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Old 12-12-2012, 04:28 PM   #1
Sindri
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Default Designing How Divination Works

So I've been thinking about how I'd like divination to work in a setting. Divination is a great chance for PCs to test their cleverness but many roleplaying implementations have left much to be desired.

Some features like anything related to the future besides speculation of an answering entity or broad questioning abilities combined with low cost and high reliability (How many leaves are in this forest exactly.) are troublesome for the GM to answer satisfactorily.

There is often a suboptimal balance between offense and defense given that it is as undesirable for the PCs to be eliminated by a preemptive assault by the full force of the enemy before they even learn about them as it is for the PCs to immediately skip to the enemies throne room both of which call for a defensive advantage.

There is also the question of what information should be available just by looking at stuff with magical senses on. See Secrets comes to mind for GURPS as a possibly problematic spell depending on interpretation and Detect Evil is well hated by many. I'm not sure how much information I want available this way.

My current thoughts on the situation are;

First of all I think actual divination of the future has to go. It's just too much of a bother trying and failing to represent it at it's full effectiveness. You can ask a being to speculate on the future but that's as far as it goes.

Second while the sort of entities doing the speculating might be any of incredibly powerful, greatly knowledgeable or possessing odd personalities that cause them to pay attention to stuff other people would consider boring diviners won't be able to ask beings with the sort of ludicrous access to knowledge that D&D gods are often represented as having to speculate on stuff.

Third people will also be able to ask limited sorts of direct questions (Magical databases aren't great at natural language processing.) of collected stores of knowledge many of which are limited in who can access them have costs to use them and can be further hierarchically limited and are generally large and consisting of enough questionably useful stuff to be difficult to read through in general.

Fourth there should be various ways preemptively defend against divination including shielding an area from scrying, replacing the information given from scrying with something else either specified before hand or an automatic one to one replacement or modification, modify the auras or whatever of creatures or objects when they are scanned magically. Naturally there will also be ways to deal with these defense and ways to deal with the ways to deal with the defenses &c. Defense should generally have the advantage though.

Fifth people should be able to scry areas by describing their location in standard ways and bugging items and creatures in addition to getting some being to try and find them notably I don't want people to be able to try to see around "Jones the Wizard". Naturally one should also be able to scry through contagion but I'm not sure how easy that should be.

How does divination work in your settings?
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Old 12-12-2012, 09:49 PM   #2
hal
 
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

What I use Future divinations for are:

Use of single skill rolls in the future based upon "if I do A, will A succeed?" As GM, all I have to do is roll the dice in advance, keep the die roll secret, and then work off the rules for Divinations (ie crit success, normal success, failure, and crit failure).

As for divinations of "actions" into the future, I view it thusly...

If you have two people who are looking at one future event, and both people want to affect that one event - it would seem as though both people via divination, can affect that future moment. As GM however, I don't see it that way. I see it as being a factor of who looks at the future event before the other person(s) does.

For instance. Let us say for the sake of argument, that you have Al and Bob, both skilled at divinations, both looking to influence a singular event into the future at Time X. 100 days before X is slated to occur, Al does his divination about event at time X. Eventually, Bob will also attempt to view a given future event at time X. However, Bob attempts to see what will happen at time X only 50 days before X happens.

From his vantage point in time, Al will always see what ever it is that Bob will do to influence event X - and be able to pick the future that includes his desires and Bob's known actions regarding event X in the future. If event X is something that can not be influence (such as an earthquake or something equally beyond scope of human intervention, then that is that.

A long time ago, while GURPS MAGIC was still a first edition, I wrote a post for GURPSNET, that outlined how divinations can be used to help with enchantments - which in turn influenced the second edition rules to exclude my suggestion...

Diviner asks the question "if Enchanter begins his enchantment today, and is not interrupted by outside events, will his enchantment suceed, where success precludes a quirked powerstone?" Since the event is 20 days into the future, the divination penalties are known. Rolling for the future event with the understanding that this roll ONLY applies if the enchanter starts his enchantment today, and nothing intervenes to interrupt the enchantment - the GM (which was me at the time) kept the roll secret - but applied that roll for the enchantment when the time came.

If the enchanter succceeded at his enchantment, and the diviner failed - the answer was "Unclear". If the diviner succeeeded, the answer was "Yes". If the diviner crit succeeded, the answer was "yes". If the diviner crit failed, the answer was "No".

If the enchanter failed at his enchantment, and the diviner failed, the answer was "unclear". If the diviner succeeded, then the answer was "No." If the Diviner crit failed - the answer was "Yes".

Thus, an enchanter, could create powerstones - but still ran a risk where both he and the diviner both crit failed on their skill rolls, and ruined a good powerstone. The thing to remember here, is that the diviner had to have a VERY high skill to take into account the penalites for looking 20 days into the future and still have a reasonably low chance of failure. THAT did not come cheaply...

In any event - Divinations in GURPS do cause problems. I suspect that is why most GM's do not permit them to be used in their game worlds, or they nerf the spell so as to make it less than useful - which in my book, is cheating the player of all those points he sunk into learning the spell, and all the times he's tried to make it useful in game play. That's just me ;)
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Old 12-13-2012, 08:32 AM   #3
Sindri
 
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
As for divinations of "actions" into the future, I view it thusly...

If you have two people who are looking at one future event, and both people want to affect that one event - it would seem as though both people via divination, can affect that future moment. As GM however, I don't see it that way. I see it as being a factor of who looks at the future event before the other person(s) does.

For instance. Let us say for the sake of argument, that you have Al and Bob, both skilled at divinations, both looking to influence a singular event into the future at Time X. 100 days before X is slated to occur, Al does his divination about event at time X. Eventually, Bob will also attempt to view a given future event at time X. However, Bob attempts to see what will happen at time X only 50 days before X happens.

From his vantage point in time, Al will always see what ever it is that Bob will do to influence event X - and be able to pick the future that includes his desires and Bob's known actions regarding event X in the future. If event X is something that can not be influence (such as an earthquake or something equally beyond scope of human intervention, then that is that.
Hmm let me see if I've understood this. Al views X at X-100 and gets whatever information. Bob views X at X-50 and sees it as if Al had not acted. Then Al receives retroactive knowledge of how things change based on Bob's actions. Is that right?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
A long time ago, while GURPS MAGIC was still a first edition, I wrote a post for GURPSNET, that outlined how divinations can be used to help with enchantments - which in turn influenced the second edition rules to exclude my suggestion...

Diviner asks the question "if Enchanter begins his enchantment today, and is not interrupted by outside events, will his enchantment suceed, where success precludes a quirked powerstone?" Since the event is 20 days into the future, the divination penalties are known. Rolling for the future event with the understanding that this roll ONLY applies if the enchanter starts his enchantment today, and nothing intervenes to interrupt the enchantment - the GM (which was me at the time) kept the roll secret - but applied that roll for the enchantment when the time came.

If the enchanter succceeded at his enchantment, and the diviner failed - the answer was "Unclear". If the diviner succeeeded, the answer was "Yes". If the diviner crit succeeded, the answer was "yes". If the diviner crit failed, the answer was "No".

If the enchanter failed at his enchantment, and the diviner failed, the answer was "unclear". If the diviner succeeded, then the answer was "No." If the Diviner crit failed - the answer was "Yes".

Thus, an enchanter, could create powerstones - but still ran a risk where both he and the diviner both crit failed on their skill rolls, and ruined a good powerstone. The thing to remember here, is that the diviner had to have a VERY high skill to take into account the penalites for looking 20 days into the future and still have a reasonably low chance of failure. THAT did not come cheaply...
Ahh the joys of result locking. It's a fun abuse of divinations and even doesn't look silly in-world much of the time (After all "Is it a good time to do X" is a fairly common thing to ask of divination in the real world.). It's with good reason that people generally avoid it though given it's tendency to turn into an unfun situation when used with things other than skill rolls. It's pretty easy to justify avoiding if you have a visions of the future only apply to how things would turn out without actions depending on them (And... surely you do. Unless you want to limit things to where divinations aren't really useful.) with such delicate things as a single skill roll. I think I'll stick with not allowing divination of the future since I'm not sure how to express in-universe why you can ask about this thing related to a specific skill roll but not that thing which isn't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
In any event - Divinations in GURPS do cause problems. I suspect that is why most GM's do not permit them to be used in their game worlds, or they nerf the spell so as to make it less than useful - which in my book, is cheating the player of all those points he sunk into learning the spell, and all the times he's tried to make it useful in game play. That's just me ;)
Yeah trying to avoid divinations being lame is one of the main reasons I started the thread.
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Old 12-13-2012, 01:44 PM   #4
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

I'm running a horror game right now with someone who's got some divinatory abilities (through the Oracle advantage, thankfully with Unconscious/Uncontrollable). I would highly recommend prohibiting the players from asking the questions themselves. In my game Unconscious/Uncontrollable does that job, but I would suggest that GMs with players who think they're clever should find other ways to shut down that sort of 'gaming.' Divination in fiction (and history) is understood to be subject to some unpredictable influences, and is further filtered through the interpretation of the diviner. Feel free to answer related-but-distinct questions (without any warning, of course), give answers filled with extraneous information, or any other 'dirty tricks.'

Divination is one of those places where players can experience a difficult time "playing a character," relative to "playing a game." As hal said - it's awfully tempting to go for result locking with things like Powerstone creation. His solution (rolling the creation roll, in secret, when the divination is made) is a great one - but it's not appropriate for every clever scheme players will try. In games where I allow it (and don't require things like Unconscious/Uncontrollable), I warn players in advance to play their characters - if they decide to play the game instead I'll take it as an invitation to play with them!

Remember that in fiction, while characters may act like divination is a good refection of the future, the overwhelming message is that people who receive signs and omens (even outright precognition) misinterpret, fumble, and are otherwise betrayed even by accurate predictions. If your players get too clever for their own good, let them be hoist by their own petard - in myth and modern fiction both, the Powers That Be delight in sending uppity diviners all manner of trouble. Why should it be any different in GURPS?
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Old 12-13-2012, 03:52 PM   #5
Sindri
 
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

Quote:
Originally Posted by Genesis View Post
I'm running a horror game right now with someone who's got some divinatory abilities (through the Oracle advantage, thankfully with Unconscious/Uncontrollable). I would highly recommend prohibiting the players from asking the questions themselves. In my game Unconscious/Uncontrollable does that job, but I would suggest that GMs with players who think they're clever should find other ways to shut down that sort of 'gaming.' Divination in fiction (and history) is understood to be subject to some unpredictable influences, and is further filtered through the interpretation of the diviner. Feel free to answer related-but-distinct questions (without any warning, of course), give answers filled with extraneous information, or any other 'dirty tricks.'
I'm not sure I understand. My players don't think they are clever, they are clever. If they weren't clever, I wouldn't be gaming with them. A substantial part of the point of gaming for me is getting together with friends and testing our cleverness.

It's definitely important to keep in mind how divination works in fiction and historically but the aim of the thread is really functional design rather than aesthetic design. I'm not sufficiently drawn to any one style of resolving divination such that that will be a part of the feel of the world and thus justify itself purely on aesthetic grounds so above all the way divination works should prioritize not producing unintended consequences due to realistic usage that interfere with PCs going around and doing PC stuff and ideally encouraging that sort of stuff. Fictional and historical divination is especially problematic since the protagonists rarely do much in the way of divination themselves instead of going to someone else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Genesis View Post
Divination is one of those places where players can experience a difficult time "playing a character," relative to "playing a game." As hal said - it's awfully tempting to go for result locking with things like Powerstone creation. His solution (rolling the creation roll, in secret, when the divination is made) is a great one - but it's not appropriate for every clever scheme players will try. In games where I allow it (and don't require things like Unconscious/Uncontrollable), I warn players in advance to play their characters - if they decide to play the game instead I'll take it as an invitation to play with them!
We are playing a game and that implicitly involves me playing with them. What's more realistic people abuse things like crazy. Nobody ever didn't do something because it "wouldn't be sporting to the laws of physics." If their abuses of divination lead to a bad result it means that they way I set up divination was badly done... thus this thread.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Genesis View Post
Remember that in fiction, while characters may act like divination is a good refection of the future, the overwhelming message is that people who receive signs and omens (even outright precognition) misinterpret, fumble, and are otherwise betrayed even by accurate predictions. If your players get too clever for their own good, let them be hoist by their own petard - in myth and modern fiction both, the Powers That Be delight in sending uppity diviners all manner of trouble. Why should it be any different in GURPS?
They do? Being sent trouble doesn't come to mind as a common problem for diviners. Sure they fail to understand things all the time but I can't rely on the players misunderstanding. I could just make up prophesies and then manipulate things later to achieve them but I'm honestly not super fond of prophesies in the first place so taking a risk and spending effort on them doesn't really appeal to me. And of course if the intention isn't for the PCs to extract information from divination then what's the point? It's not like they will sink valuable resources into divination if that's the case or be happy if they do. Certainly if divinations in and of themselves interested me I might throw them in anyway, but they don't really. They are just means to an end by allowing additional avenues for researching stuff and testing wits against villains and whatnot. If I could reliably produce prophesies where people go "Wow that's totally cool and makes sense and we totally didn't guess that beforehand." sure that would be a fun addition but I don't trust my ability to do so and the penalty for a poorly handled prophesy is worse than the payoff.
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Old 12-13-2012, 04:17 PM   #6
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

What's wrong with divination telling what's most likely to happen as long as no movers and shakers, ie. notable high point characters get involved?

Will Vulcan and Romulus get into a war in the next 10 years?
All signs point to yes.
Oh look. Spock got involved and now peace has held out for more than a decade.
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Old 12-13-2012, 04:21 PM   #7
Edman
 
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

I like divination. In one of the best campaigns I GM'd, one of the character's had psychometry. The villain, however, was hiding under their noses and was sufficiently powerful to just be a blank in the visions - a colourless blur and white noise whenever he talked. They did however see quite a few scenes of what he had done and who had interacted with, and even heard what one of the (dead) NPCs called him - Em.

Another way to do it is to give them symbols that they have to figure out. Say that the king is set to be murdered by his Grand Vizier, all the while said monarch is convinced that the threat is from a rival kingdom whose sigil is a hawk, who in reality wishes to marry him to their King's eldest daughter and wants to find out if he's a good husband. The players could be given a vision where an anthropomorphic lion (the King) stands on a mountaintop (he reigns supreme). A hawk (the rival kingdom) flies around him for a little while and then swoops down and offers him two rings (a marriage proposal). Whilst the king inspects them, his right hand (the Vizier) move of its own accord and flits the rings away (so that it's obvious it's not them making him doing it). The lion then looks on in horror as its hand proceeds to tear out its own throat (the planned murder).

Or something like that. Symbolism is a great way to give them clues, but maybe not the whole story.
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Old 12-13-2012, 04:36 PM   #8
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

The Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat variety sounds fun but hard on the GM to do without much pre-game planning.
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Old 12-13-2012, 08:58 PM   #9
Sindri
 
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
What's wrong with divination telling what's most likely to happen as long as no movers and shakers, ie. notable high point characters get involved?

Will Vulcan and Romulus get into a war in the next 10 years?
All signs point to yes.
Oh look. Spock got involved and now peace has held out for more than a decade.
Well I'd prefer there to be a reason that can be pointed to in-universe as to why some people mess up divination (Being a diviner for example to take inspiration from Dune.) rather than high point value but that certainly works.
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Old 12-13-2012, 09:01 PM   #10
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Default Re: Designing How Divination Works

The power of personal will can overcome even destiny and the fates.
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