Abracadabra #21: Stupid People* Tricks
Abracadabra
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Welcome to the first Abracadabra slideshow. I wanted to try out something different, and the yen to learn JQuery was just too much. 
Precognition and time travel has been an issue in games for me. Scenarios like the above have happened too many times. Mayn of my games are "hand the players the GURPS Character books, and let them go wild." Having said that, I've always been a bit leary of giving characters too much power, and precognition is one of the big "talk with the GM before taking" types of powers. 
And I can imagine that in-game, the characters might have similar frustrations. 
GMs can also abuse the system, either by having Mary Sue characters with all these powers, or just furthering the campaign at the expense of the players. I'm reminded of the quote that tracking is well-nigh useless in a game where everything is railroaded. 
Often times, the problem stems from a more edemic issue between players and GM. 
...and the ability for the characters to cast these spells just uncover the issue. 
For example, "don't split up the party" is a common problem in games. If a person can travel through time or freeze time, it's basically another example of splitting up the party. 
There are techniques for GMs to manage these spells, but if you use them too much, players may revolt. The cynic in me says, "make sure the players have the illusion of choice or they'll yell" and the realist knows that if the players truly steer the game to what they are interested in, it will be a better game for everyone involved. 
This power can be used for good as well. One campaign, I did a Groundhog Day scenario where everyone replayed the same four hours for about 4-5 iterations. It didn't last as long as I thought it was going to, and the players were gracious in not abusing the situation. It went well, with the players saying, "now, the ninjas are going to crash through this window in ten seconds, so position yourself." And I did a TPK without feeling too bad about it. 
OK, as I was saying, even with the best group, time travel and precognition spells have some inherent issues. 
As a GM, you need to work out how time travel works. Is the future fixed, or can the characters change it? Are our actions pre-destined? Do we have free will? Pretty weighty stuff for a game. 
Not only do you need to work out the very nature of time travel, but there's the unpredictability of the dice and the players. They will do things you don't expect. Reminds me of a campaign where a player critically succeeded on an investigation roll. I panicked and told him everything. 
So, lots of problems, lots of work, and very few solutions. But one of the things you'll see in the next slide is... 
...a potential solution. If you think of the slides as the game, with everything self-contained, this text is the out of game commentary and discussion. The game is discrete, and the OOC chat links things together. Seriously, don't be afraid to retro-con the game to make some predctions or events just "not happen." As long as people are having fun, that's what counts. 
Of course, once you get past this major hurdle, there's still how 'real life' would handle these abilities. You have help in that any charlatan can try to predict the future and you really can't prove him or her wrong. After all, people do this in real life, and selective memory helps them highlight their successes and hide their failures. 
And you'd have people trying to shield the precognition, for espionage or entertainment. What would be a truly luck-based event could turn into a different contest of skill. 
As always, some uses of magic would be trivial and easy to do, while others would be guarded by wards. And you'd be surprised which would be in which category; a major sports franchise may have more experience and funding than some small governments. But don't do this too much; players want to use their character's powers. 
And when time travelers start interfering in the time travel process, the recursion starts to hurt my brain. That's why the "Temporal Police Force" or "Temporal Prime Directive" is such an attractive idea -- some deux ex machina to prevent this type of stuff from happening. Hey, it worked for Star Trek. 
Anyway, thank you for your attention, and I hope you enjoyed this. I had fun creating the slides. If you ran into problems with the JavaScript or the UI, post a note to the forums and I'll see what I can do. 