Precognition:
While I’m still tooling around with the other Telepath abilities, Precognition ended up causing a lot of very interesting debate. The implementation of a skill that can see into the future is Not Easy ™ so I’m toying with a lot of different designs.
I figure I’d open the Google Doc up to you guys, I’d love to have your Comments on any or all of the 5 designs. (Anyone can comment directly on the Doc)
I like B, in a sense you’re shaping the future by picking the character and their trigger. C seems like it it is saying that the future is full of suck. 🙂
In the case of B, can the character pick their own future or is that a hole in their precog?
I agree with Todd, B is the best of the bunch, but I thought of another one, a F:
On a 10+ you gain a datapoint that might not be usable at this time, but it will be useful at the right time. The datapoint can be about your future, your comrade’s future, loved ones, or someone or something you’ve not encountered yet.
On a 7-9 you gain a datapoint as above, but at a cost to you or the target of your precognition. It is information that might or might not come true. Fluid is the future, hard to see.
6 or less: An unlikely vision of the future appears, typically, one not in your best interest. If you work hard, you can make it come true.
Nice, my concern is a PC sitting there and building up a pile of data points. Or would it be that a precog can only see one possible future at a time?
B & E (heh) are definitely my favourites. B plugs into the rest of UW with effortless elegance. Also reminiscent of the Battlebabe’s Visions of Death move from Apocalypse World. If you’re doing the Dungeon World XP at the end of the session thing, I would not worry too much about abuse; you’re just saying one of these triggers will absolutely happen, soon (if not during this session, then the next?).
I don’t really have any juicy intellections on E. As mitigating failures go, at least it is interesting. Now, when you say “describe the immediate or long-term consequences of that future,” do you mean the future we’re now discarding in favour of a re-roll?
Another possibility (albeit far less interesting than any of yours) could be giving the precog a free 10+ Get Involved result, to be used at their discretion. They know what’s about to happen and can take steps to prevent it.
Todd Zircher I’d say if they start trying to collect a bunch of datapoints, the MC is under no obligation to make them from the same future. Conflicting datapoints should be the result of trying to mine the future.
As Yoda says “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future..”