Some of the fantasy magic systems we are/were playing provide spell casters with access to spells that provide the player with information about future events. Now, we know from many movies and stories that any kind of time-travelling or prophesying comes with its own set of problems – so lets for the sake of this answer assume that the divination spells at hand are accurate at least to some degree – as otherwise they wouldn't be very useful1). I.e. the assumption is that the spells provide at least some actionable information about future events.
The current example we're facing is from the Rolemaster Seer list #1402). The spell allows a PC to:
- experience a vision of the future3) of the next couple of minutes,
- telling them what would happen if they were to perform a certain action.
What has been happening so far (and how we've been handling divination spells in our group) is this:
- Players see that some dangerous/critical decision X is at hand that is not immediately time-critical.
- The Seer of the group uses a divination spell on the assumption that they (or some other player) take action X.
- A scene is played out (including some dice rolls) of what would happen, were the players to perform action X.
- The players then take their time deciding if they want to do X after all, having essentially complete information of the immediate effects.
- If they do X, then the before played out scene basically happens as is –> The suspense of the dangerous situation is gone, making the whole process rather tedious.
- If they don't do X we just wasted time on some never-going-to-happen version of the future.
So the players were using these spells as de-facto 'savepoints', to try out something in the game with the possibility of 'rolling back' in case the outcome wasn't to their liking.
How can we handle these situations as game masters and/or players in order to..
- keep the spells interesting and worth casting,
- not holding up the game playing out long hypothetical scenarios,
- prohibit divination spells taking out the suspense (read: risk/danger) of taking critical decisions.
1) What I mean by this is that I'd like to avoid discussing the usual time-traval paradoxa, such as "if we know X we would never have done Y, but then we would never have known X, which means we did do Y, etc. etc.".
2)I can't quote the rules precisely as I don't own them in English. In German the spell is called 'Eingebung' and exists in levels I, III, V and XV, each level providing increased duration of the vision into the future. The English equivalent is Intuitions and it comes from the Future Visions List from the Seer Base Lists.
3) The rules are not exactly clear on how accurate this vision is, however we read 'experiencing it' for some minutes as rather accurate.
Best Answer
For reference:
From Rolemaster 2nd Edition Spell Law (English Version) pg 121
There is a II, V, & X level that extend the visions out to 3, 5, and 10 mins respectively.
In my opinion, playing out the encounter and letting them choose to "keep" the results if they like them is WAY too powerful for at best a tenth level (out of 50 levels) spell.
Not only that, this is a large time sink for the game, and can make gameplay boring and repetitive.
But that only answers half of your question. If you don't go that option, how should you handle this spell without making it too lame?
This is tough, but I appreciate your attempt to address this. Many GMs brush right over divination spells because adjudicating them them can be hard.
First you want to keep it short, and set up a quick vignette that you can describe to them. You can look to real world to see how they do it for an example. Present outcomes as a set of probabilities, like a forecast. ex. You sense that there is a 70% probability that you go right, and come the the locked door, 20% you go straight and fall into the pit, and 10% you turn back.
Or look to how Hollywood does it. TV shows & Movies like the Flash, Harry Potter, and Buffy have characters who have visions all the time. Use the imagery there to set the scene for the vision.
Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa09OhAak4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0vyVT4HFgM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5y99rpk8to
Or perhaps combine the two where they see the top three most likely outcomes. in a vision that rewinds and plays forward through each of the probable threads.
As for how to play it out mechanically, I would first give the seer story hints. If that is not an option then look to similar level spells to get an idea of what kind of benefit this should confer.
For example, Leaping I allows the caster to clear a pit easily; Balance allows the caster to get 50 to any roll for a slow maneuver; Blur subtracts 10 from all attacks. And so on.
So find an appropriate spell of the same level that fits the obstacle that the seer faces next and just give them this mechanical bonus. Sure the seer has much more flexibility, but this is offset by the fact that the seer may cast the spell when there is not much happening in the next ten minutes.
Also don't be afraid to tell them every now and then - not much happens in the next ten minutes. Maybe set up a random mechanic to determine this?