Without giving out details, I am planning an adventure where the party is brought together because each would be "the one foretold in the prophecy."
However they all qualify but for different reasons. As an example, one of the qualifiers could be, "raised by dogs"
So one party member was raised by gnolls (or half-gnoll), another lost their parents so lived on the streets with their family pet, and other felt beaten until a pack of dogs raised their spirit.
The key being that each part of the prophecy can be interpreted differently so that from a certain point of view, ALL party members could be "the one".
So I'm looking for any resources on where to find good plays on words, or previous example you've encountered.
I don't have any specific site in mind but perhaps just use this forum for suggeestions? With some brief descriptions of the PCs and what the prophecy is about, I'm sure some ideas will pop up.
Given a set prophecy based on the PCs backstory, what if one or more PCs die. How do you fit them into the prophecy? If it happens once finding new lines can be kind of cool story wise, but tougher with several PCs dying.
The other option is that you write 8-10 lines of the prophecy and have a bunch of lines to spare for new PCs. This could open up for the interpretation that "the one" need to fit all lines, making the players much more unsure that it is about them. You could even have them search for the perfect match, to fulfill the prophecy, and perhaps much later realise it's about them.
In one sense, what you're looking for is a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a course in Shakespeare.
The basic method is to acknowledge that many words have multiple meanings, not only literally, but figuratively. Indeed, the number of figurative meanings is flexible and constantly changes, sometimes warping the literal.
Take the word "woke". Literally, it is the past tense of "wake", but these days, has a figurative meaning.
Let's play with the sample you give, "raised by dogs". You've been playing with but a fraction of the possible meanings: 1 - dogs = race that looks kinda like dogs 2 - looked after by actual dog 3 - raising of internal state by dogs You've explored some of the range of dogs, but only a little on raised. To raise simply means to (physically) make something higher. But this word has a bunch of other meanings: to rear from immaturity or childhood (as above), to increase the size of a bet, to make something figuratively higher - e.g. to exalt, or to increase money (raise funds), or to raise a building, meaning to build it. Here are some more options for "raised by dogs": - a dog like race put up the character as an increase in a bet - dogs lifted the character to a higher place - dogs made the character the king of dogs - an artificial being was assembled by sentient dogs as a protector of all dogs
So all you need to do is consider the possible range of meanings of words, both literal, figurative, and "poetically made up".
The goal of this is that there is a single prophesy, handed down for generations. The prophesy claims that there will be one born that will be known by fulfilling certain requirements. But the criteria can be interpreted in multiple ways so it turns out that many of the PCs could technically be "the one". So it's not just one, but multiple markers.
The One the clerics are seeking would be known because they fulfill W, X, Y & Z. Where those could be how they were born, marks on their skin, actions they've performed, and/or threats overcome.
So another example would be, "born dead, but alive":
Still born, but revived by the midwife
Born as twins, one twin died at birth
Born fine, but rejected by parents ("You're dead to me")
A teifling that LOOKED like the dead, but is perfectly alive
I'm just trying to find good resources for this kind of word play, be it websites or suggestions.
As for "What if the PC's die"; this is meant as a way to start a campaign, so all of these actions happen within the backstory. And if one of the PC's die along the way? I guess they weren't The One! And confidentially, in the end game, it doesn't really matter--The prophesy is just the BBEG trying to get people to go down a certain path. Another reason why it's easy to interpret multiple ways.
So the question now is, what similarities do your PCs have now? Besides the dogs I mean. I'm sure we could easily devise a prophecy that could in a way grab each one by a certain connection without saying it is player A B or C.
'There has always been tale that one day there would rise one who was never meant to be, living in fear amongst the wild of beasts, scarred by their past, but soon to save all others.'
This can work with your dead alive, dog/gnoll upbringing, and with the scar, it's open. Living with gnolls, you can have scars from battle training. Lost parents, could have died in a fire but the child lived on with a burn scar. Felt beaten could actually have been beaten by their parents or lived as orphans and were bullied as a child. Once beaten so bad they almost bled to death as a pack of dogs came to protect them, licking their wounds and taking them in.
There are no PCs to match up at this point because there are no PCs. This is for a campaign in the future so as of yet, nothing is written.
When the campaign starts, at or before Session 0 I would request the players to add facts into their backstory; "Hey, can you work it so that when you were born, you were actually one of a set of twins but they died at birth?", "It says here you were an urchin as your backstory, can you add the fact that it was a pack of street dogs that first took you in?"
That sort of thing.
And it doesn't have to be dogs. I just threw that out as an example.
This would depend on each persons backstory (unless you have pre-set characters in the party).
In general, I think being vague can play to your advantage in this situation. With the example given in the OP, I think you could say the 'chosen one' was raised by canines, this would fit all of them in some way.
if the prophecy has been passed down for generations then parts of it could have easily been lost over time, so they could actually just have fragments of the whole prophecy which turns into a quest to find the true prophecy. rather than a complicated harry potter style prophecy just omit some information from each of their prophecies and let the PC's make the puzzle, they will just through speculation and paranoia.
I think this really depends on what the background of each of your PCs is. It's hard to come up with suitably vague phrasing without further details. Making this work may also mean you need to prompt your players to include certain common details in their character backgrounds.
However, one problem you're likely to encounter is that even if you're very careful about your phrasing, it's very likely the prophecy may still read as a better fit for some PCs than others (or at least they may think so), if only when taken literally.
To counteract this, you might want to make sure that each PC has at least one clue in the prophecy that clearly seems to fit them best, at least on its face. For example, with "raised by dogs," if someone was literally raised by dogs or dog-like creatures, that person is going to sound like the more likely candidate. You want to avoid a situation where the prophecy, when read as literally as possible, points more toward one PC than others.
Without giving out details, I am planning an adventure where the party is brought together because each would be "the one foretold in the prophecy."
However they all qualify but for different reasons. As an example, one of the qualifiers could be, "raised by dogs"
So one party member was raised by gnolls (or half-gnoll), another lost their parents so lived on the streets with their family pet, and other felt beaten until a pack of dogs raised their spirit.
The key being that each part of the prophecy can be interpreted differently so that from a certain point of view, ALL party members could be "the one".
So I'm looking for any resources on where to find good plays on words, or previous example you've encountered.
So are you looking for a short prophetic saying that would somehow work in all three cases?
A single saying, a phrase, or some story that would link them in a way that is vague enough to hold all three in the world of 'it could be me'?
I don't have any specific site in mind but perhaps just use this forum for suggeestions? With some brief descriptions of the PCs and what the prophecy is about, I'm sure some ideas will pop up.
Given a set prophecy based on the PCs backstory, what if one or more PCs die. How do you fit them into the prophecy? If it happens once finding new lines can be kind of cool story wise, but tougher with several PCs dying.
The other option is that you write 8-10 lines of the prophecy and have a bunch of lines to spare for new PCs. This could open up for the interpretation that "the one" need to fit all lines, making the players much more unsure that it is about them. You could even have them search for the perfect match, to fulfill the prophecy, and perhaps much later realise it's about them.
In one sense, what you're looking for is a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a course in Shakespeare.
The basic method is to acknowledge that many words have multiple meanings, not only literally, but figuratively. Indeed, the number of figurative meanings is flexible and constantly changes, sometimes warping the literal.
Take the word "woke". Literally, it is the past tense of "wake", but these days, has a figurative meaning.
Let's play with the sample you give, "raised by dogs". You've been playing with but a fraction of the possible meanings:
1 - dogs = race that looks kinda like dogs
2 - looked after by actual dog
3 - raising of internal state by dogs
You've explored some of the range of dogs, but only a little on raised. To raise simply means to (physically) make something higher. But this word has a bunch of other meanings: to rear from immaturity or childhood (as above), to increase the size of a bet, to make something figuratively higher - e.g. to exalt, or to increase money (raise funds), or to raise a building, meaning to build it.
Here are some more options for "raised by dogs":
- a dog like race put up the character as an increase in a bet
- dogs lifted the character to a higher place
- dogs made the character the king of dogs
- an artificial being was assembled by sentient dogs as a protector of all dogs
So all you need to do is consider the possible range of meanings of words, both literal, figurative, and "poetically made up".
The goal of this is that there is a single prophesy, handed down for generations. The prophesy claims that there will be one born that will be known by fulfilling certain requirements. But the criteria can be interpreted in multiple ways so it turns out that many of the PCs could technically be "the one". So it's not just one, but multiple markers.
The One the clerics are seeking would be known because they fulfill W, X, Y & Z. Where those could be how they were born, marks on their skin, actions they've performed, and/or threats overcome.
So another example would be, "born dead, but alive":
I'm just trying to find good resources for this kind of word play, be it websites or suggestions.
As for "What if the PC's die"; this is meant as a way to start a campaign, so all of these actions happen within the backstory. And if one of the PC's die along the way? I guess they weren't The One! And confidentially, in the end game, it doesn't really matter--The prophesy is just the BBEG trying to get people to go down a certain path. Another reason why it's easy to interpret multiple ways.
So the question now is, what similarities do your PCs have now? Besides the dogs I mean. I'm sure we could easily devise a prophecy that could in a way grab each one by a certain connection without saying it is player A B or C.
'There has always been tale that one day there would rise one who was never meant to be, living in fear amongst the wild of beasts, scarred by their past, but soon to save all others.'
This can work with your dead alive, dog/gnoll upbringing, and with the scar, it's open. Living with gnolls, you can have scars from battle training. Lost parents, could have died in a fire but the child lived on with a burn scar. Felt beaten could actually have been beaten by their parents or lived as orphans and were bullied as a child. Once beaten so bad they almost bled to death as a pack of dogs came to protect them, licking their wounds and taking them in.
There are no PCs to match up at this point because there are no PCs. This is for a campaign in the future so as of yet, nothing is written.
When the campaign starts, at or before Session 0 I would request the players to add facts into their backstory; "Hey, can you work it so that when you were born, you were actually one of a set of twins but they died at birth?", "It says here you were an urchin as your backstory, can you add the fact that it was a pack of street dogs that first took you in?"
That sort of thing.
And it doesn't have to be dogs. I just threw that out as an example.
This would depend on each persons backstory (unless you have pre-set characters in the party).
In general, I think being vague can play to your advantage in this situation. With the example given in the OP, I think you could say the 'chosen one' was raised by canines, this would fit all of them in some way.
if the prophecy has been passed down for generations then parts of it could have easily been lost over time, so they could actually just have fragments of the whole prophecy which turns into a quest to find the true prophecy. rather than a complicated harry potter style prophecy just omit some information from each of their prophecies and let the PC's make the puzzle, they will just through speculation and paranoia.
I think this really depends on what the background of each of your PCs is. It's hard to come up with suitably vague phrasing without further details. Making this work may also mean you need to prompt your players to include certain common details in their character backgrounds.
However, one problem you're likely to encounter is that even if you're very careful about your phrasing, it's very likely the prophecy may still read as a better fit for some PCs than others (or at least they may think so), if only when taken literally.
To counteract this, you might want to make sure that each PC has at least one clue in the prophecy that clearly seems to fit them best, at least on its face. For example, with "raised by dogs," if someone was literally raised by dogs or dog-like creatures, that person is going to sound like the more likely candidate. You want to avoid a situation where the prophecy, when read as literally as possible, points more toward one PC than others.