THE PROPHECY GAME

The game is currently under development. Check back soon.

But hey, if you've seen any of my other games and guides, you should have a pretty good idea of how this one will run. The basic rules will be something like this:

START
1. Select a divinatory system (see Divination Techniques);
   or create your own system (see Prophesy-R-Us for help).
2. Obtain a paying client. Obtain payment in advance.
   You may be your own client. Bill yourself appropriately.
3. Pose a query. It may be as general or specific as needed.
4. By employing the system, generate one or more answers.
5. Evaluate on the outcome (accuracy) of your answer(s):
   1. Success: Accept praise and bonus. Goto #2.
   2. Failure: Have excuses available. Goto #1.
   3. Undetermined: Rephrase the query. Goto #2.
   4. Disaster: Run far and fast, NOW. Goto #1.
6. If you reach this point, you've focked up. Goto #1.
   NEVER END

Now I just need to flesh-out the intermediate steps; throw in a few prescriptions and proscriptions, inclusions and exclusions; maybe add a few more outcomes; and Voila! Instant fortune-telling play! No problem!

QUIBBLING:   The non-scientific, magickal-thinking approach is to accept divinatory techniques as valid because they're traditional, decreed, intuitive, whatever. A scientific approach would involve devising a falsifiable, testable hypothesis about any such technique; testing the hell out of it (with multiple, independent teams of probers); revising the hypothesis to account for the test results; and dumping the hypothesis if it doesn't match observable reality beyond some margin of error. A usable divination technique will be exploitable (as something other than entertainment); will provide a basis for further exploration and exploitation; and will work for anyone who follows the process, regardless of their personal beliefs (if any).

INTERPRETATION:   Notice that divinatory systems require interpretation of the results, with the interpretation methods often being untestable and/or arbitrary; that different cultures have devised numerous, mutually-inconsistent varieties of such systems; and that failure of such techniques is cheerfully ignored or explained-away by enthusiastic practitioners.  Ah, but they're so entertaining...

PREDICTOLOGY: Where's My Apocalypse?

Ah, the wonderful subscribers to SkeptiChat! Their contributions and the ensuing discussions have triggered so many ideas for games and guides and resource lists! Why, the whole notion of having a set of game rules for prediction came directly from this discussion:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wally Anglesea" 
Subject: RE: [SC] Fw: [InTheShadows] Stephen Hawking Debunks Astrology

> Among some of my conclusions:  That most of the millennialists, in
> the years 1998 through 2000 would start stretching their "end times"
> or millennialism stuff beyond 2000, out to 2004 and 2011, in order
> to accommodate their inability to explain why their prophecies were
> failing.  A lot of them did. Watch for another round of it in about
> 2004, and up to 2011 (Mayan stuff starts to come in, and all of the
> interpreters of Mayan millennialism will have to move along).

  Those pesky calendars sure do get in the way of a nice apocalyptic prediction, don't they? I've just been sorting thru my crank.lit library, and noticed numerous assertions that THE END was sure to devour us in 1979, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000... depending on the calculations of the author. I guess those guys need new slide rules, eh? Without toothmarks.

  Still, there are ways to validate our specific predictions WITHOUT going thru the embarrassment of revising the due-date, including:

1.   Assert that calendar revisions in the past have served to muddy our true understanding of time, to keep us from knowing exactly when to prepare for THE END, but that it IS proceeding precisely as scheduled, so have patience.
   
   
2.   Similarly, assert that evil entities have manipulated the flow of time, slowing it down so as to delay their inevitable destruction.
   
   
3.   Assert that the scheduled demise did indeed occur, but in a realm, a reality beyond our limited consciousness -- THE END has happened, but we're still on autopilot and just haven't noticed.
   
   
4.   Similarly, assert that THE MESSIAH is now walking quietly amongst us, gathering followers and preparing to TELL ALL when the time is right, probably around CE 2033 (plus or minus 4-6 years, due to the miscalculation of Jesus' birth in BCE 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever).
   
   
5.   Similarly, assert that THE RAPTURE did indeed occur, but all the SELECT have been replaced by doppelgangers so that the rest of us may continue on our paths to perdition without interruption.
   
   
6.   Claim that you were misquoted -- evil entities changed your dates, and/or forced your audiences to misperceive the dates, etc.
   
   
7.   Ignore the passing of your deadlines, keep issuing new predictions with whatever deadlines seem appropriate, to hell with the critics. You may wish to change your identity with each new prediction.

  All these strategies merely indicate extreme sloppiness in making the predictions. Predictions should never be specific. Fuzziness rules.

PREMONITIONS: Why They Can Go Wrong

And as discussed above, every prophet needs a ready supply of good excuses for why their prognostications don't work, which is the usual course of events. Oh sure, you can MAKE good, accurate predictions, as long as the margin of error is great enough. How much leeway does your intuition give you?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Willard" 
To: "Ric Carter" 

> >Be sure to count the misses as well as the hits -- and don't filter
> >the results via memory.  Take a random sample of people; have them
> >RECORD all their premonitions over a period of time, just when they
> >have those prophetic dreams; then note the SPECIFIC premonitions,
> >and tally their accuracy.  Betcha the success rate is mighty low...
>
> TSK1!! Prophecy is *only* ``successful'' when the events DO NOT occur!

  "Prophesy only succeeds when it fails!" I like that. Good bumper-sticker, there. So, every premonition / prophesy / prediction that seems to fail, actually succeeds. And every seemingly-successful soothe-saying actually fails, but because it fails, it really succeeds. Sure, that makes sense.

  Some of us have ANTI-premonitions -- our prophetic dreams are ALWAYS wrong. When Rhine was doing his flip-card ESP studies, he was able to explain apparent failures by noting that his subjects were sometimes NEGATIVELY correct, sometimes correct OUT OF SEQUENCE, sometimes correct COVERTLY. We can apply the same logic to all premonitions - they're all correct, but they might be inverted, or offset, or unnoticed. Yah, that explains everything.

  But it still makes sense to chart and record our premonitions and predictions. Segregate them into the voluntary and the involuntary, or some similar system. Note how specific each is. Note how accurate each is. After a fair amount of data is collected, plot the trends. Continue this on an ongoing basis. Determine whether one's capacities for prediction and precognition are positive, negative, neutral, other — and the amount of skewing, if any. Calculate whether the trends change over time — with lunar cycles or solar cycles or astrological cycles or economic cycles or biorhythm cycles, etc. Write sophisticated software to compute and display the results. Take all the time you need for this...

  The next step is to diagnose and treat the CAUSE of premonition dysfunction. A properly functioning premonition system depends on synchronization. When the timing is off, the premonition suffers. Perhaps the practitioner is suffering from premature premonition, or delayed premonition, or multiple premonitions with insufficient force behind any single premonition for it to achieve satisfaction. Various drugs may be administered to deal with these problems. Psychotherapy, prayer therapy, massage therapy, gestalt therapy, electroshock therapy, and/or replacing the alien implants, may be of benefit. In extreme cases, relocation in a new time-space system may be required.

Prophesy-R-Us: Creating New Divinations

The creative diviner need not be limited by the past. (See the list of Divination Methods for a sampling of names.) Patterns, omens, auguries, premonitions can be found almost anywhere. The world grows increasingly complex, giving fresh material for inspection and interpretation. Grab a dictionary of word roots and combining forms, leaf through it, append '-mancy' to anything that looks appropriate, and voila! You've just created a new school of prognostification!

Here are some Postmodern -mancies by certain inspired gamers:

And with a bit of reference work, meditation, and inspiration on my part, not to mention extensive experimentation and the expenditures of vast amounts of government grant money, I have developed the following New Schools of divination:

To be continued...

DIVINATION TECHNIQUES & RESOURCES

See the DIVINATION TECHNIQUES page for all the possible ways of foretelling the future. See the DIVINATION RESOURCES page for links to vast wells of (mis)information. All sortsa good stuff there, which all used to be here, but this page was a bit too sluggish for the modem-bound, and I like to keep things snappy, so there you have it. —Ric