Precognition

[iamlibertarian]

If ever there was a reason for a Stop Sign, Precognition is it.

 

Just how DO GMs deal with characters who want to play Active Precogs (as opposed to Passive, where the GM gives info when s/he feels like it)?

 

How do they deal with, "I want to see and hear exactly what happens in the next 5 minutes in this spot?"

[Greywind]

"So, you're going to stand there doing nothing for the next 5 minutes?"

[Chris Goodwin]

If I were to allow it... I'd make a Perception Roll for them behind the screen, and tell them what would happen on that spot five minutes from now.  How accurate it is is based on whether they succeeded or failed the roll, and by how much. I'd also ask them what they're trying to find out, and what they plan to do about it.  If the roll succeeds, they get something more or less accurate.  If they succeed by a lot, I might let them get one or two "What happens if I do this?" questions in.  If they fail, they get too many possibilities.  Answer hazy, try again later.  If they crit fail, they get flat out wrong information; maybe it's one of those things that no matter what you do, it will come to pass, and each time you try to change it it'll be worse.  

 

Assuming I would allow it, that is.  I would also warn the player up front that that's the kind of thing they can expect from this power.  And they absolutely won't get to know whether they succeed or fail at that Perception Roll.

[massey]

I'd tell the player that since I personally do not have Precognition, that I can't predict dice rolls or what some idiot player might do.  I can make things up, but the more accurate the images he sees, the less control the players are going to have.  Nobody wants to be told something like:

 

"You look into the future.  Future You is having sex with a goat.  He looks like he's really enjoying it."

 

"What?  That's impossible.  How accurate are these visions?"

 

"Very accurate.  Hey, don't look at me like that.  This seems like something your character might do.  Why did you leave it up to me to decide what your character does?  I think you'd know better by now."

 

 

 

Active precog is better built as a combination of different powers.  Something like:

 

+8 levels all combat, costs end.  "I know what you'll do before you do it."

Invisibility vs sight.  "The Bugs Bunny 'always move where people aren't looking' trick"

Missile Deflection/Reflection.  "Stand between two enemies and duck when they shoot at you." 

 

Stuff like that.

[Chris Goodwin]

If your opponents have any inkling that you have a precognitive, they'll take steps to reduce its effectiveness.  For instance, always dress in a uniform.  All clocks and calendars are covered; in fact, it's better if there aren't any around.  For those who need them, they get a wrist chronometer that only shows the date and time when they press a button.  Depending on the tech level, they might have bone-conduction speakers that speak the date and time directly into their eardrums, or cybernetics that display them on their retina or something.  So you won't be able to look around the area via precog and see what date and time a thing is happening.  All movements will be very trained and very routine.  Assume that anything you do, your opponents will have a counter for.  Get your own precog.  In fact, try to get your own precog whether you know your opponents have one or not.  

[iamlibertarian]

"So, you're going to stand there doing nothing for the next 5 minutes?"

 

LMAO

[iamlibertarian]

I'd tell the player that since I personally do not have Precognition, that I can't predict dice rolls or what some idiot player might do.  I can make things up, but the more accurate the images he sees, the less control the players are going to have.  Nobody wants to be told something like:

 

"You look into the future.  Future You is having sex with a goat.  He looks like he's really enjoying it."

 

"What?  That's impossible.  How accurate are these visions?"

 

"Very accurate.  Hey, don't look at me like that.  This seems like something your character might do.  Why did you leave it up to me to decide what your character does?  I think you'd know better by now."

 

 

 

Active precog is better built as a combination of different powers.  Something like:

 

+8 levels all combat, costs end.  "I know what you'll do before you do it."

Invisibility vs sight.  "The Bugs Bunny 'always move where people aren't looking' trick"

Missile Deflection/Reflection.  "Stand between two enemies and duck when they shoot at you." 

 

Stuff like that.

 

LOL.

 

Well, how do you (and others) deal with into trying to be gathered outside of combat? Such as, "I want to know what time nobody will be in this particular hallway so the whole team can teleport in unobserved by direct eyes," question? (Realizing of course that time is mutable if you change actions.) Or, "Watch this NPC to find out that time s/he goes to sleep tonight."

 

True Precog (while it can be unbalancing of course) should be able to get an advantage in Any situation, which nobody can afford to pay for all the possible permutations when buying other powers which simulate Precog... Such as, "I want to know what price a certain stock will be tomorrow so as to either buy into the enemy's company's stock, or to short it," with this use of Precog, PLUS a combat use of Precog, PLUS, "I want to know what the rolls will be at this craps table for the next 10 minutes," PLUS, "I want to know what the enemy's public speech will say tomorrow so I can counter it in the media," PLUS, "I want to see tomorrows newspaper headlines so my team can be the heroes by preventing said tragedy at the last minute, increasing my team's reputation with the public," and so on...

[massey]

Well, pure precognition with zero limits at all is hard to GM unless you're willing to have zero drama or surprises in your game.  Letting the PCs win over and over again will be pretty boring for everyone involved.  I don't even think the players will enjoy that sort of game.  Something unexpected has to happen to keep them interested.

 

Any kind of change you make, say to the nature of time or something (like how Dr Manhattan could see the future but still be surprised by it) is really just applying different limitations to the power.  100% precog is possible, it's just... boring.

 

Generally, on GMing precog abilities, I'd let the player benefit from it for most reasonable things.  Teleporting into the enemy base unseen is fine.  That's a heroic-type action thing to do.  Reading the headlines and preventing the occasional disaster is fine too.  But to give them surprises, you need prep time to think things through and create a good story that will engage the players without having them feel ripped off.  So I'd tell the players that certain uses of the power may require ending the game session early for the GM to think about what happens next.

 

A classic foil for precogs is to have a problem that is not what it appears to be.  For instance, what happens if the newspapers get it wrong?  The newspaper tomorrow says that Captain Liberty has turned evil and attacked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  But what if a week later, the papers say that it's not Captain Liberty, but an imposter?  Meanwhile, you guys already attacked him.  But how far into the future do you look before you act?  Are you reacting to what is going to happen, or just to what you think is going to happen?

 

This can be particularly effective if somebody knows you've got a precog.  It can turn into a chess match between the villains and the heroes, once the heroes realize they're being manipulated.

[BoloOfEarth]

If your opponents have any inkling that you have a precognitive, they'll take steps to reduce its effectiveness.  For instance, always dress in a uniform.  All clocks and calendars are covered; in fact, it's better if there aren't any around.  For those who need them, they get a wrist chronometer that only shows the date and time when they press a button.  Depending on the tech level, they might have bone-conduction speakers that speak the date and time directly into their eardrums, or cybernetics that display them on their retina or something.  So you won't be able to look around the area via precog and see what date and time a thing is happening.  All movements will be very trained and very routine.  Assume that anything you do, your opponents will have a counter for.  Get your own precog.  In fact, try to get your own precog whether you know your opponents have one or not.  

 

Now, see, I'm more inclined to have foes who know about the hero's precognition hire a covert operative to surreptitiously change the clocks so they're an hour or two fast.  When the precog sees the scene, he thinks the bank robbery will take place at 3:00 (because that's what the clock on the wall says in the vision), but it's actually 1:30.  So he gets there too late. 

 

That said, in my Champions campaign one of the PCs (Nexus) has psychometry (just like in the book / movie / TV show The Dead Zone) which allows her to see either the past or the future when she touches somebody or something.  To be honest, it works more for past visions than future visions (because, as massey pointed out, I don't have actual precognition myself).  But Nexus has had occasional future visions that altered the PCs actions.

 

For example, one time Nexus had a vision of her kneeling by a body, crying, but from the POV in the vision, she couldn't see whose body or how the person died.  They eventually figured out the "deceased" would be her teammate Maker, who then used her gadget pool to beef up her own defenses during their fight with the villain team, so she survived what could have been a lethal tactic used by the bad guys.

 

One of my favorite tactics, however, involved a DEMON Morbane who has: 

• a magic charm on a bracelet, that glows if he is being scryed upon (which her precognition / retrocognition kinda qualifies as)
• some magic powder that he can throw into the air to block the scrying (Darkness to Clairsentience). 

One time, he figured out it was her having a vision of his actions, so he first had a one-sided conversation with her, basically telling her how she had no hope of stopping his eventual plans, blah blah blah, before using the powder to stop her from seeing exactly what he was going to do.  It was extremely frustrating for her to have to listen to him blather on, and *not* be able to fire back her own zingers or counter his statements in any way - and then have him cut off the vision (like hanging up the phone on her). 

[Chris Goodwin]

On the "pure" precognition, as a GM I'd rule that you can do anything with it that you could in theory do at the time and place with whatever your normal abilities are.  So you could peek in to see what time someone's going to sleep or whether the hallway is empty, or even the enemy's speech or the time and location of the tragedy.  For things like the stock market manipulation or craps table, I'd say you'd get bonuses to whatever Skills you're using; you still need some skill in knowing how to short the stock, when to place the order, with whom, how to find a broker, and so on; likewise to take advantage of the stuff at the craps table.  
 
For some things, like looking in a combat before it happens, and seeing how it's going to go... that probably looks something like the netrunner problem in cyberpunk RPGs.  One guy plays a mini-game while everyone else sits around twiddling their thumbs waiting for it to be over.  Except that it could be that everyone is involved in the mini-game.  You also then have to decide how the future works; see Temporal Mutability for more.  (Warning: TV Tropes link and major time sink.)  

 

Is there any point to knowing how every dice roll is going to come out in a combat, when you're just going to change things for the optimum outcome?  This might be where we start having to buy things, namely whatever abilities you use in order to gain the optimum outcome.  We don't necessary play out the combat beforehand; in fact we might gloss entirely over the time between previewing it and it actually happening, but everyone gets a bunch of "Nope, that didn't happen" buttons.  For an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at any of the Stainless Steel Rat books; whenever Slippery Jim sets up a heist, he glosses over the actual setup, but he'll start the narration at the bank.  "I pushed the buttons that triggered the sleep gas grenades I'd previously placed in the fake plants as I called out 'This is a robbery!'  Fortunately I'd also remembered my nose filters.  Next I pushed another button that cut all the lights; the infrared contact lenses I was wearing kicked in at just the expected time.  The manager came out of his office, yelling for someone to trigger the alarms, but that wouldn't do him any good as I'd already cut the alarms' communications to the local gendarmes."  And so on.  Slippery Jim may as well have had precognition in order to plan everything out beforehand; I'd say that with the PCs having access to precognition, this is something like what their combat would look like.  

 

But by now the GM is probably regretting that he let the players have a precognitive, so he's now trying to figure out how to get the villains one, or at least something to counter theirs.  

[Chris Goodwin]

One of my favorite tactics, however, involved a DEMON Morbane who has: 

• a magic charm on a bracelet, that glows if he is being scryed upon (which her precognition / retrocognition kinda qualifies as)
• some magic powder that he can throw into the air to block the scrying (Darkness to Clairsentience). 

One time, he figured out it was her having a vision of his actions, so he first had a one-sided conversation with her, basically telling her how she had no hope of stopping his eventual plans, blah blah blah, before using the powder to stop her from seeing exactly what he was going to do.  It was extremely frustrating for her to have to listen to him blather on, and *not* be able to fire back her own zingers or counter his statements in any way - and then have him cut off the vision (like hanging up the phone on her). 

 

This is awesome.  

[Armory]

If ever there was a reason for a Stop Sign, Precognition is it.

 

Just how DO GMs deal with characters who want to play Active Precogs...

That's a good question, because I don't.  I disallow PCs from things like Telepathy and Clairsentience unless they can give me a very specific use (read that: easily manipulated and/or sidestepped by the GM) which means loads of Limitations.

 

For example, one of my players wanted Postcognition.  After a discussion I felt it was properly restricted:  he can see into the past in whatever area he's standing, but he literally sees it backwards; he gets no sound; and the further back he wants to see, the longer it takes.  If he wants to see what happened in this room yesterday, he'll have to stand there for a couple of hours watching everything that happened from now back to then zip past him like he's rewinding his DVR.  

 

So the Limitations allow me to prevent it from breaking my plots, and essentially makes it impossible to use in combat.  It's actually become a handy way for me to feed the team the occasional clue.

 

As for a specific answer to a PC seeing what happens right here in the next five minutes, I don't think I'd allow that at all.  You want to see a year ahead?  Okay.  I can come up with something, and I have time to either make it come true or say that the players' actions have changed the future.  You want to see a second ahead?  Buy some extra DCV/OCV or DEX or SPD.  Anything in between that becomes problematic, IMO.

[Clonus]

If ever there was a reason for a Stop Sign, Precognition is it.

 

Just how DO GMs deal with characters who want to play Active Precogs (as opposed to Passive, where the GM gives info when s/he feels like it)?

 

How do they deal with, "I want to see and hear exactly what happens in the next 5 minutes in this spot?"

 

I deal with it by saying "You can't always get what you want"  Specifically an Active Precog gets to get a vision whenever they want one but that don't mean I show them everything.  Specifically I don't show them things that will actually be determined by the outcome of a die roll or player decision.  Any such vision will either be hazy or a multiple choice jumble.  And I don't timestamp visions.  They don't get to ask for the next five minutes.  What they see is the next slightly interesting thing I will have happen in that place.  

[BoloOfEarth]

I just remembered an NPC villain I have in my game -- Mark Futures -- who has Active Precognition, of a sort.  But he doesn't just get a vision of the future; he actually experiences it and can then travel backward in time to do things differently if he wishes -- though if he goes back more than a handful of minutes, he most likely injures himself.

 

He has a 30-point Multipower (Try, Try Again) with variable slots for up to +6 OCV, +6 DCV.  Extra defense against Presence Attacks (Saw It and Already Got Over It).  Naked AP advantage for his blaster pistol (Repeat the Shot Until He Hits Just The Right Spot).  A Flash he can link to his blaster pistol (Try Until You Hit The Eyes).  Luck.  And of course Precognitive Clairsentience (with Time Modifiers, a Required Roll, and Side Effects that increase with greater roll failure -- 2d6 per 1 by which he misses the roll).

 

Yeah, he can go through the whole day, and then go back to re-do it differently based on what he sees / hears / learns about.  But he has an even chance of taking at least some damage.  And if he missed that roll by 5, he could be at 0 BODY and dying. 

 

So, how do I as GM justify when he gets captured?  Well, once he's KO'd, the heroes and PRIMUS typically keep him unconscious until he's locked up -- which is longer than he can safely travel back in time, so he can't pull off a re-do unless he's really desperate.  So he's learned to just live with the consequences.

[iamlibertarian]

" So I'd tell the players that certain uses of the power may require ending the game session early for the GM to think about what happens next."

 

 

I like that a lot, as it will get that to want Not to use it.

 

Or, how about requiring Charges or the like, a very limited number of them. They can know anything at all that they want to that Precog could naturally discern. Once or twice per day. That would make them Very picky. And if they accidentally use it up on something minor, too bad... ;-)

[iamlibertarian]

One time, he figured out it was her having a vision of his actions, so he first had a one-sided conversation with her, basically telling her how she had no hope of stopping his eventual plans, blah blah blah, before using the powder to stop her from seeing exactly what he was going to do.  It was extremely frustrating for her to have to listen to him blather on, and *not* be able to fire back her own zingers or counter his statements in any way - and then have him cut off the vision (like hanging up the phone on her). 

 

LMAO. Love it

[iamlibertarian]

 

As for a specific answer to a PC seeing what happens right here in the next five minutes, I don't think I'd allow that at all.  You want to see a year ahead?  Okay.  I can come up with something, and I have time to either make it come true or say that the players' actions have changed the future.  You want to see a second ahead?  Buy some extra DCV/OCV or DEX or SPD.  Anything in between that becomes problematic, IMO.

 

The thing is, there is So Much more than just combat as a reason to be a precog. Just for combat, sure, easy to just buy combat powers with a Precog special effect. Want to see the next dice roll at the craps table, or tomorrow's headlines, or your sweetie's next intended cooked meal so you can surprise him/her with the ingredients already prepared, and so on...

 

Or yeah, see the scene of a murder. Doesn't mean you automatically know who did it, but it might give you more clues, advancing the plot.

[Lucius]

 

Alexander's Twin Laws of Time:

 

The Past can be known, but not changed.

 

The Future can be changed, but not known.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

But you can reliably predict this tagline will include a palindromedary

[Nothere]

Well it's in part a matter of expectations. I had a bit of a similar problem with a telepath. We didn't discuss telepathic expectations before hand. I was expecting the player to use it like in the comics. The occasional check to see if the suspicious guy is up to now good, where the villains base was after capturing the henchman, to discover what the master villain was planning. Instead they mind read everything about every crook in town. The game was quickly turning into Minority report on overdrive. Precognition is the same deal. If your player is going to be using their power to go, the corridor is clear teleport now. That's fine. If their going to sit down and predict every crime in the city. Hello Until, Pulsar will rob the 8th street bank Tuseday at 4:02 pm and Mechanon has a hideout in the Smith building he'll use in two years to rebuild himself. Your gonna have to disallow it, or put major limits. Like the vision gets hazyier the more forward in time they want to predict,

[mrinku]

Ugh. That's so anti-genre it's disgusting. Even Dark Champions predicates action over micromanagement.

 

Even with a perfect prediction power, a writer won't telegraph everything to the reader... and for many purposes the players are the readers of their own characters' stories. They're providing their own spoilers.

 

Precognition is best used as a hook, especially to reveal some disaster.

 

The story then may progress with events seeming to conspire to confirm that the forseen fate is inevitable. Then you end with a twist that does confirm the vision, but ends up being radically different to what was assumed. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. End of story jokes are cracked.

 

Alternatively, the disaster may need a gathering of strength - maybe recruiting enemies, or building some counter - and the vison allows time to organise this (but only just).

 

The trouble is that you really don't want to make a habit of it. IMHO the best way to allow a player to have true precognition is simply to require "No Conscious Control" and run it as required for hooks, progress plots and to create tension.

[DasBroot]

Seems like a good time to repeat my Golden Rule of HERO character creation.  It's universal - applying to everything from PC and NPC to followers, bases, and vehicles:

 

When the stars align and your shtick goes off exactly as you hoped how much fun is it for everyone else in the game? 

 

Golden rule Corollary: The GM counts as being in the game.

[Cassandra]

As Babylon 5 showed us knowing the future and knowing what it means are completely different.

[Greywind]

Prophecy is a guess that comes true. When it doesn't, it's a metaphor.

[Chris Goodwin]

Whenever I create a character, I usually have some cool idea in mind for how I expect their powers to work.  It's not always at the front of my mind, but it's usually somewhere lurking.  The key with Precognition is to figure out what the player has in mind for it (and, to a lesser extent, figure out how time-related stuff works in the game).  

 

"Pure" Precognition is the straight up Clairsentience (Precognition) Power.  GMs need to know that it can get out of hand, and should be willing to say no (or sufficiently Limit it) especially when it either steps on other Powers (Danger Sense, bonuses to OCV/DCV, among others) or turns into an "I win" button (the aforementioned "seeding" the combat area a la Slippery Jim diGriz).  The TV Tropes page I linked to above can help with figuring out if a potential future will play out exactly as seen, or can be set up in some way so that what they saw wasn't really what happened, or if it can be changed, or even "butterfly effect"-ed out of existence.  And the GM and player need to be on the same page; if a character spends 40 points on Precognition, the player rightly expects to get 40 points worth of utility out of it.  

[iamlibertarian]

I just remembered an NPC villain I have in my game -- Mark Futures -- who has Active Precognition, of a sort.  But he doesn't just get a vision of the future; he actually experiences it and can then travel backward in time to do things differently if he wishes -- though if he goes back more than a handful of minutes, he most likely injures himself.

 

He has a 30-point Multipower (Try, Try Again) with variable slots for up to +6 OCV, +6 DCV.  Extra defense against Presence Attacks (Saw It and Already Got Over It).  Naked AP advantage for his blaster pistol (Repeat the Shot Until He Hits Just The Right Spot).  A Flash he can link to his blaster pistol (Try Until You Hit The Eyes).  Luck.  And of course Precognitive Clairsentience (with Time Modifiers, a Required Roll, and Side Effects that increase with greater roll failure -- 2d6 per 1 by which he misses the roll).

 

Yeah, he can go through the whole day, and then go back to re-do it differently based on what he sees / hears / learns about.  But he has an even chance of taking at least some damage.  And if he missed that roll by 5, he could be at 0 BODY and dying. 

 

So, how do I as GM justify when he gets captured?  Well, once he's KO'd, the heroes and PRIMUS typically keep him unconscious until he's locked up -- which is longer than he can safely travel back in time, so he can't pull off a re-do unless he's really desperate.  So he's learned to just live with the consequences.

 

That is a marvelous way to run a Precog, for sure

 

Would you let a PC have it? Or would that Eff Up your plots?