Oberon wrote:To the rest of your post on the supposed attack of GK against CharlesComm, you're forgetting one key factor: Parson is still magically bound to provide Charlie with several (is it 9 now?) magical calculations. This gives Charlie a lot of opportunities to learn what Parson plans and counter it.
No, it doesn't help that much. When he asks, he automatically let's Parson know what Charlie knows about the attack, so Parson immediately alters the plan making that knowledge useless.
Oberon wrote:The confusion over her part in veiling the city was assuming that she predicted that the city would be spotted, and then that future was rendered false. Instead, she predicted that there would be an enemy unit within viewing distance of a FAQ city, and then Jack veiled it. No changing of the predicted future is involved there.
Time out! We do
not know how Prediction works in Erfworld. By Prediction, you can read "Prophecy".
We know that a Predictamancer whose Side falls is viewed as a failure; however, if you get a Prediction that the Side will fall and you cannot alter that future, then it's not reasonable to blame the Predictamancer for what cannot be altered. This is a strong suggestion that Predictions are not inevitable.
While Wanda views her Prediction as Fate, Wanda is entirely egotisstical, and that may reflect more on her personality than the general view of Predictamancy.
Philip K. Dick wore the "Minority Report". In the original short story, the lead character was the same -- someone that received the prophecies of the three Psychics. He received a Prophecy that he would kill someone, from 2 of 3 Psychics -- the third said he wouldn't do it. The story became a muddle of trying to figure out why one or two Psychics saw different futures, which was unprecedented.
The answer? They saw three futures. IN the first, from the weakest Pyshic, he saw our hero kill. The second most powerful saw the future in which all three had given him a prediction of murder, in which he would not kill, because he was found out. The most powerful saw the future in which the second and third agreed that he wouldn't kill, so he took a chance and killed. Complex? Yep... you may have to draw it out. In the end, they couldn't jail him for murder, because there was reasonable doubt, and he didn't actually do in the real future.
My point? That's a world where the future can be changed by knowing the future. There is nothing paradoxical about something that has not happened. Paradox only occurs if you prevent a future that has already happened.
When you include prophecy in your story, an author has to make a number of choices:
1) How reliable is Prophecy? Is ti an absolute, or a probable event?
2) How accurate is the wording? Can the prophecy be achieved in multiple ways? A Criminal Minds episode had a pyschic's reading suggest a girl was kidnapped near a seaside. Outside the downtown window of the warehouse she was found in, there was a mural advertising a vacation on the beach. Many would call Nostradamus' quatrains of this type, because they are very subject to interpretation.
3) How accurate in time is it? Ie. "You'll cross the street in 4 minutes" vs. "You'll cross the street." The second will definitely come true for the vast majority of people.)
4) Does the Prophecy include the effect of knowing the Prophecy itself? The Matrix oracle asks, "What's really gonna bake your noddle is would you have spilled the cookies if I hadn't told you that you would?" In the Minority Report, none of the Psychics saw the true future, in the end.
Having run an Eberron campaign, and included the Draconic Prophecy (for which D&D did not answer the above questions, leaving me to use my own definition), I have a certain familiarity with answering those questions.
The difference between an author and a DM is that the author can force characters into particular actions: the DM has no control over player characters, without their cooperation. So, it is best not to go wiht the "single interpretation", and "cannot avoid" in an RPG, because the player can simply defy the Prophecy by choice. (One D&D party started a shipping company instead of dealing with the villain. Kinda hard to predict things when the players just go hard left off the tracks.)
Anyway, my point is that there is no one definition for Prophecy or how it affects the world. UNtil we've got a little more on the specifics out of Marie, we're kinda stuck on exactly how much of Wanda's attitude was consistent with Erfworlder opinion on Predictamancy.
[quote="Curxsed"]Lisa Kudrow, B.S. in Biology.]/quote]
Not familiar with her. And I specifically remember nuclear physics for the girl I was thinking of. I'm not denying that it isn't Lisa in the comic, just that the person I'm trying to remember isn't Lisa.
