Future Telling and Fortune Cookies

[JohnPaulB]

Some games allow you to prognosticate: Omens, Augury, Astrology, etc.

There isn’t something like this in TFT (except maybe TRANCE spell).

However, this type of thing happens in Fantasy Adventure and Myth stories all the time.

I guess the author of the scenario could write out the prophecy in advance and use it as a plot hook. But that isn’t the flexible, in game, prognostication that a gypsy gives or an oracle announces to enquiring PCs.

For those who’ve used Future Telling in TFT, how did you use it?

======================

I’ve always wanted to do this one:

There is a type of Ceremonial Prognostication that involves a group (usually the PCs before they go out on the adventure) eating a group meal in formulaic presentation at a temple that usually has dragons, frogs, or a pot-bellied legendary prophet represented. The PCs converse, plan, argue, etc. At the end of the ceremonial meal, the ritual breaking of the bread is performed. Each PC has a small wafer, which they break revealing a slip of paper. On that slip of paper there is either a bit of Wisdom or a good or bane future happening. This future happening could pertain to the individual or the group. Sometimes it pertains to someone else in the group.

The Ceremonial Meal is of course a Chinese food restaurant. The formulaic presentation is “Order 1 from column A, 2 from column B and with 6 you get eggroll. The GM gives each PC a fortune cookie that the player can eat. Each character reads their fortune. Let the players discuss what this all means.

In the meantime, the GM listens in. From the fortunes, the GM plans some possible future events to transpire for each character appropriate to their fortune. This could be plot lines, or “how appropriate, that must have been what your fortune meant”, etc.

The GM could just gloss over this Meal, quickly go through the fortune cookies as no big deal, or he can make it so the players feel it is important to the plot.
If the GM can plan ahead for this meal and has the money, he might even have some fortune cookies made with fortunes or clues that he wants the players to know about.