Recent Games & Why Divination is Great

Post no 2500 coming soon

Been playing our 60s spy-fi UNIT game as a TSR Marvel game still.

My new setting, which will be in my 2500th feature post soon. It being used for a 5,5 game but ill write more like my osr stuff. I'm still expanding this as I play, and I will PDF it up when done for reasons. I'm playing Marvel, BX, and between games in a campaign on hold. Ive been more a player in the last 2 years than the last 42 years and I think Im doing better. I hope to play some D&D5 again as a player so i can mess with builds and learn some classes better.  

----------
Theros 5th ed game
 has started up again. They are the first group of humans to go north beyond the colonies since the previous two peoples here were killed by the gods. Geryon is leading giants to a new age and his many children, prehuman magic and divine contacts to do something big and maintain plausible deniability from the gods. Players have also found the gods have been covering up older gods and now thanks to recoving texts the players read the Archaic language. 

Party includes a satyr light priest, a centaur bard, a centaur elemental monk and a human wizard into underworld knowledge, all Lv8.

Most recently the party befriended Gryphons (wingless griffons) as the scholar wizard had a magic sword that let him speak to lions which started them speaking. Together they faught a giantess daughter of Geryon somehow empowered by the forces of the Underworld with a magic scythe and many fearsome powers. As usual the satyr priest used his powers to waste her attacks a while but even he had to fall back. When she knew she was doomed, she tried to kill the wizard. They debated bringing her head but morality and decency won out, and they spent a day building a funeral pyre and performing respectful rituals then cast speak with dead. The giantess was complex and was willing to burn her family and also didnt think the mortals could suceed and she gave away family secrets. Like you have to stab all theree of Geryons hears at once to kill him. She apreciated this effort and her father watching by a scrying pool with a nymph was also impressed at the party having good manners. They had killed the daughter he didnt value but treated her well and even used a magic Sickle to send her to the court of the undwerworld god.

So they headed east into their fabled sylvan woodlands, where some of the party hoped to meet others of their kind. The centaur bard had come from a further south area who knew ways of the area. The other satyr and centaur were raised by humans.They met the Demigod Satyr Silenus with his satyr, centaur, drayd and human followers, all drunk and fornicating. They joined in and all but the satyr priest passed out. He gained +1 CHA and a 4L wineskin that refills daily. Bonus as most civilised humans watered wine. He had a chat with the jolly godling about the supposed lack of satyr gods and heroes who died in human myths. Silenus was evasive but gave some hints. Rest of the party awoke exhausted needing rest. 

They found a trail north with wild savage centaurs they were warned to avoid so they went the scenic seaside rout which had some unknown peril. The satyr had scouted a bit and pointed out a hill fort and a magic tree with golden apples and a guardian snake. They all went to the snake and spoke with it. It explained that only a god may eat them once a year per tree. They considered taking one to Geryon to meet him but the snake said the priest could take one to display in a temple to display for a year then plant it and have a sacred tree. He was personally responsible. The centaurs kept lusting after the apple and the monk was particularly interested because he just wanted to see what it would do not for himself to eat.

As they were all wide awake after their post orgy nap they next went to the interesting hill with giant monoliths on top. It had caves just big enough to fit a giant hermit and several giant tombs. Straight out of Bigbys Giant book for 5th ed which has a bunch of lairs and interesting stuff plus more weird giants. A phantom blind giantess appeared and explained the sacred site to them and asked to not be disturbed. She was meditating in the middle doing some magic. The monoliths gave any who touched them spell powers of divination. The wizard used it to send a dream to his family and considered they could use this to mess up enemies. The priest gained divination and asked his god for tips to protect the apple and he got a dream of mushrooms in the giant hermit nooks and make a dangerous psychotropic poison to protect the apple from "vermin". Priest was a bit surprised by light god doing this but he wasn't just a god of healing. The satyr monk gave up his dream of messing with the apple.

As they camped, their dreams interacted with the elder magics of the place and Geryon, surveilling them. Geryon saw the wizard having nightmares of a witch from his childhood dreams. So Geryon contacted actual Hags to menace the party one in the form of the childhood dream. This was an impressive high-power monster battle and the fact the creatures could become ethereal and lots of magic missiles which bypassed many player abilities that had nerfed all my monsters the campaign. During the fight a hag grabbed him to take to hades and he saw a glimpse of where in the underworld they came from. It was the borders of Tartarus where giants and titans were imprisoned. 

Players spent quite a bit of this session doing divination. I made it clear that Divination works better and can have contexts to improve results. The limits of the spells in most games are quite fun to work with, and I'm fine with players doing divination for days ahead of time. It doesn't make dungeons a cakewalk, it gives foreshadowing and lets players plan in a more heist-like way. Having magic give players bonus spells they can play was fun too, and players are likely to be able to do this more in the near future. 

----------
Whos afraid of Divination

Ive ignored the caps on using these to some degree. A Yes/no answer is not gonna break much. A word per level reply isnt to dangerous. I find players get exhausted after a few and the limits mean you need to phrase things specifically. In some ways, these could be the puzzle component of your D&D game. Ambiguous answers, bonus info, lore dumps and dream visions of possible events or places can all enhance the mystery of a place.

Limits on Divination? Generally, spirits and gods won't mess with things of a more powerful god or the gods as a community would dislike. Gods ratting on each other is dangerous. Gods know when you praise or slander them. Asking about something specific to the god or their cult will get better results than stuff the god was not spying on.

Some gods like sun and light gods, are more into surveillance but not at night. Instead of giving a direct yes or no answers might by a positive or negative omen or divine sign. Questions about what your god would prefer you do might work but also offend your god. Some gods might be less interested in acting as magic 8-ball and assign servitors instead. This knowledge might not be as all powerful. More regular use of same powers might establish a working relation and consider your last questions. 

I have in my Chagrinspire campaign, and gods avoid the wasters where gods were trapped and killed in the apocalypse so they are ignorant of many events in the region. Also gnomes use lots of magic surveillance, but so do my adventurers.

So you limit augry spells to one a day, which as i established in mean and lame. So the church who has lots of 1st lv priests can run barracks full of divination casters run by commanders delving into specific research. Scribes and philosophers help prepare the spell casters with scripts to devise outcomes the church requires. Its much more effective to run monasteries like computational divination centres than just random dudes ask a few questions without collaboration. Possibly, they confirm their scriptures and relics are real or were at least well intentioned.

In dungeon games at early levels, food, every bit of healing, ammo, oil all matter in the early survival resource horror mode but this doesn't last. Eventually, light and food is just a spell away and these resources diminish as threats. I think at least in AD&D the divination spells are well-paced and the information you can gain with spells is useful but limited. Its good if players plan ahead well and enemies can easily access this too. I have players visit churches thay saved and get all the clergy to max out in spare divination spells. This helps make clerics shine on their own. 

Magical and animal spy spells are also common, besides just asking gods. Thieves and invisibility can scout ahead in a dungeon so why not spells. I had 3 different automapper spells in one game. One would cover rooms but you could have spells to map buildings and invent limits for them like requires living occupants or wont show secret doors or hidden details. I did like some games had a magic eyeball you can summon easily and some you could find easily or a maze cul-desac or loop might have strapped several eyes. 

 
In our superhero games we had psychometry or postcog were powers that nerfed investigations and made them easy. So when you need an expensive antidote for a possible player ability you need to work harder to circumvent. If every villain ends up hiring psychics to remove psychmetric data you have just nerfed a legit player ability. 

You might make players submit questions before the game.

Making a limit based on your campaign is fine.
 
Gods dont squeal on other gods or comment on other gods holy places or activities unless they are prepared to fight over it. Gods might even tell you this. Pantheons might have pacts and relations the gods wont break. This can be useful to know your gods are unwilling to answer. Some might make this clear or be evasive. Its ok to for adventurers to ask for insight to read a gods mood or truthfulness. Having a god sound tired or evasive is information. Some gods might try and break rules or inform adventurers with some more subtle omens or through someone else.

In one Runequest game, we found these knowledge spirits and if you asked a secret of the gods, the spirits were deleted forever. It turned out these spirits were part of the universe and the sum of cosmic knowledge. Killing them aided the ruination of the world. We killed quite a few before realising this was a bad thing to do. We stopped of course as we lived in the universe too. RQ does a good job of culturally limiting magic rather than ruling against it. Player figures out some spell-related scam and then finds out some awful people did this, and it's considered a heretical act of evil now. If you do it and people find out you will be an outcast and bad guys might offer you to join them.

This is a bunch of random ideas to consider but maybe a more formal set of bullet point guidelines might help in the future.