In a game I have been playing for about 5 years now we frequently discover
prophesies. The gampaign is in an action genre with a dark future / horror
flavour and the Apocalypse / Gehenna / Ragarock etc is approaching.
We have found out various things about what will happen, but very little
detail.
There is a prophesy which states before the end of all things the Tiger will
fight Fenris.
My character has discovered he is the Cat Lord. He has a "Nemesis" who is
not yet, but wants to be the "Wolf Lord".
Thus we know that at some point the existing Wolf Lord will be displaced and
there will be a massive fight scene between my character and his nemesis.
But we know nothing of when this will happen and I'm not sure the GM does
either.
So the key to using prophesy is to keep it vague. Always use the "delphic"
style of ambiguity. You must have an idea as to how the story arc will go,
but if you keep it lose and a player suggests something better - then of
course that is what it always meant!
Go for clauses along the type of "If {something vague which might refer to a
character} happens then {something vague which sounds significant}."
That way you can't lose. Never name the chatacters outright, never identify
the actual event - unless it is a recent discoverey which is going to
resolve in this or the next adventure.
Another ploy is to specify the "The Prophesy" is actually a massive "scroll"
with lots of trivia in it. Then you only have to hand over bits of it
saying "your studies of the {scroll} indicate that this section might have
significance". If you throw something at your players each session, even if
it is total twaddle they might be able to find something sesible in it and
then you have an instant sub-plot which is always useful.
This sort of thing takes time, but if you can print then up in advance using
nice graphics then whipping something out of your file (which is also seen
to contain numerous other sheets of paper which you make a point of not
showing anyone) impresses your players no end!
Another thing the GM of this campaing has said on the meta-level is that he
alters the future such that he can wrap the capaign up in a minimal number
of adventures while satisfying all the prophesies so far in the public
domain. We can never be sure how soon the world will end, or for that
matter if it will end or just change to the point where several of our
character races (no player is a normal human) cannot exist any more.
Mean while the end of the world approaches. Bangladesh is underwater, but
the bad guy who flooded it dind't survive. Romania discovered they had
"built a nuclear reactor on a previously unknown fault line" - but we
managed to keep the reactor core intact so there were only 60K fatalities
and we killed the bad guy that time too.
Meanwhile, the ancient city of Petra is now total rubble (the bad guy
sleeping there got away) and if an aged Russian crone flies a large cauldron
into your garden - don't argue about it - we've only two no-score draws
against her. She is a "ravening one" - a vampire who can only drink the
blood of lesser vampires - and therefore no threat to normal humans. (Yeh,
well actually that means normal humans have no value to her...)
Don't bother trying to visit the Sphinx - it walked off somewhere - but you
can walk at night in an ever increasing number of cities and not have to
worry about having your blood drained...
A recent crimewave rocked China as everyone fought over a large stone egg -
or was it the egg of the Phoenix? One of the three great dragons managed
to keep the Phoenix from falling into the power of either of the other great
dragons and stop The Cat from eating The Bird. (Of coursre The Cat has to
hunt The Bird, just as The Wolf must hunt The Cat - it is part of the
natural order of things.)
Very little of this is in the prophesy so far revealed, but all is
consistant with it. That is the key to its successful use.
Rgds,
Michael.
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