Quote:
Originally Posted by adimar
6 words is nothing. This is a "deus ex machina" ability that IMHO should not be reduced to skill levels. It's simply the ability to know everything and predict how every single action no matter how small would effect them. (Super precognition to the n-th degree) a smaller scale of this was displayed in Lucifer season 2 episode 5.
When Uriel makes very small changes like moving a skateboard about an inch and that causes a chain on events that ends with a car crash 5 minutes later.
|
Maybe you're right that it's best not to try to model it in game mechanics at all. That's why I was thinking Influence Points, though, because from the player's perspective it's more about being able to change Fate, with the skateboard or the spelling or the six words basically being "material components" in the magic.
OTOH, in parallel universe and time travel stories, you have major recurring themes about divergence and convergence. Divergence, or the butterfly effect, where I sneeze on a dinosaur and when I get back it's raining donuts. Convergence, where I kill baby Hitler and someone else rises to take his place. Hell, even historians argue about the impact of great forces of history versus "crap happens" events that seem to swing on trivialities.
It feels important enough to have some way of handling in a game, though I agree that how to to it in a balanced way is very hard. Infinite Worlds does a nice job IMO. Usually you're in a world where convergence applies, but there are paratemporal "windows" that open up occasionally that let you justify butterfly effect stories when you want one.