Prophecies: Time Is A River And Baby, We're Throwing Rocks

Time is a river that flows only one direction. We are leaves carried on an eternally-flowing current until the water eats us away.

Time travel backwards is impossible. Physical things, as a hard rule, can only go in one direction. You can certainly speed up your passage. Many wizards are capable of moving forwards in time. Beings from the past have reappeared in the present, but travel backwards is impossible.

Except, of course, if something truly major happens.

When you throw a pebble into the water, it creates a ripple. That ripple is itself swept along by the current, the motion extending infinitely into the future and influencing the flow of everything that comes after it. Butterflies and hurricanes. This is causality.

But, right at the moment of impact, for a very short period of time, the ripple extends upriver. A leaf may, perhaps, flow over it and for just a brief second, touch the future.

 

Prophetic Rules

The degree to which a ripple extends backwards is always a fraction of how far it extends forwards. The death of a hermit alone in the woods may only be noticeable in the seconds before his death. If you can tell the future in a fight, you might be able to see your own death a couple seconds ahead, but little else. Even the greatest of kings may learn of their death no more than a few weeks in advance.

Hard knowledge is impossible. A ripple is affected by the motion of the river it spreads backwards into. It will become distorted and unclear with time. Telling the future a second beforehand is near-crystal-clear. Look a week earlier and things may be distorted and blurry. 

Paradoxes are possible. Free will does exist, ever since Rumen broke the back of fate and locked him in a coffin above the Door to Deepest Dark. Larger stones are harder to shift when you cannot touch them, but a small pebble may be slipped around entirely simply by knowledge of its coming.

Mechanics

Fortunes are measured in Chronological Distance and Abstraction. Chronological Distance causes abstraction.

Chronological Distance	Abstraction
Seconds	No Abstraction
Minutes	Minor Abstraction
Days	Moderate Abstraction
Weeks	Major Abstraction
Months	Unreadable Abstraction

Abstraction	Description
No Abstraction	A clear and informative view of the event.
Minor Abstraction	A hazy view of the event, cut off or limited in its perspective
Moderate Abstraction	A view of the event told through related metaphors
Major Abstraction	A view of the event told only through the vaguest symbolism
Unreadable Abstraction	A view of the event that only can tell you something will happen, with no other information

Examples: Charles will find his wife Edith in bed with his best friend Mark, which will cause his friend to kill him to keep it quiet

• No Abstraction. Charles sees Mark in bed with Edith, sees himself walking in on it, and sees Mark kill him
• Minor Abstraction. Charles sees Mark in bed with Edith, but not the murder/Charles sees himself being killed by his wife’s lover, but does not know that it’s his best friend
• Moderate Abstraction. A knight is stabbed in the back
• Major Abstraction. A man walks in the forest. He picks a flower and takes it with him. A serpent bites his foot, poisoning him, causing him to drop the flower.

Telling the Future

When you look into the future, choose a fortune-telling method or make one.

1. Palm reading: Moderate abstraction for any chronological distance if done to a babe at the moment of their birth. Otherwise unreadable abstraction.
2. Tarot cards. Moderate and minor abstraction is told through a consistent set of metaphors, allowing common events (deaths, births, betrayals) to be easily taught
3. Astronomy. Always major abstraction, regardless of chronological distance.
4. Haruspicy. Lowers abstraction by 1 category but requires an animal sacrifice.
5. Bone-Casting. Maximum abstraction is moderate when predicting deaths
6. Warrior’s-Divination. Never goes beyond a few seconds of chronological distance, but can be practiced while fighting.

Prophecy Beasts

If there’s a river, some things cannot be moved. They’re so set in the riverbed that a leaf caught on them will be stuck, unable to move forwards.

Prophecy Beasts do not move backwards or forwards in time, existing in their own instant-infinity. Encountering one will trap you with them until they are dislodged. They exist in a sole instant of time, alone for eternity, unless you touch upon them in the perfect place at the perfect moment.

Prophecy Beasts can be locations, objects, creatures, or concepts. They are above death and must be given a fate to re-enter time where they became stuck in it. This can be done by giving them a new soul, trading them your fate, or successfully changing their form into being unstuck.

Marks: What if Saves, Stats, and Hp were all the same thing?

Combining saves and stats is obviously not new, but I feel like we could take it a bit further. Do we really need HP?

Stats

How stats exactly work doesn’t actually matter a ton, so long as we’ve got the philosophy that each stat represents a different way to avoid danger. I’ve got:

• Tough
• Fast
• Sneaky

And then different classes can give you others. For example:

• A Fighter can get Well Trained
• A Paladin can get Divine Luck
• A Wizard can get Protective Wards

Etc. You can even have stats you get diegetically, maybe you meet a master in the woods and she teaches you the Skin Of Stone stat or the Reading the Wind stat.

Rolling

When you are in danger, you pick and roll a stat to avoid it with. Obviously some things just won’t work: if you’re in the middle of a group of guards, sneaky probably isn’t going to cut it, try something else.

Rather than success/failure, we have Success + Marked Success.

• On a Success, you avoid the danger
• On a Marked Success, you avoid the worst of the danger, but get a Mark

Marks

A Mark is an injury, curse, or effect placed over one of your stats. While a stat is marked, you can’t use it to avoid danger.

 The default Marks might be like, “Injured [body part],” “Spooked,” “Hungry,” but different monsters might have specifics, like a dragon might have “Charred to a Crisp” or a Nymph might have “Entranced” or “Wrapped up by vines.” 

Marks stick around until they logically would be removed in-fiction.

 If all your stats are marked, you can’t roll to avoid it if you’re in danger: probably, this means death, but it basically just comes down to “if a monster wants to do something to you, sorry bud, it happens.”
 

Why do I like this system?

• Diegetic ties between your ability, your injuries, and when you get hurt.
• Forces characters to use their less-favoured stats sometimes.
• Reduces numerical bookkeeping.
• Your death is unlikely to come as a surprise; it’s a lot harder to die before you have 0-1 stats remaining. It’s still lethal, but it’s a bit more about being ground down by the dungeon rather than getting unlucky.
• More stats = higher ‘HP.’ Higher stats = less chance of getting a Mark in the first place. There’s flexibility in how to use it.

Here's a proof of concept for a system that uses this engine, including a core dice mechanic, GLOGian magic system, example class, and example monster