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Silus
2015-03-15, 12:47 AM
I'll try to make this quick as I don't have a lot if time.

So I'm working on backstory fluff stuff for a homebrew setting (details ain't important right now) and I want to include a sort of plot hook prophecy related to a section of the world (under heavy necromantic control, nothing lives there). The end result of fulfilling said prophecy would be freeing all the trapped souls and general destroying of the sorcerer ghost kings and queens.

Problem though is that I don't know how to go about writing a prophecy. Was thinking of using the song "Beauty of Dawn" by Malukah as a basis, but still stumped as how to proceed.

Two courses I could see going would be 1) have the prophecy but leave the meaning and implementation up to the PCs, or 2) have all the prophetic whatnot (the what and how) hammered out and concrete.

Anywho, assistance and advice is appreciated.

JNAProductions
2015-03-15, 01:15 AM
Speaking from limited experience? 1. 1 all the way. Players go off the rails hard enough without an explicit prophecy. With one in there? Good gravy it will get wrecked to shreds.

jaydubs
2015-03-15, 01:32 AM
I'm mostly theorycrafting here, since I've never used a prophecy in my campaigns. But here goes...

The balancing point on prophecies is keeping them accurate, while preserving player agency. If you're too vague, or the prophecy keeps turning out wrong,it's just not all that interesting. But if it already determines exactly how the story will turn out, why even bother playing?

To that end, I'd recommend leaving most of it vague so that you can adapt the campaign to it as you go. But throw in a few scattered, specific predictions so that the whole thing feels "fated." Just make sure those parts create either conflict or opportunity, rather than conclusions. In essence, the pre-determined bits create points in time for the PCs to make a big difference, rather than points in time they can't change.

For instance, don't say that the BBEG will be defeated on the 34th lunar solstice. Or that a man with a white crane will save the world. Or that the City of Light will burn beneath the red flag. Those are conclusions. They describe how certain parts of the story will end, and remove the ability of the players to really change how things turn out.

Instead, write something like - "the tomb of the Last King will open with the eclipse of 8412." Or "a child with the power to put the dead to rest will be born in the Seventh Vale." Then, the PCs have the prophecy as a point of guidance (they know about very specific opportunities). But their choices and success/failure aren't predetermined. Maybe they loot the tomb. Maybe they protect it. Or ignore it. Perhaps they manage to find the child and gain a weapon against the necromancers. But maybe the necromancers find the child first, and it's killed.

Essentially:

Prophecy as a quasi quest giver. :smallsmile:
Prophecy as railroad or deus ex machina. :smallfrown:

Silus
2015-03-15, 01:47 AM
I'm mostly theorycrafting here, since I've never used a prophecy in my campaigns. But here goes...

The balancing point on prophecies is keeping them accurate, while preserving player agency. If you're too vague, or the prophecy keeps turning out wrong,it's just not all that interesting. But if it already determines exactly how the story will turn out, why even bother playing?

To that end, I'd recommend leaving most of it vague so that you can adapt the campaign to it as you go. But throw in a few scattered, specific predictions so that the whole thing feels "fated." Just make sure those parts create either conflict or opportunity, rather than conclusions. In essence, the pre-determined bits create points in time for the PCs to make a big difference, rather than points in time they can't change.

For instance, don't say that the BBEG will be defeated on the 34th lunar solstice. Or that a man with a white crane will save the world. Or that the City of Light will burn beneath the red flag. Those are conclusions. They describe how certain parts of the story will end, and remove the ability of the players to really change how things turn out.

Instead, write something like - "the tomb of the Last King will open with the eclipse of 8412." Or "a child with the power to put the dead to rest will be born in the Seventh Vale." Then, the PCs have the prophecy as a point of guidance (they know about very specific opportunities). But their choices and success/failure aren't predetermined. Maybe they loot the tomb. Maybe they protect it. Or ignore it. Perhaps they manage to find the child and gain a weapon against the necromancers. But maybe the necromancers find the child first, and it's killed.

Essentially:

Prophecy as a quasi quest giver. :smallsmile:
Prophecy as railroad or deus ex machina. :smallfrown:

What of the sort of prophecy like "here's what happened, and here's a way to end it"? Like the prophecy ball doesn't get rolling until after the PCs accept the quest as opposed to "fate says this will happen".

jaydubs
2015-03-15, 02:05 AM
What of the sort of prophecy like "here's what happened, and here's a way to end it"? Like the prophecy ball doesn't get rolling until after the PCs accept the quest as opposed to "fate says this will happen".

Well, first of all, take it all with a grain of salt. As mentioned, I'm just thinking it out and theorizing - this isn't practical experience talking.

But I'd say that any retroactive, this is what happened in the past, is fine. Doesn't affect what the PCs can do or not do. It's not different than finding a history book or an old journal.

As for "here's a way to end it," should be good as long as it's "A" way rather than "The" way. If we go the GPS analogy, the prophecy is the suggested route. But there should be other roads. Taking a different turn doesn't land you in a lake, etc.

Also, the less far-reaching the prophecy, the more "this is what you must do" is acceptable. You must do X to complete Y totally optional sidequest is going to be a lot less restrictive than you must do X to finish the campaign.

NichG
2015-03-15, 02:19 AM
These can either be really cool or fall very flat. The 'classic' prophecy experience is one which has a very obvious but wrong interpretation that makes people really try to avoid it or do something about it, with a hidden, correct interpretation that is obvious in retrospect and feels satisfying both in terms of the outcome of the prophecy and in terms of making more sense than the wrong interpretation. Pulling this off in a dynamic game is very challenging. I don't have a generic recipe that will always work, but here are my thoughts on a possible attempt:

- Take advantage of the fact that players are forgetful - if you put in a few different prophecies at different points in the game then they'll only remember the one that ended up coming true. If they do remember the others, you have some chance that they'll just think 'those haven't happened yet'. You can't do this too often or it'll be obvious, but it at least gives you two or three attempts rather than just one. Its best if the different kinds of 'prophecy' take very different forms - e.g. one case is something read in an ancient ruin, another case is a mysterious comment from a deity during a Commune, and the third case is an off-hand comment by a time traveler.

- Be vague, but be vague in evocative and interesting ways. Allegory and metaphor are powerful tools here. If you refer to 'the Hawk' then it could be a literal hawk, an empire with a hawk on its flag, a person with the nickname 'Hawk', or even an artifact with a hawk carved on it. Having the prophecy use relational references is also a classic trick (e.g. 'the son of X' works well when X could have a son he doesn't know about - lots of people could potentially be his son).

- Use words that suggest conclusion rather than outcome, and avoid words that specify means. E.g. instead of 'X will defeat Y' or 'either X or Y will be killed' you can say 'X and Y will come to a final resolution'. Hinting at an obvious method and then having the non-obvious method happen is pretty classic.

- There are certain points in games which are more strongly driven by unpredictable player decisions than others. For example, you aren't going to be able to predict a player's specific combat actions, so try to avoid anything that would come into play during combat.

- Never, ever try to do this by just holding one pattern of events in your head. Instead, design around flexibility - think in broad strokes about the various forces moving through the world, and what they want or what they would do. At the very least, for each distinct entity in the prophecy you should have one public and one hidden party that it could refer to.

- Be aware of what the PCs don't know and what the PCs cannot know (because they haven't had any effect on the events of the game so far and so couldn't even have been figured out). Don't be afraid to change things the PCs cannot know. Be careful about changing things which are merely 'don't know' stuff, however.

- Have some of the prophecy already be fulfilled by the time the PCs hear about it, and just use the time delay between them hearing the prophecy and them hearing the fulfillment to create the illusion of predicting the future. For example, for a prophecy like 'the son of the dark one will be his undoing', maybe the prisoner who escaped from the dark one's tower and let the kingdom find out about the dark one's return to power was actually the dark one's son - and that revelation of information set into motion the whole thing to topple the dark one.

- One trick would be to create hidden explosive relationships between entities in the game world which cause things to happen merely if those entities are brought together even if not as a conscious or intentional action. Those tend to be good prophecy fodder, since people will be expecting the prophesized thing to happen due to their conscious actions and not because of the hidden fact about their nature. An example of this might be something like a case where a powerful artifact was split in two and the pieces embedded in two people. If they ever end up in the same room, the artifact will trigger its own rejoining regardless of what those people want.

- Have the prophecy be something that the PCs want to make happen, so that they actually take pains to make it come true.

Maglubiyet
2015-03-15, 09:05 AM
What of the sort of prophecy like "here's what happened, and here's a way to end it"? Like the prophecy ball doesn't get rolling until after the PCs accept the quest as opposed to "fate says this will happen".

As the hook, you could tie the prophecy to an item the PC's want or are researching. For example:

"The Crown of Jade was taken by the witch kings of old
To their restless death in in the land of cold.
He who sends the kings to their final rest
Will once again by the Crown be blessed."
(Sorry it's corny but the first thing I could think of.)

Then add a few lines about how they are to be laid to rest and all the happy freed souls, etc. Now you have a generic prophecy that doesn't necessarily involve the PC's unless they decide to retrieve that treasure.

Gritmonger
2015-03-15, 12:46 PM
You can be nonspecific and cryptic, using symbolic talk instead of direct addressing and naming names.

This is why a lot of "Nostrodamus" "Works" - it's because of vague language -

An instance from "The Dark Crystal" -
"When single shines the triple-sun/What was sundered and undone/Shall be whole;the two made one"

That's specific enough (referring to a specific time) while still being vague (the "what" in this is questionable, and left up to a lot of interpretation).

Also, you can take a cue from what happened after the prophecy was pronounced - one interpretation lead to the extinction (virtually) of an entire race, even though the absolute outcome wasn't a certainty, or even very detailed.

"When the river runs black and back to the mountains
The outlands will disgorge their dead to battle once more
And so scourge meets scourge
Until the grasses once more claim their own."

Nice and vague, hints at big battles, and a single event open to interpretation. Will the river actually do that? Will it instead be a massive migration of sea-creatures upstream, coloring the river black and making it *look* like it flows backward? What does the outlands disgorging their dead to battle mean? Actual undead? The tribes considered "dead" as in lost, or "dead" as in disgraced? What's the other scourge?

What are the grasses, and who will they claim? Vegepygmies coming for all the crops? The outlands (a grassy plain) reclaiming the dead they disgorged? The other scourge?

You can fill in pieces either through research until you (or the players) come up with an interpretation that seems really cool - and if it works right, your players will never feel railroaded, and they won't have been because they'd be driving the interpretation and the actions.

hewhosaysfish
2015-03-16, 08:38 AM
Have the prophecy be something that the PCs want to make happen, so that they actually take pains to make it come true.

When talking about prophecies in games with choices, I often end up thinking of computer RPG Morrowind.

In that game you are recruited by the Imperial Blades because your birthdate and star-sign match up with those of a particular prophesied hero, the Nerevarine. You are then instructed to find out the other prophsied signs of the Nerevarine and to go out and complete them, so that everyone with think that you are the foretold hero.

The end (if you play to the end of the plot) makes it clear the the entity that created the prophecy believes that you really are the Nerevarine but it's left unclear whether you did all those things because you were the hero all along or whether you became the hero because you did those things.

Segev
2015-03-16, 08:54 AM
I would personally have an idea of what the prophecy's fulfilment will look like, absent the PCs' intervention, and then be willing to throw it entirely out the window. Keep it vague enough that you can "reveal" how the prophecy was fulfilled by whatever the PCs do to thwart it, but how they still win because their victory is not in thwarting it but in getting what they wanted (possibly in spite of it).

Use the prophecy as a narrative excuse to have deus ex machinas in the form of coincidences and contrivances, as ways to allow players to make leaps to conclusions based on the prophecy which they would otherwise have to be very wary of.

They feel clever for "deciphering" it, they see their actions validating it, and yet they also are given their agency. Meanwhile, you, as GM, have a narrative excuse for a lot of things which would seem contrived otherwise. A prophecy has the advantage of, at least by one interpretation, allowing for contrivance since the prophet already knew it was going to happen.

It's the time-traveller boon: When the guy from the future says that Bob the College Dude wins the lottery next week, it doesn't seem nearly so contrived as if Bob just happened to win it. Especially if Mr. Future-Guy happened to give Bob the winning lottery numbers.

Same happens with a prophecy. IF it was prophesied that a man with golden hair would arrive to save the hero from certain doom, then it's a lot less contrived-seeming when he actually does than it would be if he just seemed to happen along out of nowhere.

Something like, "Thrice doomed, but thrice saved..." in the prophecy can explain away three deus-ex-machina rescues, for example.

goto124
2015-03-16, 10:16 AM
I would personally make a 'prophecy' that's supposed to be broken or rules-lawyered.

For example, 'no man can defeat me!' We've got a OP Sorceress here. What if there's a monster PC?

There's a trope for that...