Four Worlds of Prophesy - Notes from playing 'In This World' by Ben Robbins
The un-redacted notes from my group's game of 'In This World,' where we generate four fantastical worlds using Robbins' new worldbuilding game.
NOTE: This document is not a post of its own, but the compiled notes from my group’s game of In This World. For review and commentary about playing In This World, please see this post. Without any knowledge of the game or how it’s played, this document will make little sense, but you can scroll down to the four worlds and read about them if you’d like.
Notes
Four Players: J, L, Am, and Al.
Time: 2 hours, 20 minutes. Coming up with a topic, elements, and statements took about 20 minutes of workshopping, with each world taking 25-30 minutes to start, flesh out, and name.
Additional notes:
Worldbuilding consists of two rounds throughout the group, one focused on statements and details, the second focusing on just details. It is worth stating that our group always spent the first round either affirming or refuting statements, and saved details for the second round, as opposed to going into further detail upfront.
Overall, the players had a great time, foresaw themselves playing games in the 2nd and 4th worlds (both heists), and had a remarkable zero notes on what could have potentially improved the experience.
Notes were taken live, by me (the facilitator/teacher of the game, who usually GMs when we play traditional RPGs), using the notation suggested in the book.
1. Potential focus topics
3rd Place: Disease, Gardens, Crime, Sleep, Unemployment, the Chosen One
2nd Place: Maps, Heraldry, Curses
Winner: Prophesies
2. Elements of “Prophesies”
Prophets
Predictions
Omens
Divinity/Fate
The Future
Augury
Altered States
Conditions
3. Statements about Prophesies, using these elements
True prophesies come from divine sources
Prophesies are about the future
Smoking/eating special plants opens you to divine influence
A prophet’s value is based on their accuracy.
There are true prophesies and false prophesies.
Prophets cannot create prophesy, only relate it.
Prophesy is rare.
Only certain kinds of people are prophets.
Signs in the natural world are omens.
Prophesies are vague and cryptic
Prophesies can be good or bad.
Prophesies are about events of significance.
4. But In This World…
The worlds we created, in order, with player name at the end of the title…
World of Forsaken Plains, Doomed Smokin’ Weathermen [L]
X Prophesies are always bad [Prophesies are good or bad] — Prophesies are always about bad things, you can’t see a way forward, you can only work through process of elimination.
= [A prophets value is based on their accuracy] Prophets die violently if their prophesies do not turn out to be true
+ Prophets who fail in their usefulness are tied up, abandoned, and left for the next storm
+ This is a pre-industrial world where all peoples are nomadic, because there are constant, very intense, very deadly storms that people have to move away from, and it’s extremely difficult to survive in a storm. Prophesies are basically meteorology. Iron Age.
= Because there is no agriculture, this smokeweed is getting more rare, and it’s a gold rush to hunt this stuff out. Tribes raid each other for that sticky icky. [special plants]
+ Resources and access to smokeweed means tribes often gather together, competition between prophets becomes fierce, tribes fracture again….
X [divine source] Smokin’ that leaf doesn’t grant you divine powers, rather you can literally see the ebbs and flows of the cataclysmic storms with your own eyes
+ The more you get that leaf blowin’, the more tempted you are to enter the storm and commune with whateverthefuck is in there.
X [signs in the natural world are omens] The storms are where “gods” are trying to reach down the world. But the people are running for them and trying not to get subsumed.
+ Though the storms are incredibly deadly, they are also incredibly life-giving. Terrain left behind by the storms is radically enriched with new life of all kinds.
Yesterday’s World of Tomorrow Today! [Al]
X [Prophesies not from divine sources] A special plant, the prophesies are the byproduct of the plant. Prophesy is a pesticide actually.
= [Prophesy comes from plant] Prophesy truffles grow in the oak groves, they contain Prophecomycin that evolved naturally. You dig it up and you have them grated over pasta, and if you do that you can see the future.
+ There is an underground economy, all sorts of fake truffles, snake oil salesmen, a black market culture, religious nutters, false prophets, bad product, etc
= [Prophesies are still about the future.] Basically, prophesies give you a memory of the future, so you experience the future as if it were your past. You can just remember a little of the future.
+ This is a early-modern world, there is gunpowder and sailing boats, pre-Victorian, early Enlightenment. English Civil War. The Favourite. Men racing ducks. Prophesy orchards are a most valued resource. You can’t really cultivate them, they only grow in certain places.
X [Prophesies are not always about significant events] People have just memories about their own future. They can be totally mundane, but still connect you to the future.
= [Prophesies are special kinds of people] Government controls this stuff so that only certain people can generate the value of prophesy, but if you have enough coin, you can get some, just for being fancy. But anyone COULD use them. Esteem is important.
+ Governments selectively open it up to the people as a way to control, manipulate, or otherwise puppeteer public opinion.
+ The over-use of it creates a sort of listless ennui. The more people take this stuff, the more likely they are exit society. I need to find a way to exit human society and company. They slowly re-wild over time.
+ Fewer and fewer people are allowed to become citizens. Citezenship gives you rights of access to the stuff, so there is further-odd ways of excluding people from full-franchisement.
= [Prophets cannot create, but only relate prophesy] But there’s a lot of lying, because it’s considered so effective, and so non-interpretive, that it’s all so literal and factual, but there’s plenty of economic and personal incentive to lie.
World of Lorecraft [J]
X In this world, prophets can create prophesies themselves, through spinning elaborate poems and through creative augury, writing a certain future.
+ There is a single central epic pillar of prophesy that goes on and develops over time, it gets added to, interpreted, revisited, improvised upon. Many traditions develop.
= [prophesies are vague and cryptic] A prophesy is like wishing on a genie, they HAVE to be a little vague in order to be interpretive — more literal prophesies don’t work — the more vague the more accurate. But the more vague, the more room there is for interpretation.
+ Sparsely populated, dark ages, intense landscapes, epic threats, castles and seers and prophets, catastrophic past, possibly a catastrophic future. Fated kings, living saints, witch lords.
X [Divine source] Prophesies come from the collective psychic field of the entire sentient population of this world, and the prophesies that manifest are those interpretations that are the most widely believed.
+ The beliefs of pre-pubescent children are much more powerful and have a stronger psychic field than adults. Their innocent and evocative beliefs are massively more important than adults in effecting outcomes.
= [prophesies are rare] Wild old wise ones are prophets, old oracles. A certain number of people are prophets. But the bards take the prophesy and interpret it for the public who want their interpretation to become the most popular, so that it becomes true. Powerful people can affect the future by manipulating public belief around interpretation. Interpretations have it out in the court of public opinion and become magically true.
+ Inquisitions and bands of religious orders whose job it is — the anti-bards — whose job it is to control the spread of certain prophetic traditions and interpretations.
= [prophesies are about events of significance] The people are able to choose their futures, foretold truths, wars, people of significance. Or they can choose wrath. Prophetic interpretation causes the will of the people to be actualized through belief.
+ Putting on incredibly epic theater with as many people as possible becomes a way of warfare and civilizational actualization. Societies can do epic immersive LARPs in order to actualize their futures.
World of PCH Residual Solutions Incorporated [Am]
X In this world, prophesies are generated by a central artificial intelligence, automated control of society, bureaucratic management run by predictive centralized thing. [prophesies come from divine sources]
= [prophesies are about events of significance] People can gain access to prophesies once per year about their future. You don’t pick the topic, you give your scan and get your prophesy from the AI.
+ This is mandatory. The yearly prophesy is part census, part population control. Getting counted this way is a form of bureaucratic management.
= [Prophesies can be good or bad] The AI has absolutely no regard for outcomes, it doesn’t distinguish between good or bad prophesy of any kind.
+. The centralized bureau of management actually doesn’t have a dream outcome, they just have an evolving set of key progress indicators that control for odd-out things. Year to year, incredibly important geo-political outcomes are actually a result of demands like “boost widget production numbers by 10%,” or like, “reduce error reporting times.”
+ Future sci-fi cyberpunk, automated global government, there are still fringe groups and extremists, there is still bad shit like war and famine, but not close to the center of society, where people are happy with how Cyberpunk Central is running things.
X [Prophesies are NOT vague and cryptic] They are incredibly specific, but they can only be expressed in highly elaborate probabilistic calculus. You go the thing, and it gives you a ton of math.
X [Prophets CAN author the future] Sometimes the AI can get things wrong, but because there is such a vested interest in infallibility, the founders try and find and liquidate or destroy anyone who doesn’t come true. Ie: If the prophesy says you all down the stairs and die, but you survive, the agency will make sure you end up dead at the bottom of some stairs.
+ The agency that is eradicated these people are introducing a feedback loop intro the prophesy machine that is destabilizing the machine over time. The more they try to correct the prophesies, the LESS accurate it becomes over time. It become wack-a-mole with wrong prophesies, the machine gets dumber, there is more and more collapse.
X [Signs in the natural world are omens] The AI CANNOT predict anything related to the natural world at all. Spontaneous biological, animal, or environmental factors are its huge blind spot. This is not well known or acknowledged. It could predict something like a disease, but anything not on its radar, most prominently the environment, escapes its notice.
+ There are people who try to operate off the grid and re-author the future and avoid prophetic influence. Neo-Luddite underground. The Future-less.
That’s all!
Again, you can read my thoughts about the new game here, or you can pick up Ben Robbins’ In This World here:
