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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6755974" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, the thread is about ways to make it *not* problematic, so clearly it doesn't have to be.Even if you have a flexible outcome, you have an issue of perceived responsibility.  If the PCs find a letter detailing a plot to murder the King, they can choose to handle it themselves, or they can hand the King the letter, and let *him* handle it.  There is a potential threat, but its success is by no means certain.  If the PCs have a vision of the future in which the King is murdered, that isn't usually something that can be handed off.  There's a practical issue of who will believe you if you are not already a known confidant of someone near the king, if nothing else.  As a practical matter, you're telling the PCs, "You handle this, or the King dies - it is in/on your hands".  That's a form of railroading some folks may not like.And then, there's the more philosophical end of it.  Assume that the future is not actually fixed.  People have free will, and all that.  A vision of the future is merely a presentation of one possible future.  Why, then, are we concerned with it?  The King might be murdered, but he's a King, that's always true, isn't it?  He's got security to deal with threats.  Why is this one special, and why is my PC involved?For the vision to be valuable, it must be the case that the event is likely despite a wide range of different actions of people around the event - of all the possible futures, the King being murdered is in vast majority of them.  You can't just hand off the information, because that's a pretty obvious and easy thing to do - it would be in many of the possible futures, and in them the King still dies.  Averting the event requires finding an uncommon future.Then, there's the case where the future, or at least this element of it, is *fixed*, and the PCs can't change it.  The Star Wars case comes up here - that universe has a hefty does of destiny to it, and there are things that you can't change.  Anakin *will* bring balance to the Force, even if it takes six movies for him to get around to finishing the job!</blockquote>

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