Dungeon Master Forum

hear everyone talk about how Friday 13 is an unlucky day, but have never noticed any event that was unlucky. does anyone have a bad luck story to confirm this, or is it a bunch of nonsense. while out cutting the grass this morning, i found a perfect 4 leaf clover while pushing the mower. i'm now confused

I guess bad luck is nothing you wait for to happen it just happens when you are not careful or least expect it. Probably that is.
Anyways, maybe it is also more of a mystical thing: On day x you should not do y.
prolly people agreed on something over the course of time to worship gods or what not.
like in china there is no fourth floor in some buildings. 4 being an unlucky number over there, meaning death also.

About mirrors: 7 years of bad luck? heard these mirrors where so expensive that you had to save money 7 years to afford one.. mix in magic or the occult and you get all sorts of rules etc.
murphy´s law as a sidekick
Then there the phenomenon that if you had a light car crash with lets say a ford fiesta green colour, you tend to see ford fiesta green colour everywhere. Conciousness filters what you perceive.

You can certainly hone some cautionness or perception in several ways. What some believe or don´t is entirely up to them, of course.

I do not know how to adequately address this post So are you happy having found the clover?

If anything it is usually lucky. I think things went both ways today, some lucky, some not, which equally out to a usual day!

Friday 13th surely counts to the self-fullfilling prophecy-group

I didn't even realize what day it was. And nothing happened. Not that anything would have if I realized what day it is... unless maybe I thought too much about it and brought it on myself.
I guess I agree with Bit. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

I was born on Friday 13!

Yesterday, the Czech ice-hockey team lost with Sweden in the semi-finals of the Ice Hockey World Championship!

Thus it's a draw.

Happy FT birthday! How many Friday the 13th's old are you?

LOL, thanks. It was in June 1980. In your free time, you can count how many Friday 13s have passed since then.

37! (go on, prove me wrong)

But, but, but... what about Gambit37?

Gambit only proves my point MORE!

(Somehow. I don't know how.)

First, happy birthday Jan.

I don't believe in luck in the sense that it's something to be attributed to faith or superstition. Although I'm sure I've said "That was lucky" on many occasion. That's just an utterance of a shared colloquial conscious.

I've always thought of luck as simply random chance. An outcome of probability, or even possibility. Reading the Wikipedia entry on it though has given me pause for thought!

And what *about* Gambit37? Maybe I'm the universal conduit for bad arithmetic and lucky outcomes?

(it's not my proper birthday, it's my FT birthday; but thanks anyway )

Looks like I totally missed the point above!

Meet a nice lady yesterday. We kind of hit it. Talked for an hour. GOT. HER. NUMBER.
So for me Murphy got his day off, he was busily boning Lady Luck.

Congrats!

Oh, wow, congratulations, Tomi! And good luck!

Is that why you have a new (and very very wrong) avatar?

This is how he impressed her.

Tiggy and Mophus are just playing chess. And Mophus is winning.

Friday the 13th was a very unlucky day for a small group of people a very long time ago (templar knights) as I'm sure you all know..

There is often practical reasons behind the statements of unlucky things. Like opening an umbrella indoors.. chances are you'll take someones eye out. in doors in many places can be a bit cramped to open such a thing and if anyone is near to you.. well injury is likely. Broken mirror and 7 years bad luck relates to the fact that the average persons wages (at the time of the superstitions origin) were such that it would take 7 years to pay for a mirror because of the complicated process and the silver backing. A black cat crossing your path being bad luck or a bad omen.. well if it did so at night (less visible) and pulled the typical nonsense a cat does tripping up humans.. well you could leave the incident in a bad way depending on how you fell and what you fell on. Add to that the later (false) idea that witches would use black cats as familiars and would watch their future victims this way.. (likely a scare tactic based on the existing idea of black cats being bad luck),walking under a ladder.. well that's a no brainer..

There are a few nonsensical things which are not so much bad luck as the possibility that your soul would be taken from you. Like spilling salt, you need to throw some over your left shoulder to feed the demons.. well salt was not cheap so it's not about conserving it. Or when passing by a pole or tree that separates two travelers, they are supposed to say "bread and butter" because it distracts the demon making them think of such a tasty treat.. That by being separated one of you would be prone to having their soul taken.. 0_0.. and so on and so on..

I like to collect these things and try to find their origins, or if there are none written.. try to think of why they may have come to pass.

So do I believe in bad luck.. no.. not really. "No fate but what we make" is more my line of thinking.. when you're looking for trouble you're likely to find it, and like any obsession, it can seem so much more to you, than to the casual observer. Sandie has a fear of friday the 13th due to a handfull of incidents.. and I must admit that my birthday has had a balancing effect over many years where the more good happens on that day, there is a balancing factor that something else bad would happen to even it out. When a theme happens enough times.. you begin to feel as though there is some reason for it.. and then try to justify something that probably isn't there.

really, it's just another day, someones cat, a shame the mirror is busted, or a reason to pay more attention to where you are going..

I thought a black cat crossing your path was good luck?

cowsmanaut wrote:Friday the 13th was a very unlucky day for a small group of people a very long time ago (templar knights) as I'm sure you all know..

well, I don´t. Should I google it or are you willing to explain a bit more?

In 1307, on Friday the 13th (I think it was in September or October), the French king Philip ordered many Templars to be arrested and their properties to be taken by the king's man ("nationalised" or given to more "loyal" people - it's always about money). Many Templars were tortured and then burned in Paris. It marked the beginning of the end of the Templars. Since then, Friday the 13th has been viewed as a "bad luck day".

I suppose you can read more somewhere on the Internet - try Wikipedia as usually, lol.

aha. Thanks

yes, they had essentially started a banking system that made them a lot of money. it was a way of transferring money that meant not being robbed in transit. Much the way things are done now. Because of this amassed wealth they gained in power and so it was that one of their clients decided to do away with them and take their money. They did that by accusing them of such horrible acts (at the time) that no one would rise to their defense for fear of being accused of the same. Things like devil worship, buggery, and all sorts of things against god and the church bla bla.. They were forced to confess, and they did, but when taken forth to publicly admit to their "sins".. they instead used that forum to tell people of their innocence. This embarrassed the accuser and he had their leader burned at the stake in retribution. This whole event I think took more than a day to carry out.. but the friday the 13th was the day they were all rounded up. Their accuser had managed a plan to have them all intercepted at the same time so none could warn the others. This was the first evidence of friday the 13th being a bad day.. the first written reference to friday the 13th being an actual unlucky day didn't happen until a 100 or so years later I think.. I'd have to look it up again though..

This thing about the templars was mentioned briefly in Dan Browns book the Davinci code, and has had a few mentions in other documentaries.. which is why I figured that most people would know if it.. due to it's popularity.

Also, Ameena, as I was the owner of a black cat who was the most lovely animal in the world and really my best friend.. I would agree with you.. however, historical references to black cats are usually negative

Ahhh no wait, look it's a cultural thing, down to you being over there on the other side of the Atlantic .
Behold, a quote - "In Great Britain, black cats are a symbol of good luck.", from the following Wiki page...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_cat
Though it doesn't actually suggest why black cats are good luck over here as opposed to being bad luck over there in America (and presumably Canada)...

Black cat is definitely a symbol of bad luck over here, too. Though I don't know why. The British thing is perhaps because you drive on the other side of the road?

Lol dunno. Maybe it just depends on the situation or something, /shrug. There seems to be a whole list of circumstances under which black kitties mean either good or bad luck. I suppose it's jut one of those things that's sort of grown and mutated over the centuries until it has a whole host of different meanings ascribed to it.

it is a joy reading the posts
i found it odd that nobody mentioned the rabbits foot , hehe, so did the creators of DM believe it as well? most people believe in luck, to lose the lottery is bad luck, in this sense, luck is just simply a balance of numbers, the extreme odds is what creates the chance of luck. having no luck is benign, or drawn as a stright line. so i ask everyone, is luck considered to be karma?