Does anyone have some massive portent appear in a campaign? Maybe one night, a big-ass green comet appears in the sky. The GM just mentions it.

The next game, he mentions it again. This continues, with maybe local NPC mages and priests getting real worked up and even hiring the players to obtain some lost magic item that will be needed as the comet reaches its apex.

Or maybe some big bad will take the comet as the sign that he needs to destroy the players homeland RIGHT NOW, so they get sucked into a war.

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I have run several T&T campaigns using the original maps from Ultima 1 and I have done the Return of Mondain that began with strange portents and rumors and eventually led the PCs to be declared outlaws by some of the Kings for giving such vile rumors any validity.

I have had the idea a few times before, I just have never quite got to making it happen.

That's pretty funny!

Hmm, another idea is that why said portent is active, maybe goblins get a +1 to hit or elves become susceptible to sleep spells. etc.

The idea I had was to have a certain constellation of stars appear to be particularly bright. When they appear all these points in the world would turn into bizzaro versions of themselves, sky wrong color, odd creatures wandering about, etc.

It would also bring about all kinds of creatures and spirits that had been dormant for eons. Basically they would be heralding a shift in the cosmos that would lead to a magical apocalypse. I figured there would be several ways to prevent it that the players could figure out over the course of the campaign.

I kinda had the idea to sandbox the thing, so that there was no one particular right way to figure things out, instead there would be clues as to whats up and possible solutions scattered amongst various cities and dungeons.

Like I said never got around to fleshing it out and running it.

Quote from: danbuter;685517Hmm, another idea is that why said portent is active, maybe goblins get a +1 to hit or elves become susceptible to sleep spells. etc.

That's definitely a good element. Warhammer has the two moons, one of the moons is Chaos tainted and when ascendent, the forces of Chaos are supposedly empowered.

I am fond of portents, prophesies, etc...

I think the trick to that is not be too heavy handed.

Don't force things to happen; let the events in the game build upon the portent if it feels right.

Yep.  Events in my campaign, for several years, were working up to the upcoming Blood Year, a time of great upheaval and change.  There were dark prophecies about the Year, and they drove multiple groups.  It finally hit last year.

Well, my last fantasy campaign was pretty much built around an idea of ancient prophesy, so yeah. In that case, the portent was caused by the players, as the pyramid they looted exploded with a wild ray of light seen from miles away...causing all sort of bad powerful mages to look into their crystal balls and start hunting the Chosen One down .

Quote from: Spinachcat;685534That's definitely a good element. Warhammer has the two moons, one of the moons is Chaos tainted and when ascendent, the forces of Chaos are supposedly empowered.

I was always fond of a question here - which is the cause, and which is the effect, in case of Warhammer? Does the moon ascent cause the Chaos to get stronger...or does it ascent because Chaos is getting stronger? A nice question for in game philosophers as well - is Chaos ruled by phases of Morrslieb, or is it indeed uncontainable.

Quote from: Bill;685589I am fond of portents, prophesies, etc...

I think the trick to that is not be too heavy handed.

Don't force things to happen; let the events in the game build upon the portent if it feels right.

Personally, I've always been the most fond of self - fulfilling prophecies. Perhaps I should try and stick a "You shall be the King of Scotland" to one of the PCs sometime, see what they do .

Not too regularly. I do make use of smaller portents for atmosphere building though, one of my favourite movies is Warlock, and the scene where the milk turns sour and flames burn blue in the plane is great. More signs than portents I suppose.

Quote from: Rincewind1;685610Well, my last fantasy campaign was pretty much built around an idea of ancient prophesy, so yeah. In that case, the portent was caused by the players, as the pyramid they looted exploded with a wild ray of light seen from miles away...causing all sort of bad powerful mages to look into their crystal balls and start hunting the Chosen One down .



I was always fond of a question here - which is the cause, and which is the effect, in case of Warhammer? Does the moon ascent cause the Chaos to get stronger...or does it ascent because Chaos is getting stronger? A nice question for in game philosophers as well - is Chaos ruled by phases of Morrslieb, or is it indeed uncontainable.

Personally, I've always been the most fond of self - fulfilling prophecies. Perhaps I should try and stick a "You shall be the King of Scotland" to one of the PCs sometime, see what they do .

In a Dark Sun campaign, I had a warrior with psychic powers have a vision of himself killing a sorceror king with a treacherous backstab. That seemed to work well; he was afraid of the sorceror kings.
This was also the character that refused to serve (and thus restore) the nearly wasted away God of Valor they found hiding in an ancient temple in the desert. The character just could not understand Valor, and possibly doomed the world.

I ran a semi- railroady game with the second session the players finding a bunch of Prophecies by someone. Research revealed that when he wrote them everyone thought it was the mutterings of some crazy guy but as they proved true people thought he was on to something.

Now normally prophecies are a dangerous thing in RPG's since the Gm has no control over the players choices (Nor should they) so even though everyone called them prophecies, I used prophecies of things that had already occurred. So they had already come true and were now part of a hidden history. So I didn't have to concern myself with what the players did, though they continued to call and think of them as "Prophecies"

Though I will probably steal the portent idea for a new sandbox I am running. A nice ambiguous sign left open to interpretation by many factions. Thanks!

Quote from: Artifacts of Amber;685679I ran a semi- railroady game with the second session the players finding a bunch of Prophecies by someone. Research revealed that when he wrote them everyone thought it was the mutterings of some crazy guy but as they proved true people thought he was on to something.

Now normally prophecies are a dangerous thing in RPG's since the Gm has no control over the players choices (Nor should they) so even though everyone called them prophecies, I used prophecies of things that had already occurred. So they had already come true and were now part of a hidden history. So I didn't have to concern myself with what the players did, though they continued to call and think of them as "Prophecies"

Though I will probably steal the portent idea for a new sandbox I am running. A nice ambiguous sign left open to interpretation by many factions. Thanks!

When pc's 'break' a prophecy, that's cool, because they were awesome enough to control their own fate. So its kinda win win.

Bill

When pc's 'break' a prophecy, that's cool, because they were awesome enough to control their own fate. So its kinda win win.

True but in my mind it is no longer a prophecy but a good guess.

That is why I don't use them as such. Handling things like fate and prophecy gets messy for them to remain what they are. More fun to break in a novel than in a game to me.

In Dark Albion, the morning before a major battle in the Rose War, the gathered armies saw a Parhelion, a triple sun in the sky, which was taken by all to be a portent of the three sons of York (the brothers Edward, George, and Richard, who were the claimants to the throne of Albion).  It was prophesied that so long as the three brothers stood united no army could defeat them.  

This was something that actually happened historically, too.

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