Author Topic: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM  (Read 2973 times)

Offline Drachasor

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Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« on: February 21, 2011, 04:23:44 AM »
I was thinking about the problem with future divinations in a game is that it is hard to make them actually useful.  Players are pretty unpredictable that even a GM can't say what will happen with any good authority.

However, there's a neat way to handle this in the Fate system.  Do a Divination Ritual of 8 or so complexity, that's about right to place a maneuver on you for a day (that assumes a "scene" is 15 minutes, the default duration of a maneuver).  The aspect is "Prepared for the Future" or somesuch.  While you can boringly invoke this for a +2 to a roll, you can Invoke For Effect for some interesting stuff such as a complete justification for having an odd potion you otherwise couldn't justify (remember while you can declare you happen to have a potion on you, the GM can also decide it is just too unlikely, and this gets around that).  You could also Invoke For Effect to say you weren't surprised by an ambush or any number of other things (e.g. you happen to be carrying a self-inflating boat when you get tossed overboard into choppy waters).  The beauty of this is that it preserves the surprise for the player and in-game it doesn't break the 6th Law since you can't actually affect the time-stream to a meaningful degree (imho, the "light touch" is preserved).  Essentially it just makes you able to create super-coincidences.

Offline MijRai

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2011, 05:13:57 AM »
The Sixth Law says nothing about looking. Only about going against the currents of time (i.e. Going back in time). Your divination ritual is fine, perhaps even nifty. But there is no worry about Lawbreaking there.
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Offline Katarn

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2011, 05:25:19 AM »
The Sixth Law says nothing about looking. Only about going against the currents of time (i.e. Going back in time). Your divination ritual is fine, perhaps even nifty. But there is no worry about Lawbreaking there.

Cassandra's Tears do not break the 6th Law.  Moving About in Time (forward or backward I suspect) is the issue.

Offline Ophidimancer

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2011, 05:47:38 AM »
Cassandra's Tears do not break the 6th Law.  Moving About in Time (forward or backward I suspect) is the issue.

Even moving forward in time isn't swimming against the currents of time.  Everyone moves forward in time.

Offline Katarn

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2011, 05:59:37 AM »
Even moving forward in time isn't swimming against the currents of time.  Everyone moves forward in time.

touche.  I guess I meant "breaking pace" with time is against the law.  Viewing different frames is ok, but visiting them when it's not the normal progression...

Offline Drachasor

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2011, 06:14:29 AM »
The Sixth Law says nothing about looking. Only about going against the currents of time (i.e. Going back in time). Your divination ritual is fine, perhaps even nifty. But there is no worry about Lawbreaking there.

In Proven Guilty at least, Bob makes it pretty clear that acting on stuff you see in the future can break the 6th law of not done carefully.  That's supposedly why Rashid is circumspect in how he assists Harry, so that things don't get messed up.

Cassandra's Tears probably gets by this, in part, because no one listens to whomever has the gift.  The rest of getting by is done because it's a timey-wimey ball.

But I think this is pretty cool.  You could even have a powerful divination ritual that applies multiple aspects for multiple tags.

Offline MijRai

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2011, 07:23:12 AM »
In Proven Guilty at least, Bob makes it pretty clear that acting on stuff you see in the future can break the 6th law of not done carefully.  That's supposedly why Rashid is circumspect in how he assists Harry, so that things don't get messed up.

Cassandra's Tears probably gets by this, in part, because no one listens to whomever has the gift.  The rest of getting by is done because it's a timey-wimey ball.

But I think this is pretty cool.  You could even have a powerful divination ritual that applies multiple aspects for multiple tags.

Actually, Bob said if Future-Rashid was passing messages back to Past-Rashid, he might change the future. Nothing about plain 'ole looking.
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Offline Ophidimancer

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2011, 07:39:54 AM »
I was thinking about the problem with future divinations in a game is that it is hard to make them actually useful.  Players are pretty unpredictable that even a GM can't say what will happen with any good authority.

However, there's a neat way to handle this in the Fate system.  Do a Divination Ritual of 8 or so complexity, that's about right to place a maneuver on you for a day (that assumes a "scene" is 15 minutes, the default duration of a maneuver).  The aspect is "Prepared for the Future" or somesuch.  While you can boringly invoke this for a +2 to a roll, you can Invoke For Effect for some interesting stuff such as a complete justification for having an odd potion you otherwise couldn't justify (remember while you can declare you happen to have a potion on you, the GM can also decide it is just too unlikely, and this gets around that).  You could also Invoke For Effect to say you weren't surprised by an ambush or any number of other things (e.g. you happen to be carrying a self-inflating boat when you get tossed overboard into choppy waters).  The beauty of this is that it preserves the surprise for the player and in-game it doesn't break the 6th Law since you can't actually affect the time-stream to a meaningful degree (imho, the "light touch" is preserved).  Essentially it just makes you able to create super-coincidences.

You're right, I do think this is an elegant solution to the problem of trying to be too specific with your auguries.  It's what they did with Time magic auguries in Mage.  I don't really think there's an issue with the 6th Law until you stat trying to go back and change the past.

Offline Drachasor

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2011, 08:37:03 AM »
Actually, Bob said if Future-Rashid was passing messages back to Past-Rashid, he might change the future. Nothing about plain 'ole looking.

Ignoring the risk of getting pedantic, looking into the future for specific facts and such has the same risk as sending messages to the past.  The information transfer is the same.

Though, you can also model this as a "receiving a message from the future" I suppose.

Offline Oriande

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Re: Divining the Future without Breaking the 6th Law or your GM
« Reply #9 on: February 22, 2011, 04:48:29 PM »
[quote Always in motion is the future [/quote]  ;)