Push your luck is one of my favorite mechanics, and as stated in one of my previous articles, I consider it to be one of three major mechanics. But I was having a difficult time coming up with a way to implement it in one of my games, so I did what I normally do when I need to think something out: write an article.

Brief Overview

Push your luck could be used to describe many types of mechanics, but the basic concept is this: doing something more is good, but do it too much and it’s bad, usually with a very specific cut off point. You can keep doing the action, but you are always given the chance to stop, meaning it’s up to you to decide when the risk is too great. Most commonly this is done with high randomization, such as drawing cards or rolling dice. However, player-based randomization also works, like the game Broom Service, where you can play a more powerful version of a card, but it’s negated entirely if another player plays the same card the same way later in the turn. My primary question is this: what are the ways (mechanically) to implement push your luck?

Too much of a good thing

The most popular and well known push your luck game is probably blackjack. It’s got a simple premise: keep drawing cards to get a higher number than everyone else, but if you ever go over 21, then you automatically lose. This is a very simple concept, and only has one number to track (or more, if you’re a pro gambler). The number you want to go up is the same number you want to not be too high. A big part of this is the fact that the number is a hard threshold. 21 is a hard number. If you’re over it, you’re out. You can’t draw another card that has a negative number on it. This is what allows the game to use the same number for tracking the benefit and the risk.

Bad Hits

Another very common way to implement PYL is to have it so every time you draw or roll or whatever, the result is either entirely positive or entirely negative. You draw a good card or you draw a bad card. In this sense, the action of drawing a card is both good and bad, but the result of it is not. Often, there is some specific use for the bad cards, and usually it piles up. Perhaps if you draw three of the bad cards, you have to discard everything you drew, good and bad alike. That still means that a card is either good or bad, but it at least gives some wiggle room. If you draw a good card, nothing has changed and you’re back in the same decision space as to whether to draw another card, but if you draw a negative card then the math shifts. This leads to a lot of easy outs for the player. If they draw a bad card, that’s when they start thinking, and before that they can just draw to their heart’s content.

Cost and outcome

There is a way to make push your luck be all positive outcomes, in a sense. Sometimes, the negativity is a constant, and the benefit is where you’re pushing it. If you have to pay a dollar to draw a card, then of course you’re hoping to draw a good card. Maybe it’s a set collection game and you’re hoping to draw another red card. But you draw blue. Which isn’t bad, you can use the blue card elsewhere, but it’s not what you want. Maybe the game lets you draw another card without having to wait until your next turn, but it costs you 2 dollars this time. Are you going to keep pushing your luck, hoping to draw the right card? This is an interesting version of PYL, and I could see some people not describing it as such, but I think it is. The fact that you’re hoping for something and that it’s risky is what makes it push your luck. I think the idea of limited actions is also important here. If you can just wait until your next turn, then you aren’t pushing, you’re waiting patiently. There needs to be some impetus to do it now. Games that let you reset in some way also do this. Rerolling your dice in yahtzee is pushing your luck. Sure, if they aren’t doing anything now then you’re not paying much of a cost, but if there’s some very low scoring thing you can do, then yeah, rerolling is costing you that opportunity in order to give you something new.

Conclusion

I’m sure I’m missing some, but this is what I could come up with. I think there’s a lot of unique ways to look at push your luck, so I encourage you to find some of your own. Feel free to comment with one!