After reading the Skeleton Code Machine’s blog Playing the Chaplain’s Game I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool if my game had a diagetic oracle that I, as the GM, must follow?
Many games have an item where players can ask the GM a yes/no question but, to me, that doesn’t feel oracular. Now, what if the oracle produced random results and the GM had to abide by the result… in one way, or another.
That’d be incredibly fun! (For me.)
The Chaplain’s Game strikes me as a great immersive ritual to achieve a random yes/no ritual. But it has to be tweaked to work properly.
SPOILER BELOW. You’ve been warned.
To make The Champlain’s Game produce random results, only pull (don’t flip) the coins after mixing. If the whole ritual is required count heads first then — without looking — mix, flip and pull last.
Played this way, the game could be used asa proper a yes/no oracle. Instead of rolling a d6 a character plays the game.
It could be a magic item that hints at some aspect of the game. Players ask a question and the GM must abide by the result… in one way or another .
It could be tied to a class; maybe soldiers invented it hoping to divine their fate. Or it’s a popular game that anybody might know; like Ouija boards in western culture.
By the same token, it could substitute the yes/no roll in solo games. Like in M2P above, it’s diagetic and promotes immersion.
EDIT: I think Mythic Bastionland has something like this.
its a clever solution, because it FEELS ritualistic. similar to say, the 3 coin method of the yijing…
and I love how in the original game, its a pointless exercise, and recognizing the pointlessness is part of the game.
I haven’t done this yet, but its so cheap (for now? tariffs?) to print a deck of cards that I feel like creating an in world deck of cards would be very satisfying.
Right now it’ll cost you pennies. But once the coins are removed from circulation, it’ll nickel and dime ya.
Another way to use it is for players to visit a sage. And, like Ravenloft, the GM runs the oracle (or they direct players in doing so). The GM knows the answer, they can run it to produce a “yes” or a “no” depending on what fits.
It’s a showmanship gimmick, but it’d be fun to see how long it takes players to catch on to how the oracle is manipulated.
I think that you’re talking over something I’ve been maybe overtalking recently as I try to understand my own recent adjustments to approach which has to do with ‘how much is the DM playing a game too?’
Players get to enter an unknown space, probe it for reaction, and react to that reaction, thereby creating dynamo that ebbs and flows.
A DM (especially previous DM-Hugh) often views or viewed her role as ‘thing to be probed’. Take set piece A, place, pre-program for response. There is something in that barrel!
DM in this case becomes agent of the world, the delivery-man.
But if the DM is consulting oracles, charts, dice, and suggesting that regardless of their results, we’re playing them (and together), this creates a different aspect of dynamo, wherein the group of players encounters the unknown, and the DM with them. Maybe even the DM first. Such that when she turns around to face her play table, the look of genuine excitement on her face is based on ‘you won’t believe what I rolled up’.
I think this moves the aspect of play into higher stakes circumstances and ultimately relies on a fundamental storytelling action-ingredient: put yourself, DM, in a corner, and talk your way out of it. Then afterwards, exult in the strange and wonderful synchronicities of toying with chance over and over again.
I’ve always liked the position that the GM is playing the world. The best part is when the world surprises me as much as my players. My GMing formula (in this phase of our campaign) is:
Setting Status + Factions Status (with goals) + Player Fears = new or adjusted random event tables, more player fears, altered setting and faction status.
Right now I’m running Dragon Town and have gone off script while still using its setting and factions. So I kinda know what’s happening behind the scenes but don’t really know how it’ll manifest.
At this point the town’s citizens are being corrupted by The Darkness Below. I’ve stolen much of it from The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow. Problem is I still haven’t figured out quite what it’s building up to. My younger crew isn’t ready for PHH’s more adult ending.
We’ve just started investigating. I’m taking notes on questions the kids ask. Whatever they fear most, their worst case scenario, will be their own creation. < insert evil laugh > Arguably, the world is theirs and I’m a conduit, of sorts.
Now, I’m going to insert a seer with a truly random yes / no oracle. Characters will ask their questions. The result of the oracle will become part of the emerging narrative.
[TLDR] All that to say I agree, there is a dynamic at play where the GM interprets random results and player responses to bring forth plausible changes, even undesirable ones, and discover how they play out.
The TLDR is at the end.