You thought a wooden nickel was a pain in the ass (significant artefact).

Believed to have been originally produced by a powerful British Entropomancer – If in possession of a bad penny, any matched dice roll you make below your statistic / skill score results in a failure; any matched dice roll above your statistic / skill score results in a “comedy” botch. These botches are always non-lethal but painful, embarrassing, ironic, inconvenient or unlikely (banana skin anyone?).

Like a Wooden Nickel, the bad penny cannot be lost or given away as it will always return to you, accompanying a bout of bad luck that becomes progressively worse each time you dispose of it (up to death, I’m afraid).

If the penny is taken by someone when not offered however, (E.g. in your wallet when it is stolen) then the “curse” is transferred.

There is another interesting but risky alternative to get rid of it – the coin’s “bad luck” can be harnessed and released in a wave of entropy.

System: Bite your right thumb hard and rub the blood into the coins worn surface, then throw the coin carelessly with your right hand over your left shoulder incanting “Forty-two is no age to die”). Make a successful Soul roll.

Throw the coin far – because on a successful roll it will cause a cycle of steadily worsening disaster and may even drive the bad luck back onto you.

Eg: You throw the coin off a building and it strikes someone in the head, injuring them (1st). The Injured person falls, pushing a group of people into incoming traffic (2nd). Cars swerve to avoid them and cause a pile up (3rd). One car crashes into the building and cracks a gas main – gas ignites causing an explosion (4th). The explosion structurally weakens the building and the building collapses (5th).

Eg: You throw the coin in a bar and it lands in a biker’s beer with a plop showering his face in suds (1st). The nearest laughing patron is smacked squarely in the face for disrespect in a surge of drunken anger (2nd). A brawl erupts in the bar (3rd). Some idiot pulls a knife and a fist fight turns into a knife / chair / broken bottle fight (4th). The ruckus knocks over some beer into a live set amplifier, starting an electrical fire (5th).

At the end of the chaos the coin will be nowhere to be found. You are much more likely to encounter a bad penny again at a later date once you have possessed one.

Description: an 1861 British pre-decimal penny (no longer legal tender) with Britannica prominent on one side and the other worn smooth. It is tarnished is beyond polishing and it has a bend in it even the most robust vice can’t shift.