Hey! You got a quibble in my prophecy!

[Tinker Gnome]

I like my PCs to be The Unchosen One so I generally do not use prophecies.

 

[Pbartender]

I've always wanted to try using a "20/20 Hindsight Prophecy"...

In which there is a prophecy, and perhaps the PCs know that there is a prophecy, but they don't necessarily know what the prophecy says. I'd let the PCs play through a large chunk of the campaign, and then reveal the prophecy to them... A prophecy that I'd have only just then created, and reverse engineered to match their exploits.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Follow in the footsteps of Nostradamus: Go so thick with purple prose and metaphor that it only seems obvious in retrospect.

"Wait, so Fred was actually the dark falcon? How did that prophet know that the goblins would call him that?"

 

[Ahnehnois]

A good prophecy raises more questions than it answers.

For instance, I had a prophetic NPC talk about how a player was traveling with an "accursed one" but there wasn't time to specify which other PC (or NPC) I was talking about.

A vague image of somewhere I know they're going to go is always good.

And the best ones are the ominous ones, the ones that really make you shiver if you think about them.

 

[Mark CMG]

I've always wanted to try using a "20/20 Hindsight Prophecy"...

In which there is a prophecy, and perhaps the PCs know that there is a prophecy, but they don't necessarily know what the prophecy says. I'd let the PCs play through a large chunk of the campaign, and then reveal the prophecy to them... A prophecy that I'd have only just then created, and reverse engineered to match their exploits.

That's about the only way they seem to work in games. They work well in books (and this is one of those areas where books and games just don't mirror one another well) but in games they can all too often wind up being a linearity situation set up by the DM.

 

[Rune]

Also, conditional prophesy is your friend. Consider the prophesy from The Dark Crystal:

When single shines the triple sun,
what was sundered and undone
shall be whole; the two made one,
by Gelfling hand, or else by none.​

This prophesy sets the conditions in which it might be fulfilled, without mentioning whether it actually will be, or not. In this case, it does not even specifically say what the consequences will be if it does not come to pass (although it infers another thousand years of the status quo presented in the film).

 

[Heathen72]

...I strongly recommend against this approach- you would basically be telling some pcs that because of their character generation choices, they get screwed.

Really?

Wow. I don't think that is telling them that at all. A player with some sort of persecution complex might feel that way, I suppose, or one who had a lawyer at the table demanding that everything in the campaign world revolve around the players and their capabilities, all of the time might. I don't imagine I would enjoy running a game for players like that, though, and vice versa, no doubt.

Not every situation is so extreme, of course, and naturally negotiation is key, but if players came into my game expecting that the nature and history of the campaign needed to conform to their "character gen choices" they might find their "character gen options" somewhat limited. I like Greek myth, so I imagine that I would have to insist that they all play characters with ridiculously high strength, in case I am inspired to create a prophecy about a bow that could only be strung by the strongest man in the land. I like the prophecy about the Lord of the Nazgul too, so I guess they would all have to play women or hobbits, too. Just in case.

Alternatively (because I do like to give the players some semblance of freedom) my backup response to their concern about being 'screwed over because of their character choices' would be to make sure that the players know that everyone gets a chance to shine in my game, but not everything revolves around your character. I would also point out that even when it isn't their character's moment in the sun, just because they don't get to 'pull the trigger' doesn't mean that they won't have a part to play. Hopefully this will make them feel better. If not, see the conclusion to my first point above...

Oh, Re: the OP, here are some thoughts I had involving a prophecy in a thread from a while ago. What I tried to do in that thread was to create a situation where the prophecy was for the most part clear, but ending the curse it described required some creative interpretation of the prophecy on the part of the players. I intend to run it as a game myself.

Finally, one other thing to bear in mind is that it is probably best not to frame the prophecy like an ultimatum. Failing to meet the prophecy should mean that the status quo remains, i.e., the Lord of the Nazgul lives on, the mighty bow remains unstrung, the season remains winter (but never Christmas) etc.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I tend to prefer prophecies that are either crystal clear (thus telling the party what to do) or can happen any number of times (so if the party TPKs the next group has a chance)

 

[DogBackward]

I've been planning a prophecy-based game for a long time, about a world where everybody knows that Fate controls everything. Prophecies are very clear and always happen exactly as written. Until the PC's come along. It's an idea inspired by Sparhawk (a.k.a. "Anakha") from the Elenium; the PC's, for whatever reason, are simply invisible to the Fates. They are a wildcard in the prophecies: the only way one can change is if one of the PC's (or a few other such individuals in the world) get involved somehow.

I'm thinking I might go with a single event that happens when they're all there, to avoid having to explain why so many of these individuals got together. Y'know, since the whole concept of destiny bringing a group together wouldn't really work.

I've also had a villain who went through his own quest at the same time as the PC's were doing their early stuff, and managed to erase his name from the Book of Death, which holds the name of all who have and will live, and the time and circumstances of their death, thus becoming immortal.

 

[Heathen72]

Re: the Witch-King

Something that vague still has plenty of wiggle room, especially in a FRPG. It could mean death via woman, death via non-Human, death via an accident (falls off cliff), death via carelessness (his own magic misfires or is bounced back at him, the PCs convince his minions to redeem themselves and turn on him, a summoned creature kills him, there is divine intervention prayed for by a cleric...

It doesn't screw the PCs unless you, the DM, have ONLY ONE meaning to the prophecy. Believe me, creative players will think of SOMETHING that satisfies the prophesy...you just have to decide it's good enough.

Well said. And interestingly in this case, it was that the Lord of Nazgul thought himself invulnerable to anything less than a Maia or a Balrog that led to his being killed by Eowyn and Merry. He actually taunts Eowyn with that fact, so you can only imagine he totally himself when he found out that she was a woman and all his certainty left him.

It is not so much a case of the execution of the prophecy hanging on a legalistic technicality, and more a reliance on a sort of ambiguity within it - which the best prophecies do. This one does not say that he will be killed by a woman, which is restrictive. It says he can be killed by no man. As Danny says, there is a lot of wiggle room in that!

FInally, it is the nature of prophecies to make more sense after the event. But if you can have it make more sense in a cool way - for the players to go 'Of course!!' then all the better.