Sandbox / Draft Your Luck

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Maths: I was inspired to write this after seeing that Blackjack, a classic example of this, needs tropes. I'll continue to experiment with the new folderization. This feels like it's almost ready for the TLP. What do other people think?
Nona: Looking good to me!

• Title: Push Your Luck
• Alternative title: Press Your Luck

Draft

Laconic: A mechanic where you can choose to keep your current gains or risk them for additional gains.

Many games have you roll dice (or draw more cards or something similarly random) to determine what kind of benefit you'll get. When Push Your Luck is in play, you have the option to keep rolling dice for additional gains. However, if you meet a certain condition, you'll "bust" and lose some —if not all — of your gains as a penalty.

In most cases, in a form of Diminishing Returns for Balance, each successful "roll" increases the likelihood that the next one will make you bust. Games that don't have it tend to make the probability of busting constantly high (e.g. "Roll a d6 as many times as you want. You bust if you get a number below 5") or cap the number of rolls you can get.

When done well, this creates a lot of tension when deciding if you want to stop. However, games also tend to take steps to keep busting from being too frustrating — those are not just Anti-Frustration Features, but also help nudge players towards taking risks instead of playing it too safe. This is why many games only take away part of your gains instead of everything. Games where you do lose it all tend to be short, or make each individual push-your-luck instance less impactful so you aren't completely screwed if you get unlucky or make one bad call. Some games also feature Luck Manipulation Mechanics.

While the luck involved is obvious, this mechanic can be more skill-based than it seems at first — a skilled player will have a better idea of when to stop and when to take calculated risks.

While this is primarily a board game trope, it also shows up in various video games.

Examples

Card Games — Collectible

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Ad Nauseam lets you draw as many cards as you want, but for each one you draw, you lose life equal to its mana value. If you get too greedy, you can die to it, or at least make it relatively easy for your opponent to finish you off.
  • Push Your Luck, an Attraction from the Self-Parody set Unfinity, has you play a Blackjack-like mini-game when you visit it: you reveal cards until you decide to stop. If the total mana value of the cards revealed this way is 7 or less, you get a Teddy Bear token, and if you get exactly 7, you get to give the teddy haste and make it gigantic, and then replace Push Your Luck. On the other hand, if the total exceeds 7, you bust and get nothing.

Card Games — Traditional Deck

• Blackjack: You make a wager, then get two cards face-up, and can opt to receive more cards. The goal is to get a score of 21, or if not, a higher score than the dealer (each player is in competition with the dealer, not the other players). If you get 22 or higher, you've gone bust. If both you and the dealer go bust, the dealer still takes your wager.

Card Games — Dedicated Deck

• Coloretto: Take one of the current rows of cards, or draw a new card and add it to a row (hoping you can take a better set of cards later).
• Incan Gold: Head back to camp with the treasure you have now, or press on to collect more treasure (hoping you don't lose everything).
• LLAMA: Quit the round and accept the points currently in your hand, or draw another card (hoping to play all your cards, or at least be stuck with fewer points).
• Lost Cities: You score points by completing expeditions (playing a series cards of the same color in ascending numerical order). Expeditions that you never start are worth zero. But starting an expedition costs 20 points, so you have to play at least 20 points worth of cards just to break even. Furthermore, handshake cards must be played before the first scoring card, and double, triple, or quadruple the final score (positive or negative).

Dice Games

• In Can't Stop, you roll four dice and put them into configurations determining how to move your progress markers. You can keep rolling for as long as you want, but if a roll doesn't result in any legal plays, your turn ends and you lose all your progress from that turn.
• Cosmic Wimpout: Bank your current score, or roll again hoping to roll dice that will improve your score. You lose it all if you don't score anything with your rerolled dice.
• Farkle: Bank your current score, or roll again hoping to roll dice that will improve your score. You lose it all if you don't score anything with your rerolled dice.
• Pass The Pigs: On your turn, you throw the pig-shaped dice and hope they end up in a scoring position. If they do, you decide if you want to settle for those points (passing the pigs to the next player) or to keep rolling. If you roll "pig out" — one pig on the right flank, the other on the left flank; a fairly frequent result — you lose all the points accumulated in that turn.

Strategy Games — Eurogames

• Abyss: The Kraken expansion adds the "Sanctuary" locations. Their value is determined by a small push-your-luck game: you draw cards from the loot deck that can give Influence Points and other bonuses. You can stop at any time. If you get two copies of a card, both are discarded, which loses you their points, but not their other bonuses.
• Carcassonne: The "Hills and Sheep" expansion allows players to add sheep to their fields for additional points. Players with sheep can either draw randomly to get more, or cash them in. However, if a player draws a wolf, all the sheep in the field get scared off, resetting the count to zero.
• Living Forest is a Deckbuilding Game that uses push-your-luck to determine how many cards you'll draw per turn: you keep drawing resource-providing Guardian Animals until you either decide to stop or you "bust" by reaching a net three solitary animals (a gregarious animal cancels out one solitary animal). If you bust, you lose one of your actions for that turn. There's a Luck Manipulation Mechanic in the fragments, which can discard any animal and cancel all its effects for that turn. This can undo a bust. The titular creatures in the Kodama expansion were designed as an incentive to push your luck — one kodama card is useless, but after that point the benefits get better and better the more you draw.
• In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, you draw chips from your bags and add them to your pot. Adding more ingredients tends to increase how much your potion will be worth. However, if you draw too many cherry bombs, your pot will explode. If this happens, you have to choose between gaining points and coins at the end of the round instead of getting both benefits.
• In Ticket to Ride, drawing additional ticket cards later in the game functions this way. You are required to keep at least one of the three ticket cards you draw. If you're lucky, then the cities of at least one ticket card will already be part of your network, or will be easy to add to your network. If you're unlucky, then all of the ticket cards will be extremely difficult (or even impossible) to complete, and the point value of the one you keep will count against your at the end of the game.
• Wingspan: The Asia expansion adds some activated predator powers with push-your-luck elements:
  • The powers of Brahminy Kite, Forest Owlet, Purple Heron and White-Throated Kingfisher all start a dice-rolling mini-game. You can choose to roll up to three times. For each time you get the desired result, you get to cache a food for one point apiece. However, if you don't get the desired result, you have to stop rolling dice and return all the food for the previous rolls that turn.
  • The Eurasian Eagle-Owl and Eurasian Marsh-Harrier have powers somewhat reminiscent of Blackjack: you can draw up to 3 cards. As long as you stop before their total wingspan reaches 110 cm, you get to tuck them for a point per tucked card. Otherwise, you bust. The cards are discarded and you get nothing.

Live-Action TV — Game and Reality Shows

• Press Your Luck: A player with earned spins may opt to roll for a cash prize or pass their remaining spins to an opponent. If they choose to spin and get a Whammy, their account is reset to zero, and four Whammies cause an instant loss.