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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BookTenTiger" data-source="post: 8935865" data-attributes="member: 6685541">As I've mentioned in a few threads, I've fallen head over heels in love with the game Ironsworn. The basic game can be <a href="https://www.ironswornrpg.com/" target="_blank">downloaded for free</a>, though its excellent expansions (Delve and Starforged) must be purchased (and should be!).Ironsworn is designed for very small groups or solo play. To aide in this, the game has a system called The Oracle. It's basically a series of tables you can roll on in order to generate settlements, NPC's, plot twists, enemy actions, etc. This, of course, is already very much in-line with D&D, home of so many famous random tables.However, The Oracle has another use, and that's to answer questions about the campaign world, consequences, or really anything else. Here's how it works:[ATTACH=full]275368[/ATTACH]Let's say I'm playing a solo game and my character, a hunter, is trying to fight a big ol' wyvern. I know the wyvern's going to be swooping down at me, but I'm not sure if it's going to try to snatch me or my faithful hunting hound. Rather than choosing, I ask the Oracle! I decide it's "likely" that the wyvern would want to grab the unarmed dog rather than this hunter with a spear pointed and its belly. I roll a d100 and get 34. So to my question "Does the wyvern snatch my hunting hound?" the answer is "yes."Here's another example: I'm currently running an Ironsworn game for three friends. We decided on a quest to save a town from a plague. We asked the Oracle a series of yes or no questions to figure out what's going on with this plague. First we asked "Does the plague cause a physical reaction?" We decided it was "Almost Certain" that the plague cause physical reactions... and rolled below 11! So the answer was "No." Then through a series of further questions, we figured out that this "plague" was actually a magical mental illness that cause paranoia and waking visions. None of us would have come up with that idea originally, and it was so fun to see it develop as we asked more questions and rolled!Some further examples from the Ironsworn book include:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Is there somewhere I can hide?"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Do I drop my sword or my shield?"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Do I know the way?"</li> </ul>These questions remind me of those frustrating moments in D&D when you're not sure if a character would know something you don't know as a player, or if something exists in the campaign world that you haven't decided on as a DM. I remember playing in a campaign in which we were fighting this huge storm elemental. We asked the DM if we could use a metal rod to attract the elemental's lightning attacks, and the DM said that lightning rods didn't exist in the campaign world. Personally, to me, this didn't make much sense, since the cantrip Shocking Grasp grants advantage for attacks against opponents wearing metal or made of metal armor. It felt like the D&D rules assumed characters knew lightning was attracted to metal. The small debate we had left a sour taste, and only now do I realize that using The Oracle could have easily solved this problem!Rather than debating at the table whether Faerun has lightning rods, we could have rolled on the Oracle Table! In fact, I'll do it now. Let's say the DM says it's Unlikely that our characters would know of lightning rods. I roll a d100 and get... 23. That's a "No." The dice have spoken, problem solved.This is why I'm going to introduce The Oracle into my next D&D game. Rather than having to be the authority on every aspect of my campaign world, I'm going to leave questions up to the dice! Here are some situations I look forward to using The Oracle with:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Is it safter to travel by sea or by land?"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Would my character have met the Baron before?"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Does anyone in this band of goblins speak Orcish?"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"How does this town survive in isolation when the wilderness is too dangerous to farm?"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Could I have entered the medusa's lair with my eyes closed?"</li> </ul>Often when I receive questions like this, I go through a little internal debate. "What would be fun for the players? Does this match my vision of the campaign world? Am I being too lenient? To strict?"The Oracle solves these problems!For Yes / No questions, either I (or the table) decides on the likeliness of getting a "Yes."For open-ended questions, we brainstorm two different options and then choose which one is more likely!And at the end of the day, it's not the DM making these decisions... blame the Oracle!...So what do you think? Would you use the Oracle in your D&D campaign? Do you feel like the players would respect the results? Would you be willing to give up some DM Authority and leave some decisions up to the Oracle?</blockquote>

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