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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: bibliophile20 on February 12, 2011, 06:17:31 PM
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So, my earth-mage PC wanted to make a Divination focus, but wasn't coming up with any ideas beyond the very basic "tracking spell" level. I threw some ideas around and we came up with a cleromancy focus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy); basically, a large sand table with a silver ring containing the whole thing, a couple hundred hand-carved stone dice (in the platonic solids, carved with numbers and runes, in about 50 different types of stone), and a variety of dice cups. The procedure would be along the lines of drawing lines in the sand (days, weeks, months, for time, state borders for long distance location, etc) and then throwing the dice to see where they land and with what numbers.
So, that got me wondering: this is very much an earth-mage's focus, with the sand, and the carved rocks and metals and whatnot. What other ideas have people come up with for their divination foci, especially for the other elements?
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With that, you could also use the sand to construct models of locations, similar to what Mab did in Small Favor with Marcone's building. Just get a symbolic link to the place you're investigating, and you can see the layouts and condition, maybe even what happened there in the past.
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Yeah. The thing you have to remember about Little Chicago is that it was made of symbolic links. That isn't something you get by just drawing lines in the sand or even if you JUST make something out of similar building material. Harry actually went out and grabbed parts of those buildings, trees, etc to make those links work.
I'd view Little Chicago not as a Foci or the like at all in game terms. It's just an immense setup for Divination ritual that gives you symbolic links to the whole darn city.
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I suggest glasses or a monocle. Perhaps a mirror or window? A still pool of water could work as well.
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For earth magic I've played around with the idea of dropping enchanted dust onto a positively charged magical flat surface in order to get a picture.
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An enchanted mirror carved with runes that shows the subject when you sprinkle a sympathetic link over it.
A basin of water mixed with herbs and reagents that shows subject in ripply clarity.
A meditation mat where you focus on the subjects, picturing them in your mind's eye.
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Pyromantic scapulamancy is the best. You slaughter an animal and remove its scapulae. Then you take those and burn them. You read the resultant cracks on the scapulae.
Osteomancy in general is kind of neat. You read the bones of some animal. You can have a certain set of bones that you always use, or you can sacrifice for a particular divination.
Pools or bowls of water are always a good time. For ritual purposes, you might ritualize walking down to a body of water to fetch the water for this reading.
More earth oriented, you might want to read crystals. Geodes are cool, but any crystal should do the trick. Perhaps have smaller, carved crystals that you toss and read.
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This thread has made me think that since symbolic links are important, having someone do an activity related to the divination provides a link both to that person (to divine his future) and a link to whatever particular part you want to divine. This sort of thing can give new meaning to having an NPC get a PC to get do a particular quest or activity.
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Somebody here had statted had a lamp of diogenes as I recall, that would fit a pyromancer fairly well.
A magic mirror like the one in snow white could hold its own "spirit of air and intellect", though personally i think a working magic eight ball would rock, and tarot cards are good if you wanna go a focused practitioner route.
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We should probably specify for this discussion: Divination can refer to precognition (seeing or predicting the future), postcognition (seeing the past), and farsight (viewing and influencing places far removed from the caster. The divination focuses I posted before are generally intended for farsight and postcognition purposes, if only because precognition runs pretty close against the 6th Law.
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Rune Stones or wands,
Tarot Cards,
incense,
Candle or fire pits,
Scrying mirrors(Black Mirrors)
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It'd be hilarious if someone picked up one of the old fortune telling machines with the creepy mannequins and started using it in divination rituals. Especially as a GM one could give them all sorts of weird and vague messages.
For that matter a ritual involving a fortune cookie would be fun (though it couldn't be a foci, you sort of break it at the end).
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Love the fortune telling machine idea. Gotta put one of those in my world in general.
I have a player whose divination foci is a mechanical thingie that looks like a pocket watch, but has a compass, and aspects of a psudo-abucus/calculator type nature (maybe think beautiful circular slide rule?).
Dian
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Depends on how you see divination. I see the tools as being the focus of the talent of the person, rather than the tools actually doing the divining. In which case, all the magus needs is a focus for the divination vision - something to "project" his vision on to, as it were.
Fire - flames of a fire or a candle
Water - a still pool or bowl of water
Air - clouds
Earth - a flat quartz vein or other shiny rock
Spirit is difficult, perhaps meditation or possibly looking in to one's own eyes in a mirror - a sort of self-soulgaze?
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"Depends on how you see divination. I see the tools as being the focus of the talent of the person, rather than the tools actually doing the divining. In which case, all the magus needs is a focus for the divination vision - something to "project" his vision on to, as it were."
I agree that it's essentially "the mage" rather than "the tools" doing the divining, but I also like the idea of some more interaction with/of the tool, rather than just "stare at it for a while". Consider tarot cards, ouidji (sp?) boards, I ching and other 'tools' that require some action or use.
Dian
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Part of the reason I made this thread and leaned on the PC to design a focus in the first place is to have the narrative ability to describe what the PCs are seeing, and let them interpret it with the help of judicious lore checks. It's significantly less out of character and alot more fun to describe what you're seeing through the medium of your focus than it is for the player to say, "Okay, I roll some dice and cast a complexity 12 but otherwise non-specific divination ritual. I roll lore to interpret. What did I find?" And without a focus to present it through, I was having to just present it in a straight up "Just The Facts, Ma'am" fashion that I wasn't enjoying as GM, especially after canonical things like Little Chicago, the tracking glasses from Welcome To The Jungle, and even the map that the ectomancer sprayed with ink.
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Love the fortune telling machine idea. Gotta put one of those in my world in general.
I have a player whose divination foci is a mechanical thingie that looks like a pocket watch, but has a compass, and aspects of a psudo-abucus/calculator type nature (maybe think beautiful circular slide rule?).
Dian
Sounds like the thing from the Golden compass