Yora
2013-05-23, 03:28 PM
Prophecies are a staple of fantasy stories and there are countless examples that even include characters who are destined to perform certain heroic deeds.
I think in a story that just puts a really major strain at my willingness to suspsend my disbelieve and it cheapens the achivements of the hero if there never really was any chance for failure anyway. But in an RPG it doesn't work at all because the GM does not yet know what will happen. And if he constantly interferes with the descisions the players make and the rolls of the dice, the players won't have much fun simply acting out what has already been decided for them.
Another problem is that in many games, especially D&D, there are all kinds of spells and powers that can predict the future or provide accurate information about the present or past. Spells that simply tell you what happened or even just confirm or deny any suspicion you might have a enough of a nuisance, but again the GM still does not have any ideas what will happen in the game.
Though that is actually not completely true. The GM does have a pretty good idea what will quite probably happen.
And I think this is where you can build on to have prophecies and fate that both add something to the game, but don't make playing it pointless as well.
Everyone can make lots of incredibly accurate predictions all the time, based on simple laws of nature, past experience, and knowledge of what they plan to do if nothing interferes in a major way. While writing this, I can already tell for sure that there will be a new thread on the forum in about 10 minutes, and that the starter of the thread will be me. I also can predice with a very high certainty that people will reply to the thread. Predicting that there will be a total of 5 to 40 replies in the next 3 days is a bit more uncertain, but the chances are still quite high. But I can't see the future, I am just making predictions based on my knowledge.
Now prophecies tend to be made by gods or very powerful and ancient spirits. Beings that know a lot of things, can see much more than any normal person, and also have far more experience. These beings can make predictions that may reach far more into the future, include far more details, and still have a far greater chance of comming true than any prediction a regular mortal could make. (Also, the larger the amount of participants and the longer the duration, the more statistical probabilities add to the equation, making the overall outcome even more certain.)
What does that mean in practice? "In the year 914, in a village at the base of the dwarven palace, a boy will be born with blue hair who on his 23rd birthday will slay the Necromancer General of Doom with Blue Crystal Sword" is a prophecy that would be way too detailed to be a likely event, based on things that have been set in motion generations earlier. Those are bad prophecies that would be plain railroading and already tell exactly what will happen later on. Even a really wise and perceptive being couldn't make such a prediction and be correct.
However, it does not seem too far fetched to make a prophecy like this: "When the kingdom falls into the hands of the merchants, a dark priest will rise from obscurity and create an evil dictatorship. His successors will rule until the heir of a farmer will lead the commoners in rebellion." Maybe there is an evil cult that already is setting into motion it's plan to gain power by nudging wealthy merchants into highly prophitable deals that will destabilize the government. Given the strength of the government and the morals of the merchant class, it might not be a big stretch to assume this plan will succeed in bringing down the government allowing the cult to take over. However, some of the cults practices will not sit well with the traditional values of the commoners, and it has always been the wealthy farmers who have been the leaders of the commoners in rebellions against the government. The entity making the prophecy may know enough about the leaders of the cult to be convinced that they will eventually cause the commoners to rebell, but won't have the power to win such a fight. It's a reasonable assumption based on things most people don't know and only the powerful being having more than just a fraction of the details.
Who exactly will be the leader of the rebellion and what village he will be completely random. But it also really doesn't matter in the overall things. The being might even include a predction which village it may be, based on past experience which village has always created the worst troublemakers. (Otto von Bismarck 1888: "War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.") This way you can make prophecies and it will be really easy to make adjustments as the PCs are doing unexpected things, and it won't seem that you are simply railroading the whole thing.
With Fate it is really quite similar. I think the terms a a bith mushy and I'm not a naitve speaker, but the word Destiny always seems to imply knowing exactly what will happen and in what way, while Fate has more associations with being trapped in a greater series of events without the ability to make a meaningful difference. By this definition, destiny is way too ridgid to work in an rpg. But you can work a lot with fate. Based on how the hero thinks and has always behaved in the past, and how the villain thinks and has always behaved in the past, a god, spirit, or just very wise person, might gain the knowledge that it will be the heroes fate to attack the villains stronghold. They simply know that the hero won't be able to just stand by and watch the villains evil deeds for long before he will take action to stop him. The hero might still deny it, but sometimes other people just know someone better than they do themselves. And if it so happens that the hero is a lot more powerful than any of the villains minions, it becomes justified that it is not only fate that the hero will attack the villains castle, but also that the two will have a fight to the death. Since there isn't really anything to stop him other than the villain himself.
While I think the greeks had a very fatalistic and deterministic concept of fate (or destiny) which a person just can't escape, the Germanic concept was a more uncertain one. In the idea of the Wyrd, most actions and descisions you ever do won't have any real impact in the greater sceme of things. Red socks today or blue socks? First feed the chickens, then feed the pigs? In theory, every moment there are infinite numbers of possibilities what could happen, but in the greater sceme of things, the outcome will always be the same anyway. However, sometimes there are moments in which a single person with a single descision can make a huge difference. So while in theory every descision and action leads to an infinite number of options, only a very small number of these will actually make a meaningful difference. And every poweful being could make predictions about a person only up to these crossroads in their life, or their fate.
Often you have oracles make prophecies that go like "If you stay couragous, you can still achieve victory, but if you let doubt cripple you you will die." These are the kinds of prophecies that will work very well in an RPG. Because they only predict that an important moment will come, but can't yet say what exactly will happen. And that's also what a GM can say for sure. That there will be a crucial moment in the campaign at some point, and also where it will take place and who will be involved. But the final outcome is still open. Even if in 95% of cases it is foregone conclusion that the heroes will win the day, there is still a huge difference if the GM tells them ingame that they can't fail because the outcome has already been decided.
What do you think about this? Both in the theoretical concept I described, as well as in possible applications of it in actual campaigns and adventures.
I think in a story that just puts a really major strain at my willingness to suspsend my disbelieve and it cheapens the achivements of the hero if there never really was any chance for failure anyway. But in an RPG it doesn't work at all because the GM does not yet know what will happen. And if he constantly interferes with the descisions the players make and the rolls of the dice, the players won't have much fun simply acting out what has already been decided for them.
Another problem is that in many games, especially D&D, there are all kinds of spells and powers that can predict the future or provide accurate information about the present or past. Spells that simply tell you what happened or even just confirm or deny any suspicion you might have a enough of a nuisance, but again the GM still does not have any ideas what will happen in the game.
Though that is actually not completely true. The GM does have a pretty good idea what will quite probably happen.
And I think this is where you can build on to have prophecies and fate that both add something to the game, but don't make playing it pointless as well.
Everyone can make lots of incredibly accurate predictions all the time, based on simple laws of nature, past experience, and knowledge of what they plan to do if nothing interferes in a major way. While writing this, I can already tell for sure that there will be a new thread on the forum in about 10 minutes, and that the starter of the thread will be me. I also can predice with a very high certainty that people will reply to the thread. Predicting that there will be a total of 5 to 40 replies in the next 3 days is a bit more uncertain, but the chances are still quite high. But I can't see the future, I am just making predictions based on my knowledge.
Now prophecies tend to be made by gods or very powerful and ancient spirits. Beings that know a lot of things, can see much more than any normal person, and also have far more experience. These beings can make predictions that may reach far more into the future, include far more details, and still have a far greater chance of comming true than any prediction a regular mortal could make. (Also, the larger the amount of participants and the longer the duration, the more statistical probabilities add to the equation, making the overall outcome even more certain.)
What does that mean in practice? "In the year 914, in a village at the base of the dwarven palace, a boy will be born with blue hair who on his 23rd birthday will slay the Necromancer General of Doom with Blue Crystal Sword" is a prophecy that would be way too detailed to be a likely event, based on things that have been set in motion generations earlier. Those are bad prophecies that would be plain railroading and already tell exactly what will happen later on. Even a really wise and perceptive being couldn't make such a prediction and be correct.
However, it does not seem too far fetched to make a prophecy like this: "When the kingdom falls into the hands of the merchants, a dark priest will rise from obscurity and create an evil dictatorship. His successors will rule until the heir of a farmer will lead the commoners in rebellion." Maybe there is an evil cult that already is setting into motion it's plan to gain power by nudging wealthy merchants into highly prophitable deals that will destabilize the government. Given the strength of the government and the morals of the merchant class, it might not be a big stretch to assume this plan will succeed in bringing down the government allowing the cult to take over. However, some of the cults practices will not sit well with the traditional values of the commoners, and it has always been the wealthy farmers who have been the leaders of the commoners in rebellions against the government. The entity making the prophecy may know enough about the leaders of the cult to be convinced that they will eventually cause the commoners to rebell, but won't have the power to win such a fight. It's a reasonable assumption based on things most people don't know and only the powerful being having more than just a fraction of the details.
Who exactly will be the leader of the rebellion and what village he will be completely random. But it also really doesn't matter in the overall things. The being might even include a predction which village it may be, based on past experience which village has always created the worst troublemakers. (Otto von Bismarck 1888: "War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.") This way you can make prophecies and it will be really easy to make adjustments as the PCs are doing unexpected things, and it won't seem that you are simply railroading the whole thing.
With Fate it is really quite similar. I think the terms a a bith mushy and I'm not a naitve speaker, but the word Destiny always seems to imply knowing exactly what will happen and in what way, while Fate has more associations with being trapped in a greater series of events without the ability to make a meaningful difference. By this definition, destiny is way too ridgid to work in an rpg. But you can work a lot with fate. Based on how the hero thinks and has always behaved in the past, and how the villain thinks and has always behaved in the past, a god, spirit, or just very wise person, might gain the knowledge that it will be the heroes fate to attack the villains stronghold. They simply know that the hero won't be able to just stand by and watch the villains evil deeds for long before he will take action to stop him. The hero might still deny it, but sometimes other people just know someone better than they do themselves. And if it so happens that the hero is a lot more powerful than any of the villains minions, it becomes justified that it is not only fate that the hero will attack the villains castle, but also that the two will have a fight to the death. Since there isn't really anything to stop him other than the villain himself.
While I think the greeks had a very fatalistic and deterministic concept of fate (or destiny) which a person just can't escape, the Germanic concept was a more uncertain one. In the idea of the Wyrd, most actions and descisions you ever do won't have any real impact in the greater sceme of things. Red socks today or blue socks? First feed the chickens, then feed the pigs? In theory, every moment there are infinite numbers of possibilities what could happen, but in the greater sceme of things, the outcome will always be the same anyway. However, sometimes there are moments in which a single person with a single descision can make a huge difference. So while in theory every descision and action leads to an infinite number of options, only a very small number of these will actually make a meaningful difference. And every poweful being could make predictions about a person only up to these crossroads in their life, or their fate.
Often you have oracles make prophecies that go like "If you stay couragous, you can still achieve victory, but if you let doubt cripple you you will die." These are the kinds of prophecies that will work very well in an RPG. Because they only predict that an important moment will come, but can't yet say what exactly will happen. And that's also what a GM can say for sure. That there will be a crucial moment in the campaign at some point, and also where it will take place and who will be involved. But the final outcome is still open. Even if in 95% of cases it is foregone conclusion that the heroes will win the day, there is still a huge difference if the GM tells them ingame that they can't fail because the outcome has already been decided.
What do you think about this? Both in the theoretical concept I described, as well as in possible applications of it in actual campaigns and adventures.