Destiny: What would a world dominated by it look like?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by thrash

I imagine the biggest variable in such a world would be: how strong are individual Destinies? Is it possible to avoid a Bad End or fail to achieve a Good one?

As it currently stands Destiny has four levels:

Trivial [1/-1]
Minor [5/-5]
Major [10/-10]
Great [15/-15]

The greater the Destiny the harder it will be change/prevent but it may flip or the nature of the Destiny is misunderstood.

Take Anakin Skywalker for example. His Great Destiny was "to bring balance to the Force" but was that a good or a bad Destiny?

If you sit back and think about it (something the Jedi council didn't do). If the light side of the Force in the form of the Jedi being strong then that balance is going to mean the dark side gains strength or something diminishing the Jedi.

[Anaraxes]

If the assumptions are that "Destinies" are universal, and can be commonplace rather than special, then the world could look like anything. The existence of Destinies would be irrelevant. For example, how do you know that you're not already living in such a world? (Sure, we don't know our Destinies. That doesn't mean we don't have them; it just means we didn't ask the question.) Perhaps your Destiny is to read threads on gaming forums. (Ding! Another seventeen Destines fulfilled.)

Does seem like kind of a waste of the capital letter, though.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

The Norse believed everyone had a destiny, or "Wyrd". It doesn't have to be a great deed or an epic saga. But it WILL happen.

The bad part is that the Wyrd is fulfilled no matter what, that fate and luck will guide you right to target, and the efforts to avoid it may end up fulfilling it.

The good part is that until you fulfil your Wyrd, nothing can stop you. You will have the ability to fulfil your Wyrd, so nothing that can stop that will succeed. In fact the most common Wyrd knowledge is the exact manner of one's death.

There is a tale of the Norseman Örvar-Oddr, who learned his Wyrd was to be killed by his horse in his home village. So he killed his horse and buried it, and set off a-viking, sailing in distant lands. For three centuries (yes, centuries) he gadded about heroing. Then, feeling homesick, he visited his home village, and tripped on the skull of a horse (his old horse, the grave exposed by three centuries of weathering), which resulted in his death.

An entire population can have Wyrds, some major, some minor, some merely "you will die in thus-and-so a manner" or "you will eat ten thousand sausages in your lifetime". Knowledge of one's Wyrd might be unusual, though.

[sgtcallistan]

The world we play in has gesa, destinies and fates (and a fickle goddess of luck).
The thing is that the purpose of asking a druid about gesa, destiny or fate is that they enable a person to be fearless... except in certain circumstances.
Most PC have one or more of these, and can act as if they don't but can carefully manage what happens to favour (or not) themselves.

Enough tales of how gesa work, how fate is unchangeable, how destiny will not be what you imagine exist in the culture that many will not seek to know it ('it was his wyrd', when anyone dies).
Those who seek to know it are considered brave, usually warriors, and watchful for the conditions of their end coming true, but do not let it rule their lives, rather seek to end their lives with high honour.

Example: the warrior wife (a charioteer originally) of a PC responded to the PC saying what he thought was his fate (never to have a hearth to call his own) with: 'in a forest of stone, beneath the Iron Ring (a ring about our fantasy world), and... (the PC and player forgot the last one)'.

This led to a wonderful moment when he mentioned some carved-in-the-shape-of-palm-trees stone pillars he'd seen in the local Arabia-analogues' bazaar (which was close to the equator and so under the Iron Ring).

PC and wife (and babe-in-arms) went to the bazaar, found some fancy chairs by a table, sat and waited for what would come.
They were offered coffee in the fantasy equivalent of a shopping mall.
Each had a couple of local silver coins from a trove found on a wrecked ship some days before, which happened to be the exact amount they needed for a large pot of good coffee.

When the rest of our ship's crew caught up with us, we were able to introduce them to coffee and stayed up all night singing on the boat.

On the next island (exactly on the equator) there was a collapsed temple with many pillars (which had vines all over them), and PC's wife was killed while feeding their baby, at which the PC recalled that the last condition was 'while half-naked'.

I think as an example of two destinies intertwined it was just about perfect.
PC has no status without his wife, has lost his legal standing in the society, and has no claim upon his wife's homestead.

My PC has now to present the child to his wife's sister (a great distance away), and has a 'roaring rampage of revenge' to carry out, against the dark gods themselves (their island, their killer).

[RyanW]

I've got a bit of a portal fantasy sort of campaign planned, and an idea I had was that these newcomers aren't in Death's book. She finds that intriguing.

My first thoughts of running this draws heavily from the relationship between Bob and Hexadecimal.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by maximara

Take Anakin Skywalker for example. His Great Destiny was "to bring balance to the Force" but was that a good or a bad Destiny?

If you sit back and think about it (something the Jedi council didn't do). If the light side of the Force in the form of the Jedi being strong then that balance is going to mean the dark side gains strength or something diminishing the Jedi.

That depends on how you're defining 'balance.' George Lucas seems to have been defining it through a sort of 'California hippie' interpretation of Eastern mysticism. To the Jedi, the Dark Side WAS the imbalance, it would not exist if the Force were properly balanced, so the Chosen One was supposed to destroy the Sith by breaking their power. They did think about it, they just had some missing pieces and a bit too much arrogance until it was too late. Even then, going by the Original Trilogy and ignoring either Disney or the EU (so, working with what Lucas had in 1983), Anakin did fulfill it in the end, destroying the Sith and leaving only the Jedi.

(A big problem in the Star Wars fandom is that the term 'Dark Side' is misleading; it's meant to be more like a cancer in the Force, not a necessary part of it, but even the official media has problems there.)

[Inky]

Actually, Mark Caliber's misremembering, the Destiny trait in GURPS can be an adverse one and priced as a Disadvantage - see B131.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to say "destiny" in this thread for the general idea and "Destiny" for the GURPS trait, those of us who aren't already, just to avoid muddle.

What about using Higher Purpose for this instead of (GURPS) Destiny, or combining the two? If you wanted the gods or whatever was behind this to want the destinies done and be hostile to deliberate attempts at dawdling, that is. If it was a prophecy/time-travel type thing, that would be less applicable, it would be just a case of "this thing will happen, you're free to try to evade it in whatever way you like but it will happen in the end".

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

A world in which everyone has a Destiny is unworkable. The whole point of Destiny is that you are going to do something special or unusual. If everyone has a Destiny, then nobody has a Destiny. You could have a setting where, say, one in a hundred people be born with a Destiny and that world would be a very dramatic one indeed by comparison without ours, rife with epic betrayals, and acts of heroism.

A destiny is merely a future that is going to happen. It can be any future. Obviously in literature the interesting "destinies" are at the forefront but having a destiny is nothing special. It could be to be a farmer your whole life and die old in your bed.

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

That depends on how you're defining 'balance.' George Lucas seems to have been defining it through a sort of 'California hippie' interpretation of Eastern mysticism. To the Jedi, the Dark Side WAS the imbalance, it would not exist if the Force were properly balanced, so the Chosen One was supposed to destroy the Sith by breaking their power. They did think about it, they just had some missing pieces and a bit too much arrogance until it was too late. Even then, going by the Original Trilogy and ignoring either Disney or the EU (so, working with what Lucas had in 1983), Anakin did fulfill it in the end, destroying the Sith and leaving only the Jedi.

(A big problem in the Star Wars fandom is that the term 'Dark Side' is misleading; it's meant to be more like a cancer in the Force, not a necessary part of it, but even the official media has problems there.)

Boy I didn't take it that way. I interpreted balance as equal power between the forces for darkness and light. I chuckled because at one point it was fulfilled. You had Yoda/Skywalker (jr) vs Palpatine/Vader. Though only briefly. The Jedi ruled the galaxy for all intents and purposes prior to the rise of the Sith again under Palpatine. So there was no balance. It was utter domination by the Jedi.

That was my take anyway but Star Wars takes are takes and everyone has one.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

That depends on how you're defining 'balance.' George Lucas seems to have been defining it through a sort of 'California hippie' interpretation of Eastern mysticism. To the Jedi, the Dark Side WAS the imbalance, it would not exist if the Force were properly balanced, so the Chosen One was supposed to destroy the Sith by breaking their power. They did think about it, they just had some missing pieces and a bit too much arrogance until it was too late. Even then, going by the Original Trilogy and ignoring either Disney or the EU (so, working with what Lucas had in 1983), Anakin did fulfill it in the end, destroying the Sith and leaving only the Jedi.

(A big problem in the Star Wars fandom is that the term 'Dark Side' is misleading; it's meant to be more like a cancer in the Force, not a necessary part of it, but even the official media has problems there.)

The problem is the force shares so many things with taoism (STAR WARS: How Taoism Inspired The Force and Star Wars is Taoism in American garb) that fans tend to look at it through a taoist lens.

Heck, that is what one of the sequels was trying to explain: when one side of the force, be it yin (dark) or yang (light), becomes dominate the seed of the the other appears and pushes things in the other direction. One of the novels also delves into this.