The Future is Blank!

[Robert A. Rodger]

I’m working on a game in which fate and destiny are very important to the setting (and for that matter, the rules). So I want to design a system to help GMs develop prophecies for their games.

The first thing I tried was a sort of mad-lib system, where you would randomly generate categories and then choose something more specific from that category and fill it into a framework of some sort.

That didn’t really work. You got really bizarre prophecies that even the most high priest (if you know what I mean) would think was whacked.

So, I returned to the original idea, which was a sort of tarot-like reading designed specifically for adventure gaming, where each card can suggests an action, a character, an object or a description. The GM would have to do a lot of interpreting, but especially with different layouts for different types of prophecies should have enough to go on to add unique prophecies to his game.

I’m using a standard 54 card playing deck for portability’s sake (including 2 jokers), and have read up on a lot of guidelines for fortune telling with playing cards. But I’m having a huge problem coming up with elements for each of the cards to represent. All of the existing guidelines seem poorly suited to RPGs, focusing on real world issues such as work, money and romance. While all of those would be valid for a character’s reading, it doesn’t help when you’re looking for a few good prophecies for player characters to participate in.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Please?

[Kergillian]

Hmm...

Everway should be the first place you look. The randomized system is all in the interpretation of art cards.

Still, nothing beats getting a good tarot deck. They vary in quality, though, so if you can get the chance to look at one before purchasing, you'll get a better idea if it gives you the right feel or not.

You can also look for an old Ravenloft Tarokka deck. The themes in this deck more closely match themes in RPGs, with the portability of a deck of regular playing cards.

[Mock]

If I understand you correctly, you are using the cards to develop a prophecy, which in turn becomes the plot arc for a session or a campaign? That's a cool idea--the "not so random plot generator."

You identified 4 general categories of card meanings--object, character, description, action. I might suggest a fifth, "event," which can allow you to describe consequences.

From those five, you might consider setting up subcategories (this sounds like your first idea, but bear with me) for each. For example:

Object
-Weapon
-Tool
-Artifact (statue, etc.)
-Treasure (sceptre, crown, jewel, etc.)
-Document (book, tome, etc.)
-Relic (kinda like artifact)

Character
-Enemy
-Friend
-Ancestor/Parent/Relative
-Descendent
-Nemesis
-Deity/Ghost
-Creature/Monster

Action
-Create
-Destroy
-Speak
-Write
-Defeat
-Befriend

Event
-Birth
-Death
-Collapse
-Disappearance

and so forth. The categories are purposely general since I don't know your setting, but you can alter them obviously to fit specific features of your setting, like deities and creatures (i.e. instead of "creature" you could have "Spitting Worm of Bal Hezoth" or something). Also, you might consider modifiers like "evil, good, wounded, dead, etc." to modify the "object" cards (e.g. if the evil sceptre of karrak is not destroyed, the spitting worm of bal hezoth will be born and blah blah blah).

Now, I don't know anything about fortune telling with cards, but I assume there is a systematic way to make sure that the fortunes can make sense in one respect or another. So, when you do a reading, you can construct a prophecy without ending up with whacked out ideas (I hope). This approach isn't entirely random, since it uses the as the mad-lib idea, although it still uses the categorization concept.

I hope I haven't misunderstood your question, so let me know if this is any help.

-Mock

[Robert A. Rodger]

Originally posted by Mock
Now, I don't know anything about fortune telling with cards, but I assume there is a systematic way to make sure that the fortunes can make sense in one respect or another. So, when you do a reading, you can construct a prophecy without ending up with whacked out ideas (I hope). This approach isn't entirely random, since it uses the as the mad-lib idea, although it still uses the categorization concept.

I hope I haven't misunderstood your question, so let me know if this is any help.


You understood perfectly. The prophecy becomes a plot-arch or true, meta-plot, in that it's laid over the adventure. Ideally, the GM can come up with a series of prophecies, and as the characters have their adventures the group discover elements that match the prophecies. The GM can then decide to follow up and incorporate more of that prophecy in the adventures.

I would rather that the catgeories be relatively vague, such as "monster" so that the GM can choose "Spitting Worm of Bal Hezoth" or "Horrible Dread Dreaccle" whichever fits the prophecy. Or, far more likely, to leave it as "monster" and then which ever monster the players encounter becomes the one foretold in prophecy. This is also why I want each card to have elements like, an adjective, so that you can come up with "toothesome monster" or "monster of light" which narrows it down somewhat, but is still vague enough for play.

The way Tarot reading works is each card has a series of interpretations, and they are layed out in an order such that each card represents elements to the question posed. A simple one is: this card represents you, this represents what's opposing you, this represents your past and this represents your future.

So, Mock, are you suggesting that each card represent a sub-category?

ANyone have suggestions on what categories should be included? Or a methodology for matching them with the cards?

Again, the actual Tarot doesn't quite suit my need, but I will look into Tarokka.

Thanks!

[indra]

I'll second the "real tarot" recommendation. If you want to make things easier on the GM (ie. yourself ;) you should develop NPCs and event ideas in advance, then choose Tarot cards (or sets of related cards) to represent them. You could let the player(s) draw their own cards, or you could arrange one in advance to limit how much improvisation you have to do during the game.

I covered very similar issues in the very first "Bag o' Nifites" article, except I called this system "Portents." ("Prophesy" was another matter entirely!)

I'm pretty sure the article is at:
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/nifties20jun01.html

L8r, --Dan

[indra]

Well, that will teach me to post faster! ;)

If you don't like the Tarot, you could just incorporate each character/event/whatever's assigned symbol(s) into random parts of the game: Random encounters, the ramblings of insance street people, dreams, etc. That's the core of the "Portents" system, hence the name.

L8r, --Dan

[Ian Absentia]

Originally posted by Robert A. Rodger
I’m working on a game in which fate and destiny are very important to the setting (and for that matter, the rules). So I want to design a system to help GMs develop prophecies for their games.
Here's an idea just off the top of my head -- a little raw, but see what all of you can make of it.

Why not put your players to work and have them create their own self-fulfilling prophesies? We're familiar with games that feature "plot points" which allow a player to assume control of the outcome of a situation or to temporarily take control of the plot. Let's borrow a leaf from these games.

Very loosely, have the player whose character is the subject of the prophesy draw X cards (X being the number of cards the GM deems suitable, and assuming that each card in the deck has at least a general divinitory meaning assigned to it), noting the order in which they were drawn. Begin (or resume) play.

As the campaign proceeds, when the prophesied character is faced with a dilemma that the player interprets as matching the divinitory meaning of the first drawn card, he may play that card to "trump" the situation and declare the outcome as he wishes. Play then resumes and the player is on the lookout for a situation that matches the meaning of the second card, and so on and so forth. The player is motivated to actually seek out situations that match the prophesy because the character is guaranteed a desired outcome as long as a valid match can be argued. The player is also not hidebound to adhere to a railroaded plot because he's the one interpreting otherwise normal situations as fulfilling the prophesy. The GM is free to run a normal campaign regardless of the prophesy, though he himself may be inspired to format a general plot suggested by his intrepretation of the cards. Eventually, the player of the prophesied character gets down to his last card and has to decide for himself how climactic he wants his character's prophesy to be.

I can foresee a few potential problems with this plan. What do you do with a player who just sits on his cards? ("Hey, I can't die if my prophesy is unfulfilled, right...?") What about players who play their cards too frivolously just to get the prophesy over with? What if the final prophesy card suggests the eventual death of the character? Who would want to play that card? Should it be possible for other players to play the prophesy cards for the prophesied character? As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this idea is still a little raw.

Hrmm...intriguing,
~Ian

[Robert A. Rodger]

Ian, I really like that idea, although it probably won’t work for the game we’re using. (Though I would be interested in trying it in other games.) We’re already using cards as our action resolution mechanic, so I wouldn’t want to introduce new ones…

But, let me share a bit more of the big picture. The game is card-based. Each character gets his own deck of cards. One of the forms of experience rewards comes in increased karma, or higher ranked cards for the deck (or removal of negatively ranked cards).

I want the GM to develop a series of prophecies to use in the game (as well as getting them from supplements and sharing them with other players on-line). Elements of prophecies which are specific people are called “mantles” (and in fact can be passed on to other people or reincarnated). One of the benefits of taking on a mantle is that you have to fulfill the destiny. Which means that if you screw up (like are about to die too early) the Fates will contrive a situation to let you live.

But the Fates get really upset when they have to do that, and impose a serious karmic penalty… the character’s destiny becomes much harder to fulfill now. (Likewise, if the players agree to take on a mantle both in character and out, but then start opposing the prophecy in someway, there will be karmic hell to pay.)

Thus, characters that choose to participate in these prophecies get a vested interest in seeing them out. It would be similar if in D&D you only got full experience if you’re adventure had to do with the prophecy, and ½ or ¼ for anything else.

Now, even using Tarot cards, it’s reasonably easy to develop prophecies for individual characters, just like modern-world card reading. The problem I’m having is building the other prophecies… the prophecies of cities and empires, magic rings and horrible monsters… the big prophecies.

But that is exactly how I want the prophecies to interact with the game, Ian. The group has them to choose from and may incorporate them if they want. One example my writing partner came up with is “After the five rings of the sunken city are found, the Great Beast will be slain.” So knowing that, if the players stumble onto a magic ring, maybe it’s one of the five, inspiring adventures to find the others. Or maybe it means there will be a horrible beast that needs to be killed. Or maybe it’s one of four and the players should find the fifth…

[Andrew Martin]

One helpful resource is to use a tarot deck. Here's a url, to where there's a whole heap of tarot deck images: http://www.tarot.com/images/decks/.

The real cards are available from the US Games web site at http://www.usgamesinc.com/.

I hope that helps a bit.

[KenHR]

He already said Tarot won't suit his purposes, Andrew.

Robert, why is the creation of "larger" prophecies more difficult? Couldn't you create them just as you would a mantle? The only thing that would have to change would be the "scale" of the interpretation, no? Or am I misunderstanding?

I like the "five rings" example, btw. It's vague, has a great "aura" of epic-ness about it...everything a good prophecy needs. Especially the vague part.

Ken Rutsky

[Ian Absentia]

Originally posted by Robert A. Rodger
Ian, I really like that idea, although it probably won’t work for the game we’re using. (Though I would be interested in trying it in other games.) We’re already using cards as our action resolution mechanic, so I wouldn’t want to introduce new ones…That's okay. I'm currently poring over my review copy of Exalted and actually getting pretty excited about the game (almost as excited as I still am about Werewolf: the Apocalypse -- have I mentioned that this is my greatest guilty pleasure?). As I composed my reply to your initial post, I immediately got to thinking how this little prophesy mechanic I suggested would work wonderfully with either Exalted or Werewolf. I might just revisit this topic with a more developed system.

~Ian

[Mithras]

All I can suggest Robert, is to think in terms of campaign building blocks:

Conflicts - beasts, diseases, curses, tyranny, war, injustice
Figures - heroes, anti-heroes, a prince, farmer, sailor, etc.
Artifacts - rings, ships, wall of thorns, eye of Ra, etc.

The random order you draw from each of these decks gives you the plot of your prophecy.

[MetaDude]

Well, Robert, you've certainly captured my attention. I'm currently running a prophetic campaign involving a paladin who must destroy a trio of evil swords.

I've been having problems integrating new players. This is partly due to the prominent role the paladin plays in the story arc. The larger part of the problem is my inexperience at handling large groups - I'm used to dealing one or two, and occasionally three players. I'm also used to playing with close friends.

Lately, I've been having problems taking on the role of referee, because there are several new players in the gaming group. I cannot control who shows up, so I play with everyone or I DM everyone.

I see your idea as a great way to generate interest in a player, and create a sense of importance for the character. With the players themselves getting involved in the interpretation, I can let them create hooks which I can work with. This really helps, because I just don't know what makes half my players tick...

[Robert A. Rodger]

MetaDude,

One thing I did in a campaign that sort of led up to this was to ask my players to write down some moment or image they’ev always wanted to see in a game. Then to write down something they would like to see their character do (but not things their character wants to do). Finally, I passed out the image cards from Neverwhere and asked everyone to draw five that they liked or thought would be cool to see in a game.

Then I took all this home, shuffled it up, and made a prophecy out of it. I never got around to revealing it to the players or their characters, actually, but it was very neat whenever we got to one of the scenes they’d written about. The player, when he realized what was happening would perk up and the role-playing really improved as they tried to get to that moment, even if it wasn’t the best “in-game” thing to do right then.

It was a lot of fun, and a great way to get to know my players.

Ken,

The only reason the larger prophecies are harder is because I don't have a symbology developed for them yet. It's a real pain in the ass to create one from scratch, and I haven't been able to find resources that are appropriate to the needs of a RPG.

[NPC Whymme]

Robert, cool idea. I myself am working on a system where fate is important, but I hadn't thought about prophecies yet. My setting isn't epic fantasy, but one in which those large prophecies do not fit very well. Still, you set me thinking again...

Anyway, I'd suggest that for the world-spanning prophecies, you look at what makes a good campaign or story and extract the elements out of it. For that, you may want to study Polti's thirty-six situations (http://www.wordplayer.com/archives/poltisitu.01-12.html and further) or S. John Ross' Big List of RPG Plots (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/plots.htm). What may work is to assign each of Polti's thirty-six situations to a different card and then lay out a number of those cards to find out which situations are covered by the prophecy and how they are related.

Whymme

[NPC Not an NPC at all]

Mmm... Fascinating stuff. Prophecy is ripe for exploitation in games as a means of collaborative storytelling, but as far as I know no game has ever successfully tackled the problem of how to implement it. My own attempts have been too fraught with paradox, which is consistent with prophecy but difficult to unravel. The trick is (Methinks) to tread the fine line between deterministic scriptedness and Hyper-abstract symbolism that is open to all manner of interpretations. The modern astrological cold read is an example of the latter, really too ambiguous to be of any use.

You've got to blend the foreshadowing and anticipation with a bit of mystery and wonder. I think the trick is to have differing levels of interpretation for each card depending on suit, rank(?), order of reading, context and individual whim. There should be multiple possibilities arising from each card, I think this is a way to work in those scenes the players want to take part in.

A reading could predict something that is arbitrarily going to happen, It could map out a series of events in a specific order, it could predict events contingent upon other events, it could improve chances of success in a particular situation or it could provide ambiguous symbols that manifest as the story unfolds.

Another factor could be the prophetic disciplines of the interpreters; Runecasters could come up with a different set of interpretations to those attained by Hieromancers, which would in turn be different from those attained by Vision Seers, Arithmancers, Crystal Gazers, Rhabdomancers, Astrologers, Necromancers, Sorcerors (practitioners of sortilege, divination by drawing lots), Aeromancers, Botanomancers, Hydromancers, Aeromancers etc. etc. ad nauseam

(I personally like to know how the results were attained, does the card system represent something from the game world- Are the characters reading the cards or doing something else)

It all really depends on the kind of results you want to get.

So;

What do you want the prophecy to provide?

How deterministic do you want the results to be?

How does it fit into the setting?

It's such a big subject, and highly significant to what I am involved in at the moment. (See the Antediluvian Earth thread) I am fascinated to see how things pan out.

P.S. I like the idea of Mantles, it reminds me of the geasa of Celtic Myth, an ideal way of advancing the story thru internally consistent mechanisms. Likewise I am reminded of Herakles' service to King whatsizname during which he performed his twelve tasks. Also I am reminded of Beowulf's service to Hrothgar. Three precedents indicates numinous ineffability.

So it has been written.

[Robert A. Rodger]

Well, again, I think the key is that no one knows what a prophecy means until its been fulfilled. I’m convinced that by having a series of statements, the players will seek out the connection between the statements and the world they inhabit. You kind of have to find retro-active foreshadowing… the GM creates events based on what’s been foreshadowed, not foreshadowing based on events he know is going to happen.

A couple examples of this from my games: The players were exploring a ruined city. They found a temple that housed a huge ruby guarded by spectral dogs. They had a long day and decided to let it be. Later, they went to an oracle to get advice, completely to my surprise. The player asked, “what do we need to defeat our foe?” I didn’t even really know who the foe was, yet and off the top of my head answered, “The stone of Noas, the staff, and the southern wolf.” The players groaned and instantly assumed that the ruby was the Stone of Noas and they’d have to get it from the hounds. Sounded good to me. So it was.

Another time some other players went to a library to do some research. I decided the librarian was grumpy at being interrupted and needed something for him to be doing. So, he was making a copy of a book. The characters were later involved in a mystery in which a key piece of evidence was, coincidentally a book! So of course the librarian was in on it. I didn’t know this when it started, but it made sense and they thought it was decent attempts at leaving clues before they even knew there was a mystery.

This is what I want to provide GMs and players. A series of concepts which can be a springboard to improvisation and inspiration, whether the players know it or not. The prophecies are not particularly deterministic. In fact, most of them should include a “turning point” in which one of two outcomes is possible. But after the fact, they should all seem inevitable.