Gear Antique's Wind of Luck System

This post is part of collections on Games and Tabletop RPGs.

Gear Antique is a Japanese steampunk TRPG originally published in 1991 as a boxed game and re-published in 1999 as Gear Antique: Renaissance. While there's many interesting features to the system, one I particularly wanted to touch on is the "Wind of Luck" (WoL) system that allows anyone to try anything with a reasonable chance of success, at the cost of eventual payback.

Sometimes your luck catches up with you.

The basic rules of Gear Antique are similar to other percentage and attribute games like BRP. Your WoL score starts off the same as your Luck attribute, rolled as 3d10 at character creation. Whenever you fail a skill check you may opt to roll against your WoL instead. Whether the WoL roll fails or succeeds, your WoL score goes up by 1d10 points. Besides allowing anyone to try anything, this also simulates a lucky streak - the more you rely on your luck to succeed, the better it gets.

The catch is that eventually your luck runs out. As soon as your WoL score rises to 70 or higher, you must make a 3d10 roll on the Payback table. Middle results range from "you get sand in your eyes and it hurts" to weapons or armor needing repairs, while extreme results are things like "you slip, hit your head, and black out", "your wallet is missing", "you find a roach in your food", or "your lover turns cold".

For a small part of the game rules - the explanation and table fit on just one page - it adds a lot of character to the game. Ψ