The Scrying Game

[hcobb]

For a game setting that's all about the atheism, TFT gives PC wizards godlike omniscience, should they choose to use it.

First off Scrying doesn't seem to have any location or distance targeting limitation.

Play ouija by passing a Pathfinder Charm around a circle of scholars.

Or fairly safely summon a series of demons and ask each one the Nth word in the final answer.

Start your quest with a Trance spell then narrow down by any of the means above.

How do you keep all of this in check, in a game that doesn't even have a reasonable Sherlock Holmes talent.

[hcobb]

BTW If you exactly make your Scrying roll you pay nothing and see nothing?

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

BTW If you exactly make your Scrying roll you pay nothing and see nothing?

Just reruns.

[Skarg]

I handled it in my original campaign... very badly, at first. A player who was very clever decided to see if he could find a Crystal Ball available for hire at a Wizards' Guild. I said OK trusting that Advanced Wizard generally had nice limits to things, but soon realized he was going to be going for all sorts of information I felt unprepared and unwilling to give out (I was still a novice GM, 12 or so years old). When he had the wizard ask the ball about who was trying to kill him, instead of revealing the secret nemesis of the PC, the ball revealed some men with a ballista set up on the roof of the building across the street from the Wizards' Guild chapter right then, which I had just invented in my panic. Bad GM! It did scare the PC and he never went asking for crystal ball readings again. However I felt really bad for doing that, promised myself not to do that sort of GM world-situation abuse in the future, and also decided that I didn't want my world to have that sort of magic power, because I saw that it implied all sorts of possible and likely abuses, not just by PCs, but by NPCs, and that wasn't a world that I wanted to run, nor was it a world I felt competent to run self-consistently. I didn't want to feel responsible to run a world where that level of surveillance was possible.

It did teach me to be a better GM, whose next order of business was to go about reviewing the magic items and deciding which ones would not be known in my campaign, and/or exist in an altered for that didn't have those (or other) issues that would create a world I didn't want to run.

The descriptions of these, it seems to me, have improved thanks to some Legacy Edition edits by Steve. However a GM should IMO still to reflect upon what he wants the limits of these information-giving spells to be, and what additional limits he might want to add.

For example, I'd probably tend to limit the usefulness and specificity of the information received, and also not feel obliged to give different information per attempt. e.g. You might just keep being told you're not the fairest one of all, or unspecific visions implying danger... Earth myths, legends and tales that feature power-and-control-hungry people trying to over-use divination methods are almost always cautionary tales about how foolish that can be.

I probably will either not allow the Scrying spell at all, or add to its requirements and/or difficulty, such as requiring you to focus on an item enchanted to be a scrying beacon.

Demon summoning is not going to be safe and predictable in my games. Compelling Greater Wishes much less so.

Astral Travel will be risky in more ways than one.

[JLV]

I'm still considering making these tremendously powerful and easily abused spells more than just spells. Perhaps rituals instead, that take hours to perform, require all kinds of outside paraphernalia and ingredients, and have significant risks of backfire and consequences of failure. Then, if someone wants to scry, great, but they'd better be prepared and well-guarded if anything goes wrong. This might apply to creating magical items as well. A friend of mine suggested requiring a Wizard to expend an attribute point to make a magical item (you could select which one randomly by rolling D6 to see which of the three is lost). THAT would cut back on all these "brand" items and such. Who is going to agree to suck up a point loss in ST, DX or even worse for a Wizard, IQ just so you can have a fancy flaming arrow?

Not sure if the ideas above are the best answers or not, as yet, but it seems like it might be a way to prevent the kind of "spell abuses" being thrown around so casually on these boards!

[hcobb]

Spoiler: In my online adventure Curse a spirit doesn't take kindly to being scryed on.

[Chris Rice]

I'm not a fan of Detection style magics in RPGs in general. If they are too common then it's very difficult to maintain mystery or tension in the game, and that's no good to me as a GM. However, reading the description of the Scrying Spell in the new edition, I like the constraints that Steve has put on the spell and think I'd be prepared to allow it in my games as written. It can only be used once per day and success is far from certain and even then can be costly.

[Skarg]

One idea that fits with one of the ideas I like about Astral Projection (that there may be spirits or creatures of some sort that inhabit the astral plane, so that when someone astral projects, they may encounter them, and they may be dangerous to visitors) - if there are, then they may also be able to notice and react to scrying.

[hcobb]

Note Molly's struggles to find a target for her scrying as they are searching for an unknown location.