3 Ways to Forsee III

The Future as Web (aka the Grand Destiny)
This view of the future isn't really a third model, but a complication of one of the other two.  It's just the idea that events have more than one cause and to change the future can be a complex undertaking.  Avoiding a negative future is more difficult than just assassinating one person.  Ensuring a good future equally involves chains of smaller events that have to happen or be avoided.

Trapped in History
I think his view of the future has become popularized, oddly enough, by seeing the future from the past.  In other words, time travel stories.  A character travels back in time and the problem becomes, not predicting the future, but how the choices that character makes interact with a future we already know.

In that sense Future as Web is most commonly related to a Future as Fate.  The events in the time traveler's future are inescapable because, well, that's our history.  But the Future as web isn't about that so much as a means used to prevent any change from happening.  Oh, you think you can stop WWII from happening just by killing Hitler?  Well, you actually killed a body double who was conspiring to replace Hitler.  Or, you miss your shot and make Hitler more paranoid and dedicated to his war aims.  If the Future as Web is used with the model of the future being fated, the layers of causes act as a buffer to any change to the future that's already known.

Alternate Histories = Future as Possible Paths
There are some examples of the opposite, though, basically any story where history as we know it is malleable.  This is frequently seen in time travel stories where something has been screwed up by the traveler and they need to make things right so the future happens as expected.  A familiar example is Marty McFly trying to get his parents to fall in love.  This is the Future as Possible Paths, because we see, even when Marty succeeds, he returns to a different present.  Again, Future as a Web is not in reference that he could change the future but the idea of the interconnectedness of all the causes that result in what will become the future.  It isn't as easy as just getting his parents in the same room, he has to deal with Biff, the principal, and the time crunch of scheduled events.

The Future that's Bigger than You
Because Future as Web is about something harder to change with many interconnected causes , it's usually about something bigger than any one person.  It is a kind of Grand Destiny.  Wars, the succession of Kings, great plagues, these are foretold.  To avoid destiny takes more than a single act.  The seer will still be affected by future events but this future isn't their personal fate (even with Marty, there's also the existence of his siblings hanging in the balance).  Future as a Web is less "how do I prevent the halfing from stealing my purse" and more "how do we ensure the Empress Dowager is dethroned?"

Mechanics
I think these Grand Destinies can come into play either as adventure hook prophecies that players hear, or when players desire to make a big change in the world and go to someone with sight of the future to give them guidance on how to achieve it.

Rather than a table here to generate particular Grand Destinies, I'll just say they should be things that happen in a sandbox but not require players to interact with them.  My post here looks at some possible examples and one way of handling them, escalating things over time if players don't get involved.  Contrary to my advice in the Future as a Possible Paths post, because these destinies are harder to avoid, I don't think they should be related so closely to things the PCs own or people they know.  That route leads to frustrating railroading.

Now, how you model predictions of these magnitudes depends on which of the two views of history you are using.

If Future is Fate, I think you can choose a destiny and several smaller trigger fortunes.  Then, use Zak's method of allowing players to say when a foretold event happens except that those smaller fortunes either a) have to happen in a particular order, or b) need to happen simultaneously.

Example:  The Empress Dowager will lose her throne when a feast is prepared but not eaten, a rope snaps as music plays, a crown rolls across a stone floor.

The PCs realize the heir apparent will be hung for the pleasure of the Empress and her court and wish to prevent it for their own reasons.  They interrupt the execution/banquet, manage to snap the noose, and roll the hereditary Great Crown they've recovered across the floor for all to see.

The courtiers and generals present are shocked and pivot to support the heir.

Here, the predictions become a kind of key to the prophecy; if players can arrange a situation where they all happen, then the prophecy comes true.

If the Future is Possible Paths, it becomes trickier (for the DM at least).  Because prophecies are just one possibility, players can just work against them to make them not happen.  There isn't the sense of "stickiness" or difficulty in working against destiny.  Here's an idea for a way to allow players to do what they want and still give that sense of the complexity of changing what is destined:

Usually players will be trying to prevent foretold events, because otherwise they could just stand back and let them happen.  For a particular event of great importance that players want to stop, come up with 4 smaller events or preconditions that will affect its likelihood.  Let these be discoverable by players-- wise npcs advise them, they find them in books, they see them in dreams.  When it comes time to see if players can prevent the destined event roll 1d6, 6 = yes.  Modify the roll by +1 for each of the smaller events that PCs managed to make happen.  I think I would make this transparent to players, to give them a sense that they are up against that die roll and destiny itself.  But allow players to come up with additional factors that would result in modifiers.

Example:  Prophecies say the Empress Dowager will rule for a 1000 years.

PCs learn that getting her generals against her will make a difference (+1), they learn that the Great Crown that true Imperials wear has been missing (+1).  They learn the heir apparent is secretly held captive in a tower (+1).  Coming up is an important political/religious ritual where the Imperial power is reaffirmed (+1).

They speak with the generals, even performing some tasks for them to win them over. They rescue the heir apparent and recover the crown. They plan to present him to the court on the ritual day. But, worried this won't be enough to shake the 1000 year reign, they decide to search for evidence of the unlawful way the Empress Dowager seized the throne and present it to all as a magical projection (+1).

That is enough, the heir apparent takes the throne. The prophecy has been avoided.

To liven it up, agents of the parties desiring the prophesied outcomes could actively work against the PCs-- the cultists wishing the World Plague to occur, the rebels desiring the Elf-Dwarf War.  If this works as I envision it, any time Players chafe at a grand prophecy could result in a whole mini-campaign of them trying to overturn it.

3 Ways to Forsee II

Future as Possible Paths
This kind of foretelling is the opposite of inescapable fates.  The future is an infinite number of paths stretching forward from Now.  Any time someone peers in to a crystal ball or has a precognitive vision they see the most likely future.   It will happen if everything remains unchanged, but there is plenty of time between now and then for things to change.

This might be a more modern view of the future-- a future of variables and probabilities. Future as an equation where the inputs are fuzzy and prone to change.

These kinds of visions of the future can be specific and visual, like dreams or scenes in the mind.  They could just as easily be vague like Future as Fate predictions, something like "misfortune will strike your friends" with the understanding that the misfortune could be avoided.  But, because Future as Fate can only give these vague kinds of predictions, why not be distinct and present visions of future possibilities as rich visuals.

This kind of foretelling is much more useful to players because it is about gathering information to help make choices.  Why find out a friend is going to die if you can't change it?  This vision of the future is more active and empowered.  Players find out about the future like scouting a foreign country.

A Mechanic
There won't be a single, elegant solution like Zak's for this kind of future because there are so many variables, but I think we can at least come up with some guidelines

Which Part of the Future to Show
Because the possibilities are open it becomes hard to decide what part of the future to even show.  How far ahead should be shown?  And what about physical distance from the seer's current location?

One thing to keep in mind is that if a future path depends upon decisions, each decision you assume for the players makes a particular path less and less likely.  It might be a good rule of thumb to either show the future as the outcome of one particular choice or show the future up until the next big decision point.  The first will help players decide if that is in fact the choice they want to make.  The second will prime them for the upcoming big choice, and hopefully build dramatic tension.
 
In general, though, a week ahead would seem quite far, a month probably the limit for things revolving around the PCs (See the next way to foresee for grander destinies).  As for physical distance, again a week's travel would seem far. But this still doesn't lay out what choices a vision of the future would show.

Probably the best guidance on what to show is to remember that players will want to use it to inform them.  So the PCs' present situation is a good starting point: 

The Players Have No Plans
If the players are in a safe place and have no particular plans it might seem odd that someone would be looking into the future.  But there are things besides the PCs themselves that grant visions.  A place might grant visions to those that sleep there.  Fevers, drug use, or magic items all might grant a glimpse of things to come.

If players have no particular plans, this kind of DM granted vision can essentially act as an adventure hook.  These may not be about choices so much because you won't be sure that players even want to get involved.  The choice is, in effect, this thing is going to happen do you want to stop it, or maybe take advantage of it?  But a vision that involves strangers or strange places will amount to the same thing as hearing a rumor.  To be more magical and interesting these visions should probably provide a glimpse of something happening to the PCs, their friends, or their belongings. Here is the simplest chart I can imagine to help you with this:

Example: Someone hated by the PCs is ravaging a familiar object out of greed.

You see the orc One-Eye who killed little Bobby the link boy last session.  He's in a 10'x10' room sweating as he stoops over something, hammering.  You see it now, it is the Great Crown you've been searching for.  He's hammering on it to get out the rubies and the beautiful piece of art is mangled before your eyes.

The Party is Heading on a Journey
For wilderness travel you can roll encounters and weather for a week ahead of time and relate that to players.  This will let them make decisions about what to bring and how to prepare for this particular journey.  Likely decision points might include which of several routes to use, or, after a dangerous encounter-- whether the party should even continue.

The Party is Heading into a Dungeon
A dungeon zooms things in considerably and it becomes difficult again to decide what part of the future to show. But there are a few focuses that players might be interested in knowing about.  You could either decide which of the following is most important for this dungeon, or roll randomly to determine which of these to show them:

1) A Terrible threat. Choose the most dangerous foe the dungeon holds in store for this particular party.  Show them fighting it and, if defeat is likely, show them getting slaughtered in vivid detail.  This is one of the few times you might impress on players the lethality of the game and the real possibility of death without them suffering the consequences. A party might take this as an opportunity to plan carefully to take on this foe, but they also might feel empowered to just run at the first sight of it, if they've already seen themselves getting slaughtered by it.

2) Many Challenges.  A Rocky-like montage of difficulties, especially terrain-based is another option.  Show the PCs using ropes, iron spikes, burning oil, string to navigate mazes.  This would basically serve as an overview to help players prepare.  In some ways it would function as the Pre-Mapped Dungeon, but the players don't necessarily know where the images they see are located within the dungeon.  It is also a way to show them many smaller scale challenges instead of a single large one.

3) Treachery.  A Preview of desertions and double-crossings from factions in the dungeon and/or hirelings.

4) A Dilemma or Big Choice.  There might be one particularly important choice in the dungeon, for example, releasing a bound demon or not, or starting up magical machinery.  The vision could show the choice being made in one way.

A Player Wants to Know the Outcome of a Particular Choice
While the archetype of those that can see the future is often about getting visions you can't control, I think it will be more interesting to everyone if the visions are useful to players.  For that reason, I don't see anything wrong in just asking the players involved "What are you interested in seeing?"  They might answer any of the things we've mentioned above ("I want to see what happens if we take the shortcut in the woods," or "I want to see who will betray me in the caverns.") or they may ask about turning the handle one the big, creepy door to the left.  This can essentially defang traps, but if your traps are set up more as obstacles anyway, knowing what happens won't necessarily tell the party how to get through the door safely.  Also, spells, magic items, and precognitive abilities will most likely have limitations on frequency of use that will prevent layers from avoiding all uncertainty.


The next way to foresee is really a subset of both these first models.  But the Future as a Web is different enough that I think it warrants a separate look.

3 Ways to Forsee

Like a lot of fantasy elements, how to implement foretelling the future in an rpg is complicated by the fact that there are multiple conflicting archetypes at play.  Let's try to tease those apart and work towards some simple but distinct mechanics.

In this case the origin of the competing archetypes is pretty easy to see.  Because we can't know the future any attempt to predict things will fall into two categories: becoming vague enough to make sure the prediction fits what actually happens or presenting predictions as possibilities which give you an out when things go completely differently.  We humans have actually established two different metaphors of time and the future that correspond to these tactics.

Future as Fate
One way of understanding the future is as an inescapable fate.  The fortune teller reads the cards, the seer the entrails, and no matter what you do the fate will happen.  In fact, your struggling against it will often ironically bring your fate about.

To reach this level of certitude, though, requires turning the dial down on specificity.  One way to do this is to be cryptic about actors.  You never make a prediction about someone-- King John, Tom, your sister Kate--  but about friends, shepherds, or important men.   These can be interpreted whichever direction you need: literal, symbolic, or even as a riddle for someone named Shepherd.  Another way to be less specific is to tap into universals that are likely to happen because they happen to all humans.  Romance, misfortune, sickness-- it happens all around us everyday.  Newspaper-horoscope-vague: "your efforts will be noticed," "a friendship is tested," etc.

If you give humans these two features in a prediction 1) common life occurrences happening to 2) no specific "who," it turns out our natural pattern matching software does a great job of making those predictions fit life.

A Mechanic
So how do we utilize this in-game?  Turns out Mr. Zak Smith has offered a way to do it in Vornheim.   A random fortune is rolled for on a chart.  These fortunes are all vague but intriguing.  Then players decide when to apply the fortune in play.  the DM can also decide to apply the fortune.  So it is presumably in the best interest for players to get the fortunes out of the way before the DM does because it will go easier on them.

Example: "A crown will roll across a stone floor."

The players find themselves in a 10'x10' room with an orc guarding a crown.  The player remembers the fortune, invokes it, and the DM decides the surprised orc drops the crown.  It rolls toward the party, who snatch it up and retreat without needing to engage in combat.

Now, if the player hadn't invoked the fortune then-- let's say the party gets the crown the old fashioned way, by killing the orc -- the fortune is still free for the DM to invoke.  The party is leaving the dungeon, running along a chasm pursued by trolls and the DM invokes the fortune.  The crown slips free from the character holding it and roll toward the chasm as the trolls close . . .

I think giving players the task of making predictions fit is brilliant for a lot of reasons.  It gives them agency, it keeps them engaged and paying attention looking for opportunities, and it gets them involved creatively.  And, like I mentioned above, this kind of pattern matching is something we humans are pretty good at, even new players should be familiar with horoscopes.

Some Concerns
I do have a few concerns with it as a mechanic, though, primarily that it sets the DM up to be an adversary.  I'm happy to make connections as DM, to tie coincidences together, but I'm uncomfortable with a mechanic that requires the tension of me being on the look out to apply the worst possible meaning of a fortune to players.

Another concern is that I've got enough stuff to remember without having to constantly be thinking about when to apply various players' fortunes.

Last and least, it uses a chart that is consumed in play-- I know most people prefer these, and that you can really have a list of fabulous results this way-- but I'm more interested in giving DMs a tool to create their own charts.  Especially because then you can also bring players in to the creative act at the table if you want to.

Addressing Concerns
Zak largely avoids my first concern, that of pitting DM vs.player, by making most of the fortunes in his table more complex than simple binaries, not clearly advantageous or disadvantageous.  So not, "a good friend dies" and it's between you and the DM to decide which of your friends is meant. In this way the fortunes become toys that invite both player and DM to get involved in the creative act.

But I wonder if the very act of making them less dangerous for the DM to enact makes them less interesting toys for the players to want to play with.  In other words, as a player would you pay someone to tell you "a crown rolls across a floor"?

There's not much I can think to do about the concern of requiring the DM to remember these.  Either limit the number of unresolved fortunes possible in play or make them solely the player's responsibility and provide some other method of tension so the player will want to resolve them.

Lastly, any vague generative tool could be adapted to make you more fortunes including Tarot, Lotería cards, Hanafuda decks, dominoes or regular playing cards. Here is the simplest chart I can think of, knowing full well it won't give the flavor of Zak's fortunes, but might require more collaborative creativity from Players and DM.  Roll 2 differently colored d6:

I think my next step for a more detailed fortune creator would actually list universals that would apply to rpgs, like "will fumble," "will fail when least expected (fail save)."

More about a Fated Future
Let me recap a little based on what I've learned from Zak's solution and my thinking about Future as Fate in play: 

• Inescapable negative fates are really just curses, so there is no reason for players to seek them out in play.  Why should I ever talk to a fortune teller if it always leads to a hireling dying?  Why cast future predicting spells if it means you'll have to face more dangers?
• So some predictions must be really good, to make players even interested it getting involved.
• But predictions can't all be good, or they just becomes a fate point system where the player changes occurrences in the game to their advantage.
• There must be some kind of tension to get these fortunes resolved--to say they have happened-- or pretty soon you'll have hundreds of fortunes hanging around.
• One source of tension (besides an adversarial DM) could be a limit on fortunes: one fortune must be resolved before any further aspects of the future can be seen.  The fortune teller keeps rambling on and on about the rolling crown.
• Again, this would mean some predictions must be really good, or the first negative fortune would mean players would just leave things on hold, never invoking that fortune, and not messing with fortunes again at all.
• Fortunes should probably be owned by specific players, that way there is some interesting tension as they decide which friends and hirelings to apply negative fates to.
• Perhaps you could give players a small XP reward for resolving fortunes.
• If the knowledge of future events is coming from dreams there could be negative repercussions from lack of restful sleep until they are resolved.

These inescapable fates can be colorful for things gypsies scream at adventurers, recurring dreams, or drug induced visions but, in the end, because the future holds both good and bad for us, Future as Fate will always have the problem of whether players will want to get involved at all.  I think we need to look to the other views of the future for something more attractive to players.

This post got longer than I thought it would be.  I'll give you Future as Possible Paths next time.