Suggestions for riddles/prophecies

[Ripley the Bard]

I'm setting up a D&D 3.5 game. I like to have prophecies and riddles in my games, things that are somewhat difficult to interpret and sound like ancient cryptic language....

Problem is, I'm no good and coming up with these. Anyone have suggestions or links to sites that do this? I would be much obliged!

 

[Dross]

While not a direct prophecy website, TV Tropes and Idioms can be useful for examples:
Fate And Prophecy Tropes - Television Tropes & Idioms

Have a wander through, as they provide sources you may have access to.

Try Nostradamus and see of you can find some of his prophecies.

 

[Deset Gled]

... and sound like ancient cryptic language....

You can get some basic riddles from just about anywhere, it can be harder to make them sound good.

First, you could try recording the riddles ahead of time, and use some simple audio effects. Pre-echo and backmasking are easy techniques that make anything sound creepier.

Second: Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur. Translated, this means "Anything said in Latin sounds profound". Use an internet translator. Unless you've got a linguistic historian in your group, it will be good enough to make a basic riddle sound important. Try using different languages for different effects.

Finally, try using the Nostradamus effect on your players. That is, make some reference/prediction/prophecy about the group's future using extremely vague symbolism. Then, wait a session or two and prompt the group to discuss it again. From there, you can sit back and watch the players try to fit the predictions into events that have occurred. They will undoubtedly come up with some interpretations that are weirder than anything you could come up with on your own. Use just enough of their ideas to make it seem like they're on the right track, but change just enough from their predictions to keep them on their toes.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Finally, try using the Nostradamus effect on your players. That is, make some reference/prediction/prophecy about the group's future using extremely vague symbolism. Then, wait a session or two and prompt the group to discuss it again. From there, you can sit back and watch the players try to fit the predictions into events that have occurred. They will undoubtedly come up with some interpretations that are weirder than anything you could come up with on your own. Use just enough of their ideas to make it seem like they're on the right track, but change just enough from their predictions to keep them on their toes.

This is a great way to go. One of our GMs uses it and it's worked swimmingly. It gives us players a sense of accomplishment in unravelling the prophesy without actually knowing if we did unravel it or if our ideas were integrated into what was originally intended. That GM always has us players doing some aspect of the storytelling workload for him and it works out all around!

 

[Evilhalfling]

Here are three riddles I have prepped for a upcoming Fae riddle contest.
I think I got them from googling "Old riddles" and following links:
the first is my one of my favoriate gaming riddles.

I am the beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place."


What odd number becomes even when beheaded?


"I never was, am always to be,
No one ever saw me, nor ever will
And yet I am the confidence of all
To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball."

[sblock]
(letter E)
(s/even)
(tomorrow)
[/sblock]

 

[NewJeffCT]

I had done similar in my last campaign (sept 2007 to January 2010), that was, coincidentally, a 3.5E game. The players ran from level 1 to level 17 or 18 at the end.

I had some past events from the various player backgrounds vaguely woven into the beginning of the prophecy, while adding in a few other things as well.

Then, I was fairly clear about the PCs being the "chosen ones" as each couplet pertained to one of them, though some of the things afterwards were not quite clear (they were shown to be champions of good by bravely defending The Heart of the Wood) - the Heart of the Wood could be the center of a forest, a magic item, a ranger/nature cleric/druid, or something else? (with the path of the adventure took, it turned out to be a good dryad who had long defended her tree and the surrounding forest from slavers and other marauders - it was literally her heart inside the tree)

However, for the future events, I was purposely vague - "Doorway to the Past" and "Three Miracles to give Hope" or "most dreaded of beasts" and stuff like that, where the miracles could be any 3 big things the players end up doing in game, and a most dreaded beast could be a dragon, demon, devil or some other high level monster.

I had a general idea of what I had thought each thing would be in game, but "Blessing of the Hawk" - the symbol of the nature deity of one of the PCs - turned out a lot different than I had planned. My vague idea was some sort of DM divine intervention to prevent a TPK or else a new powerful magic item, but it turned out to be a new PC - the girlfriend of another player joined the group, and her PC was a follower of the same deity.

Oh, and each line had 12 syllables and each couplet rhymed.

 

[Ripley the Bard]

Good ideas, I may use some or all of them! They aren't exactly what I was looking for, but they are good nonetheless! Here's an example of what it would sound like, what I had in mind (although it can't work):

"With every breath the air grows still,
Deathly cold winds howl and wail,
Raging thunder pounds like drums,
When something wicked this way comes."
~Something Wicked by Midnight Syndicate

 

[Ripley the Bard]

Good ideas, I may use some or all of them! They aren't exactly what I was looking for, but they are good nonetheless! Here's an example of what it would sound like, what I had in mind (although it can't work):

"With every breath the air grows still,
Deathly cold winds howl and wail,
Raging thunder pounds like drums,
When something wicked this way comes."
~Something Wicked by Midnight Syndicate

 

[arscott]

Seems like a two part task. You're trying to create riddles and prophecy that works in the context of your game. And you're also trying to write poetry.

As far as writing poetry goes, there are all sorts of resources online and off--try googling "writing poetry" for starters. I'd suggest reading poems written in the style you want to use. Don't just pay attention to the rhyming words, but also to the meter (arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables within each line) and rhyme scheme (which lines in the poem rhyme with which other lines). If you're looking to employ archaic vocabulary, read some shakespeare, or even chaucer.

You might also take a look at Anglo-Saxon poetry. It emphasises alleteration over rhyme, and makes use of metaphoric devices known as kennings.

Kennings are actually pretty useful for the "cryptic riddle/prophecy" part too. They're figurative phrases used in place of a more literal single word. So you might say "Sail-Road" instead of "sea" or "Spear-Storm" instead of "battle".

The important thing to do when including prophecy in a campaign is to not restrict your player's actions. The two big ways to do this and still keep your prophecies intact are to use open-ended prophecies and a technique called "magician's choice".

Open ended prophecies are prophecies that remain true for a variety of different outcomes. The most famous is probably the prophecy that the Oracle at Delphi delivered to King Croesus.

The magicians choice is a choice that always results in the same outcome (whichever card you pick from the deck, it will be a jack of spades). Never do so in a way that makes your player's actions meaningless, though.

I told my players at the beginning of my current Dark • Matter game that the world will end in 2012. Eventually they learned that one party member would be responsible for the world's destruction.

But I planned about 5 different ways that the world might end, and multiple reasons that the character in question might choose to end it (I also assigned this fate to the character that is the least likely to be in harm's way during a combat--if he died early, that prophecy wouldn't have worked out very well.)

Finally, sometimes prophecies don't come true. And that's okay.

 

[NewJeffCT]

But I planned about 5 different ways that the world might end, and multiple reasons that the character in question might choose to end it (I also assigned this fate to the character that is the least likely to be in harm's way during a combat--if he died early, that prophecy wouldn't have worked out very well.)

Finally, sometimes prophecies don't come true. And that's okay.

That is how I did it as well. I had a general idea of what MY plan as DM was for each prophecied event, however, that was only if the players had gotten so far and not triggered something else to cause event X, Y or Z.

And, after the campaign was over, they went over the prophecy line-by-line to see if each event came true. I think most did, but some were kind of a stretch in terms of their explanation.