiler rather than hide to do spoilers)

as for that debate:


I've certainly seen worse backstories than "product of a meta-eugenics experiment."

I'd say, run with it.