Cassandra Mode Activate
In Handbook-World, a TPK is like Black Friday. They’re great for the local economy, but a bit shit if you’ve been unexpectedly resurrected. Case in point: After the untimely demise of The Anti-Party, certain of their effects went up for sale. Gunslinger made off with Sorcerer’s supply of bat guano and sulfur. Barbarian’s hair salon is under new management. And Oracle’s backlog of prophecy turned out to be way cheaper than paper towels. Fighter is just being economical!
Of course, this is the problem with prophecy in general. In the same way that we discussed the fallibility of illusion magic last week, the fallibility of divination makes for equally wonky gameplay.
For example, just this afternoon my avenging gunslinger/inquisitor/follower-of-Iomedae found herself faced with a moral quandary. The gang had rediscovered a lost civilization of ice elves. They seemed perfectly content in their secluded tundra home — writing poetry, practicing free love, and living a life of semi-decadent ease. Their major pastime was eating hallucinogenic clams, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because lotuses don’t thrive at those latitudes.
“Why do you speak of other gods?” they asked my holy gunslinger. “There is only one god. Her name is Calistria, and she gives us beauty and pleasure and all good things.”
The party side-eyed one another. “This wouldn’t be the same Calistria who’s all about lust, revenge, and trickery, would it?”
“Wat?” they asked us.
“Wat?” we replied.
And then there was a huddle. Was it our responsibility to tell these benighted people about the outside world? They seemed happy enough. Why bring trade and the dubious benefits of “””civilization””” to their cozy little world? And besides, it wouldn’t be a good idea to offend the most vindictive bitch in the pantheon.
“So like… You wanna talk to her?” said their priest.
“Talk to who?”
“The goddess Calistria. I’ve got her on hold.”
It was a commune spell, and it was the first time any of us had a direct line to divinity. And here’s where THE POINT of this little anecdote comes in. My questions went as follows.
1. Is it your will that we leave these people to their own devices?
IT IS MY WILL.
2. Would my own goddess, Iomedae, agree with you?
OF COURSE.
3. How can we protect these people from the encroaching railroad-baron dwarves?
I WILL PROTECT THEM. I WOULD NEVER LET ANYONE HARM MY… PETS. WE HAVE NO ENEMIES HERE.
I’ve never had to roll Sense Motive on a deity before. But you’d better believe that the word “pets” set my Good-PC senses tingling. And because it got my back up, I went ahead and said the impolitic thing: “Call them ‘pets’ again and you will have an enemy, goddess or no.” I’m pretty sure this was not the smartest thing to say to a goddess of revenge. I’ll be sure to let you know when I pay for my impudence.
More to the point, it reveals the same weakness of divination that Fighter is experiencing in today’s comic. When you are forced to interpret prophecy, wordplay, or strange visions of any kind, you are at the mercy of your own insight. Did you read the situation right? Where is lie? What could you have misinterpreted? It’s questions like these that lead to our own question of the day!
When have you gone wrong with divination in your own game? Tell us all about your own Cassandra moments down in the comments!
A new NPC I’m working on (who I’ve mentioned here before, actually), never lies. This is a self-imposed challenge, since they love being deceptive. As such, I’m working out quite a few of these Cassandra truths in advance. And they’re going to need them, since they’re secretly the parent of one of the PCs… who is actively questing to kill them.
“I am not the God Eater. That is not a name I possess, and I am nowhere near powerful enough to claim it.” (Because when I was bound I lost most of my power and all of my names, including that one.)
“Ha! I’d have to be mad to challenge the Dark Smith. He is far more powerful than I.” (Fortunately for you, I’m f***ing furious. And skill is a great force multiplier; I fully intend to kick his ass. I just want to see how good you are at bargaining, first.)
“Are you certain you want to know this? Very well. Your scent is *exactly* like your mother’s. I should be able to pick up traces of your other parent, but I can’t. There’s only one being so utterly scentless to my nose, and they are the object of your quest. I’m sorry. Your other parent was almost certainly the demon called the God Eater.” (Because of course I can’t smell myself. And I *was* the God Eater, even if I’m not anymore. And for what it’s worth, I truly am sorry for all the enemies and complications you’ve inherited from me.)
Whoops, realized after I posted this that these were all examples of Exact Words more than Cassandra Truths. Still, same basic concept of whether to trust the NPCs words as they seem. Kabalin is actually mostly trustworthy, but they view hiding their identity as a necessary evil while they figure out what’s going on.
Well, less “necessary evil” and more “fun trick I’ve got an excuse to pull”.
I think it falls within the spirit of the thing. You’re getting information from an NPC. It’s easy to misinterpret.
This was a long running AD&D-converted to-3.5 Ravenloft campaign. One of my players had a character Psionisist of part Vistani (the settings fortune-teller gypsy-alikes) heritage, and during the course of the campaign had been gifted a Tarokka deck. I had a physical deck and ran through a few simple reading patterns with him for on-the-fly readings, and we came to a sort of gentlemans agreement – if he saved readings for critical and high-pressure moments, I would ‘bend’ the adventure to suit his readings. And it worked quite well, he saved it for real “completely stuck” moments, and I adjusted the adventures on the fly so his readings gave genuine routes to progress the adventure.
However, it came to bite the party in the ass big time.
The party had screwed with Count Strahd (I’m sure everyone knows who he is) on a couple of occassions, to a big enough degree that there was a serious grudge. Strahd had set one of his best killers (a vampire femme fatale) on their case, and she got close, only being driven off after coming very close to ending one characters life. The player of said character wasn’t really up on vampire lore (and the character himself was low intelligence), and mixed up his vampirism/lycanthropy and so was convinced he was now going to turn. Everyone else assured him he was fine, but he wasn’t having any of it, and as a last ditch attempt to assure him he was fine, the Vistana agreed to do a reading.
Well, I couldn’t have stacked the cards better had I tried; completely at random he drew a “past” card that depicted a bleeding warrior with a evil-looking woman stood over, an “opposition” card called “the Darklord” that even was drawn to show Count Strahd, a “ally” card called the “Artifact” that showed a fairly standard holy relic, and a “future” card called “The Beast” that showed a werewolf mid-transformation howling at a full moon. Oops. I didn’t need to do much figuring out on how that reading was going to adjust the campaign setting….
lol. I love it when the cards lean into the narrative. Got a buddy who’s big into tarot. It’s great fun watching him twist the image to the moment.
Hello,
Well I don’t really have a story of misinterpretation who comes to my mind but I couldn’t resist to talk about one of my current character. It’s in the Knight (http://www.knight-jdr.fr/ soory it’s a french game and note sure it exist in english) universe, where humanity is besieged by darkness, to simplify it all, and a military organization – the Knight – use Iron-Man-styled armor to fight them. And are fond of arthurian legend, with their leader taken the mantle of Arthur and a Round Table of lieutenants.
So, the characters have a “civil” identity and a knight’s name, often referencing some mythology or more mundane reference. Since I choose the advantage of premonition dreams for my character, her knight’s name is Kassandra. So even if I don’t recall a moment where I really misinterpreted one of her dreams (often I just don’t understand them…) I litteraly play a Cassandra xD
Any way the GM got tired of premonition dreams and some shenanigans on the very nature of my character (let’s just say we discover she is NOT human, at her own surprise) have taken the focus in my arc.
It’s a tough shtick to pull off in an RPG. The dice have to go just so if you want your own predictions to go awry as a PC.
In that case the dreams were given by the GM, it was mostly clues about the scenario (where to find someone, that sort of thing). So the random of the dice where not at fault.
I’m pretty sure Calistria respects the raw bravery it takes to say that to her face, honestly. Her antipaladin code is pretty solidly ‘If you don’t like what I’m doing, try and stop me.’
At one point, I was gming a campaign with a Sarenite inquisitor. The party was on a journey towards an important task in the inquisitor’s future, to the point where an avatar of sarenrae decided to personally show up and make sure he got the memo that there was IMPORTANT SHIT that needed doing (and to remind him that she’d already warned him twice about being too bloodthirsty for his own good.)
The party’s ex-tyrant antipaladin, now a fighter/barbarian hybrid, looked at the avatar of Sarenrae with skepticism, but made no comment.
The vigilante, on the other hand, decided to cast Detect Good. On an avatar of Sarenrae. He promptly dropped to the ground, screaming as his eyes were seared blind by her aura.
Let’s hope so. O_O
Dude really should have invested in some of those eclipse glasses or something.
“I like your attitude,” says Calistria, “You shall be my *new* pet.”
> I’m pretty sure Calistria respects the raw bravery it takes to say that to her face, honestly.
Let’s just hope that doesn’t translate to her smiling happily while you’re dying of wasp poison. That’s an issue with chaotic people (or gods), them liking you is no guarantee of safety.
I had a player in a 3.5 game whose character’s backstory was that he received a prophecy that the BBEG was going to be trouble. So his cleric set out to destroy the evil and found … a kid. “Well this can’t be right” he said. Many years later, the kid grew up and went on to be a BBEG and the Cleric had to clean up the mess he made. (This was all suggested by the player, by the way!)
I think you may have grounds for a lawsuit:
https://mashable.com/video/the-creator-trailer
This one’s not exactly prophecy as much as predestination.
In college we played a GURPS Supers campaign with the weirdest and wackiest bunch of losers this side of Doom Patrol. In the course of our adventures, we were periodically beset by mobs of certain faceless villains with no clear origin in our reality (call them Team Black). They hated us and called us horrible names and accused us of destroying their religion. In the course of the campaign, we eventually met two rival factions in another dimension (Team Red and Team Blue) who each laid claim to THE MOST VALUABLE THING (macguffin), an otherwise useless big, metal orb the size of a basketball. We kept asking the two rival factions about Team Black, but they insisted there was only Red v. Blue. We also tried to get them to make peace or share, but they disagreed so totally that in the end only one group got the macguffin. (I don’t even remember which.) The losing side swore vengeance against us and (recalling our inadvertent suggestion) changed their color to black in mourning and swore vengeance. One of our later adventures involved time-travel to the past; we were mobbed by Team Black just before take-off, and we had to repel boarders while en-route, in the process accidentally scattering vengeful Team Black members backwards through time into our own earlier adventures. I later learned from the GM that regardless of which side we’d helped, the offended team would inevitably have become Team Black and sworn revenge, etc.
Were they actually called “Team Red/Blue/Black,” or do you just not feel like explaining a bunch of arcane organizations?
They were faceless robed and armored beings with a music/ tonality social and religious structure, treble vs base I think. We were accused of bringing discord to the holy music by giving privacy to the rival faction. Honestly, 30 years later, all I can really recall is the color of their outfits and the general plot, but they DID have a really cool name I can’t remember.
I wasn’t there for the most memorable prophecy story in my local community, but I’m going to share it anyway.
It happened in a game of Exalted to a circle of Solars.
The pc’s had found this Very Important TM ancient tablet with an important prophecy on it written in the very first language.
The group hands it over to the Twilight caste as the only one who can read said language. The GM hands over the hand-out he has prepared for just this occasion to the Twilights player and everybody turns expectedly for him to read it aloud…
and instead of doing that he takes the paper and EATS IT, right then and there before everyone. “Solars don’t believe in prophecies” is the only explanation he gives.
To the GM’s credit he rolls with it, and a good time was had by all.
lol. What a legend! Write your own destiny, Exalt!
The gods in my homebrew tend to be VERY involved with their worshipers. When your power is directly influenced by how many and how devout your worshipers are, you tend to be a lot more “hands on”. Once a clerical type gets around 5th level, depending if they’ve been actually trying to forward the gods worship, the odds of someone showing up on a divination or commune (usually one of the gods underlings, but…) starts increasing. Once they reach 10th, it’s pretty much a given that they have eyes on them pretty much all the time.
Because of that, you get things like the player whose paladin absolutely refused to make any kind of god call. Anything other than the required prayers wasn’t going to happen. Until the time he and another character discovered a rift had opened to the hells and it looked like a minor invasion was in process. It was set up so that they would run for help, but he surprised me and yelled, “Athena HELP!”. They were around 12th level then, so he, with an amazing dice roll (natural 00), got a pissed off goddess in her tatty robe and curlers going, “THIS BETTER BE GOOD!” Of course as soon as she saw the rift she told to the two characters to go hide and she’d be right back. Being heroes they of course refused and did a holding action until the cavalry got back.
The player said his paladin was so traumatized by seeing his goddess in her “Netflix and chill” mode that he was retiring to the nearest temple. Took the group a concerted effort to talk him out of it :D.
What… What color was the bathrobe? O_O
Hot pink 🙂
I can’t tell if that’s a flying cloaked vampire in the background, or some kind of mecha-leech-vampire thing.
Vampire mech? Hmmm… Hey @Laurel! I came up with an idea all by myself with no help from anyone else! >_>
What inspirational quotes are written/hanging behind Fighter’s head there?
Hey @Laurel! What inspirational quotes are written/hanging behind Fighter’s head there?
I’d lay good gold down that the one right above his head reads “The Family that Slays Together Stays Together”.
Live, Laugh, Loot?
I have played enough malkavians to know how dangerous interpreting a prophecy can be 🙂
Forgot to ask, is the discord thing a new thing? 🙂
Yeah. Super recent. GET IN HERE!
I feel threatened 😛
When conversing with a deity or any other omniscient power, take pains to never ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to, and never base your next action on what was just said 😉
The one time I dealt in prophecy to any significant extent I was the GM of the game. The problem there wasn’t that prophesy was hard to guess at, it was generally pretty direct, but more that in the future the god Pelor had somehow been killed and someone stole his domain over Time.
Prophecy wasn’t exactly available past a certain point in the future… and that point kept getting closer and closer because the usurper was enacting convoluted time travel schemes to take over earlier and earlier in the timeline, aiming to eventually having always been the god of Time.
Hmmm, that plot sounds familiar… :p
My first proper character was a Divination Wizard. Sure he got Insta-gibbed the first time the GM introduced an enemy that could cast fireball, but I still went out of my way to come up with a headcannon science behind prophecy (because wizard).
Basically I decided that all possible futures co-exist in potentia until they are observed (through prophecy/divination), at which point the observed future events are locked in and become Fate. This means that awareness of a prophecy is what makes the prophecy metaphysically self-fulfilling, and fate can only be denied by those who are unaware of it.
In practice I take this to mean the DM has fiat to manipulate whatever bullshit they need to make the prophecied events come to pass, while the players have to employ bendy logic and carefully cultivated ignorance to change it.
Once my players met an old elf lady out in the desert. She offered to use her divinations to answer one question for each PC. The answers were, of course, in cryptic four-line not-quite-poems formed out of backstory knowledge and my plans for the campaign’s future. Some examples:
‘Where is my missing father?’:
“He is closer than you think, but still far away. Still a world away.
Darkness surrounds him, and winter’s grasp, and something more sinister still.
His resolve remains like stone, yet even cracks appear.
To find him, you must travel in an opposite approach.”
‘What being is responsible for our recent troubles?’
“Layers upon layers upon layers form an impenetrable wall.
The mind-ridden, the faithful, the corrupted conspire.
Above them all floats an observing eye.
And the flesh of the flesh of the abyss’s black stars.”
I prefer the reliability of “CCTV divinations” over “20 questions diviniations.”
When I use “20 questions divinations” I like to leave as little wiggle-room as possible: *Rolls out a map* “Is it located north of this latitude? (No either means you’re on it, or it’s south) “Is it located east of this longitude?” Repeat over several days to locate.
This comic’s prophecy has been fulfilled, and it could, in fact, mean anything: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/divine-intervention-4-dawwn