Wishing [Fantasy]

[AlexanderHowl]

How do you handle wishes in your games? Do you follow the letter of the wish or do you follow the spirit of the wish? Do you explore the unintended consequences like in the majority of folklore or ignore them like in the majority of contemporary games?

For example, let us say that you are a GM and you give a character a djinn lamp with three wishes. Their first wish is that they want to be the wealthiest person in the world. How would you grant their wish? Would there be any unintended consequences?

In my own case, I would have the wish transport them to a timeline without people, so they would be the wealthiest person in that world. Since they have two wishes remaining, they could burn their second wish to wish themselves back their timeline. We will assume that they wish to go back to their timeline and burn their second wish.

Let us say that they use their third wish to wish for $200 billion, making them the wealthiest person on Earth. How would you grant their wish? Would there be any unintended consequences?

In my own case, I would give them exact counterfeits of 2 billion different $100 bills (equivalent to 18% of the total supply in circulation). The counterfeit bills would mass 2,000 metric tons and take up 2,000 cubic meters of space, but it would be on the character to figure out what to do with the counterfeit bills. I would not bury the character in bills or destroy their property with them. Instead, I would have the bills appear in shrink wrapped bales in their front yard (20 meters long, 20 meters wide, and 5 meters tall).

[Purple Snit]

I would decide what would make for an enjoyable and entertaining episode in the campaign I was running; there are a lot of adventures that could sprout from someone suddenly becoming that wealthy, and since the whole point is to have fun and tell a good story, I would go from there. Legal questions, fame and the complications thereof, long-lost relatives and others looking for money, thieves, charities - the list is endless.
Honestly, if your intent is just to maliciously hose the player(s), why even put the wish there in the first place? There is an old rule of GMs that says, "never give the NPCs anything that you don't want the players to have". I think this is a golden example of that.
On another note, are these questions you pose intended as thought exercises for other GMs/players, or is there something else you want to get out of them? I have never quite been able to figure that out.

[DangerousThing]

I've never given a Wish in GURPS. However, back in my college days when I GM'ed the other game (it was before GURPS was invented), I had a simple rule for wishes. I told this to them before they wished.

If the player could give me a short wish, no more than 20 words long, without conditional statements, I would grant them the spirit of the wish.

If the player chose to give me a paragraph of dense text with more if-statements than a computer program, I would interpret it to the strict language, with the goal of screwing the player over.

This made wishing much easier and quicker so we could get back to the parts of the game that were fun for everybody.

[hal]

I'm a little confused here...

When you're talking about a wish in GURPS, are you talking about Lesser wish, wish, greater wish from GURPS MAGIC or are you discussing something that is essentially a GM McGuffin that the GM has license to do what ever, to whom ever, how ever the GM pleases?

If the latter, then we're talking about essentially a function of material outside the realms of GURPS rules for the most part. I'm unaware of any ability to craft a wish in GURPS rules for ritual magic (although I by choice, am not all to conversant with the ritual spell magic rules), nor am I aware of anything else in GURPS that even permits a wish of the magnitude being discussed thus far.

If simply possessing a wish in an object and uttering or even THINKING the words "I wish" is enough to trigger the use of the wish, then I would simply ask the player "are you going to carry that wish item around where even thinking the words "I wish" can cause you to use it, chances are good the player will place it in a safe spot. I'd make the player roll against their Will to avoid in "wishful thinking" with a bonus of +2 simply because people don'[t routinely think "I wish" unless they're discontent with their lives or circumstances.

GURPS MAGIC offers the suggestion that a Greater Wish can wish for anything that can be done with up to 1,000 energy (if I recall correctly), so even greater wishes do have limits to their capability. Since ressurection costs considerably less than 1,000 energy, a greater wish could be used to wish someone back from the dead.

On the flip side, teleporting to center of a Star because the character wished "I wish I were on the sun" might be more than the cost of 1,000 energy. **shrug**

In one campagn I ran, I had forgotten that I'd given a player a lesser wish bound into a ring as a reward for services by the player character. The player never used it, but when he did, he used it to GREAT effect. While riding horseback, he charged for the enemy general and took an aimed shot for the head at a full gallop against a target that was also at a full gallop. He used that lesser wish to turn his attack into an automatic critical success with a roll of a 3. That in turn killed the general, and in turn, won the battle for the player character's side. NICELY done on the player's part. But - the rules were specific - as GM, I could not, nor would I even WANT to screw over the player with specific wording versus intent etc.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I've never given a Wish in GURPS. However, back in my college days when I GM'ed the other game (it was before GURPS was invented), I had a simple rule for wishes. I told this to them before they wished.

If the player could give me a short wish, no more than 20 words long, without conditional statements, I would grant them the spirit of the wish.

If the player chose to give me a paragraph of dense text with more if-statements than a computer program, I would interpret it to the strict language, with the goal of screwing the player over.

This made wishing much easier and quicker so we could get back to the parts of the game that were fun for everybody.

Your method was more fair and impartial than mine was in my youth. As a young GM I think that I probably just did it as a chance to give back to a player. So one that was irritating got screwed with, one that was a pleasure to have in the group got the spirit of it.

There is also a verbiage issue. "Wish" D&D is nothing like "Wish" GURPS. My issue is more with the D&D/rub the lamp/favor-from-a-god style of Wish that can just DO ANYTHING, vs the GURPS Greater Wish that pretty much self limits to ~20cp or 1000 energy spell effect, unless the GM allows something else. Most of my House rules regarding Wishes dont apply to GURPS cause I find the mechanic as written to be fine (though a little cheap for lesser and wish). I do limit Greater Wish with the rule that the only way to learn it is to have someone use a Greater Wish on you to teach it. I have only seen Wish used once in GURPS.

.. My "rule" for Non-GURPS is more a mindset that goes like this... The difficulty/power of the spell relates directly to the number of people that have to be "rewired" or choices that have to be "reworked" in order to make the wish a reality. D&D specifically makes it difficult to eliminate the Wish because its the Catch-all fix for stuff they don't want to have a cure, but if it gets cast on them they want a cure. D&D5e put some limitations on the spell, but it still seems too accessible and overpowered.
.. GURPS made it a little more interesting, and easier for me, by having multiple levels of Wish and by limiting the Greater Wish spell to a ~20cp outcome with some impressive penalties for failure. I dont know if my way of seeing 'Wish' it is a result of some early GURPS influence (I did play 2e for a time though never as a caster) but I do know that I HATED the D&D version of the spell almost from the first time I encountered it, and tried to never give the D&D type to my players except as a one off reward/effect.

Some examples might be:
.. If you were just told your yearly physical test results came back and they found cancer. The Genie type Wish wouldn't need as much power behind it to rewrite reality because maybe 3 people know, who care, and some test results that turned out to be wrong. Something of this level the most difficult thing would be finding someone that could/would grant the Wish. Though in most game systems cancer could be fixed with spells more accessible than Wish. (I could see this being the GURPS equivalent of a standard Wish spell, rerolling the outcome of the test)
.. Conversely if you wish for $200 billion there is a lot of reality to rewrite to make sense that you are a person with $200 billion and everyone sees that as perfectly normal "the way the world always was". This would require world wide acceptance, and some plausible way that the money came about. This would take so much power to implement that it would probably be easier for you to put the effort to just acquiring this wealth than Wishing for it. (This doesn't even come into play in GURPS because the Advantage Wealth (multimillionaire) is to far out of reach for 20cp <House rule> +5 per rare ingredient max 4 ingredients = Max 40cp , I allow from Greater Wish).

[Kromm]

The correct answer for me is linked to the answer to the question, "What power is ultimately granting the wish?"

Beings of pure Good reach into the mind of the wisher to extract the heart's desire – that is, the player's true hopes for the wish – and grant that.

Beings of true Evil inevitably seek to grant whatever would screw the wisher the worst, which is usually the letter of the wish, read as perversely as possible . . . but occasionally the spirit of the wish if the player's actual desires have negative ramifications the player has overlooked.

Beings of Law go by the letter. It's just how they are. It has nothing to do with screwing anybody, and players who are good at wording things legalistically get what they want, while those who are bad at it get what they asked for.

Beings of Chaos do whatever they want. They're likely to pick and choose bits of both letter and spirit – sometimes to the wisher's advantage, sometimes to the wisher's disadvantage. As GM, I ask, "Going forward, what would make the campaign more fun?"

In all cases, degree and scale depend on the being's power. Djinn aren't true gods. Creator gods have more reach than ancestral patron gods of clans. Angels and devils have a hierarchies.

Most unaligned wish-granting beings follow the Great Wish guidelines. So do actual, magical Great Wishes. The power is extremely bounded, but if the player can spell out the effects in game-mechanical terms, I go with that. If they get "creative" (case #4 in the spell write-up), I'll follow my "beings of Law" guidelines because I see Great Wish as formulaic, unmediated magic; it has nothing to do with, say, Summon Demon.

But I never accept written-down wishes, or those read from notes. The player has to turn away from any notes, look me in the eye, and state the wish. If they refuse to do that, their character hasn't wished and they forfeit the wish. This has nothing to do with trying to "screw" the player; it's about roleplaying properly.

I'll make exceptions for those with suitable abilities. Notably, the Magical Lawyer perk (GURPS Thaumatology: Magical Styles, p. 32) or a use of Serendipity.

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The correct answer for me is linked to the answer to the question, "What power is ultimately granting the wish?"

This is exactly my approach. I would never grant a wish that just works, either perversely or as intended. In every case, there is something granting the wish and the wish is limited by their power, intelligence, attitude, and rules.
I think this is more consistent with most traditional portrayals of wishes. When the genie in the story of Aladdin says 'your wish is my command', then he means that in the normal sense of the phrase; he will try and fulfil your orders, but he is inherently limited by his own powers, can only do things that he actually thinks of, may have a limited understanding of what you want, has some things which will violate his 'contract', may choose to interpret instructions depending on his personality, opinions of the lamp / ring holder, etc.
Because wish-granting entities in traditional stories tend to be poorly-defined plot-devices, it can seem like they have unlimited power, but I don't think that was the actual 'intent' of those stories. Wizards in those stories often seem equally arbitrary in their abilities, but few people would suggest that wizards in fantasy roleplaying games have anything like the ability to do whatever they want with no limitations.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The correct answer for me is linked to the answer to the question, "What power is ultimately granting the wish?"

One of the best advantages of this approach is that the player has some cues as to what sort of wish they are getting. They get the chance to interact with the entity, find out a little of its personality and nature, and be prepared when they make their wish.


Or you can take the mysterious magic item at its word and wish without figuring out what its powered by. If you feel lucky.

[DangerousThing]

One of the problems that GM's face is that gaming is inherently different from the fiction that we get our inspiration from.

In fiction, wishes are almost always a plot device to further the plot. In legends, they seem to show the worst part of people's desires, so they seem to screw over the protagonist. The only legend that I remember that has the protagonist come out on top is Aladdin, but even then many of his problems occur when the bad guy gets the lamp.

As a writer I get a much better plot if the protagonist gets screwed over. This gives them a chance to improve.

As a GM, I had to learn that the story is about the PCs, and that screwing them over usually lowers the fun for everybody.

But because I get my inspiration for my games from fiction, I do have to remember this.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Or you can take the mysterious magic item at its word and wish without figuring out what its powered by. If you feel lucky.

Just ask yourself this one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do you, punk?