Casting Shadows

I don’t play too many games where predicting the future comes up all that often. Additionally, I don’t find my players actually take this sort of past information-gathering skill too often, usually being more in favour of interacting with Contacts and so on, but when they do, I like to shoot for portraying things as a mix of impressions, emotions, and other random sense impressions which leave them with a lot of data that will make their investigations make sense after they start making mundane progress.

By themselves, the clues from divination or other prophetic powers do not need to make sense, but once the character starts to get an idea of what is going on, or who may be involved, and so on, the impressions start to put flesh on the bones of their researches.

Divination in All for One: Regime Diabolique
These days, I have begun an All for One campaign set in Paris in the setting’s base year of 1636.  Divination is just one of a whole parcel of powers magically adept characters might pursue, so I have been giving it a lot of thought of late. I don’t want it to slow the pace, dilute the tension or excitement, but at the same time, I don’t want the choice of this power to feel like it was in error, an annoyance, or worst of all – useless.

The description in the core book uses vision related examples pretty exclusively, and suggests methods of the mutability of the future as a means to prevent use of this power from getting out of hand, so I would run it like that if it were taken in my game – for divining the future. The future does not yet exist, so no impressions have been laid in reaction to it… it is just a prediction of possibility, and I like the idea of portraying that as a vision, lacking other elements such as speech or emotion.

For the divining of past events, however, there are myriad impressions which might be perceived and these can be portrayed as overlapping and sowing confusion in the vision so that part of the challenge is just making sense of what has been communicated.

Example: Ambush
The characters are nearing the enemy encampment and the Diviner in the group hopes to ascertain a safer route to their objective.

The trail splits near a tree, likewise split by a fiery tongue of lightning and thunder like the crash of cannons into a thick section and a thin section. The thick trunk and healthy branches of the tree bend toward the right fork and cast broad, cool shadows on sunlit grass and the even ground of the wide, clear path. The thin sliver of trunk hangs dangerously over the rocky ground of the path on the left, with bare branches projecting fiercely at eye-height in the barely lit darkness of a moonless night.

With a bit like this I can communicate a few bits of information and maybe stir up some speculation at the same time, all without revealing exactly what awaits the group, and where.

• Implies cannons or firearms
• Clear indication that Left is Death (as it always is, handist SoBs in RPG writing, I swear!)
• Implies that the danger is greater or perhaps only present at night… or maybe… night is just another abused metaphor for danger…?

Example: Murder and Abduction
The characters wish to know who captured their friend and brutally slew his lackey in the supposed sanctity of his private home above their favorite tavern. The Diviner in the bunch slips the landlord/barkeeper some coin and heads upstairs to dip a few chicken bones in the gore…

Outrage! Regret… fear… Fear of loss, fear of failure Pain! Serpent on skin, glass teeth bite, sands of time press heavily, What’s at the window?! Yellow and Black, under black, the reaper cloaks the shield, blood falls, weakness comes, Pain!*

Here, arguably, we have nothing but gibberish, but one part of it (glass teeth bite) can quickly be resolved and set the characters on the trail of the villains. Investigation of the room might reveal small drops of acid, as would investigation of the lackey’s body. A little bit of personal awareness or aid from a contact, patron, or the like may put them on the trail of whomever makes glass daggers, and from there more and more of the clues will come to confirm (not provide) information that they uncover, to help address and prevent analysis paralysis. The biggest clues will come into focus when they get a list of possible suspects and realize that the sigil of one of them is in yellow and black, and the killer himself has a serpent shape burned into the flesh of his lower arm.
Sands of time may never make sense to the players, or perhaps it will make sense right from the start in conjunction with the references to the window… the killers might be worried about being seen, and fighting the pair is taking too long… Or… 

You see what I mean. The characters have a few concrete things to go on and the rest can serve as fuel for fun, in character speculation.

How do you handle divination in your games?

*I can’t write, speak, or think things like these without hearing Leonard Nimoy in my head talking about the Chamber of the Ages. No Kill I. Shalom. 

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