Prophecy Maker

Regardless of how Blades [in the Dark] handles [planning] mechanically, the point of Blades is that characters and situations work hand in hand to weave a story—there’s no such thing as “failure”, its just a different branch along an infinite path. [Dungeons and Dragons] 5E conditions players that a failure state exists (ctrl+F the PHB for “fail” and see what I mean). 
—HeavyArms

This time, I was the one to start a conversation by venting my frustration regarding overtly long planning sessions and how I experienced most of them in D&D, curiously enough. There are many reasons for that sort of stuff to come up: too many players, too many tools (abilities, equipment, etc.), players getting stuck in a loop of arguments, and so on. The one that stuck out to me was a focus on failure, pointed out by HeavyArms quoted above with permission. This led me on a journey that made me relabel this article half a dozen times.

I took inspiration from the conflict resolution from PbtA and Matt Colville's notion of a "null result" to avoid. Add a dash of my favorite mechanic from Double the Zombies, equipment inspired by the Final: Sole Survivor with a bit of a Gon' Click inspiration, and a "but" here and there. The outcome of this process is my very own dice oracle.

All you need is a pair of six-sided dice.
The image is public domain.

Prophecy Maker

The count starts at 0 unless it's greater already. Start by defining:

• a good, a bad, and a random outcome,
• an expected outcome, and a countdown amount,
• the skill bonus used,
• and the item used, if any.

Roll 2d6 and add them to the skill and item bonus.

• The good outcome happens if the sum is ≥ 7, and it has a catch if it's 7.
• The bad outcome happens if the sum is ≤ 9, and it has a catch if it's 9.
• The random outcome happens if both dice have rolled the same number.
• For every 6 rolled, increase the count by 1. When count ≥ countdown, the expected outcome happens, and the count is reduced to 0.

Finally, the item can be damaged if the lower die roll ≤ item's bonus. In such a case, subtract the roll from the bonus. If the new bonus equals 0, the item is destroyed.

Now available in a business-card format! ... okay, I don't know how big a business card is, but with some shifting around this could fit for sure!

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Since I wanted to shorten the above as much as I could, it's time for some notes.

Skills are assumed to range from +0 to +3, with +1 being the average. and items are expected to have a starting durability of +1 to +3 depending on how reliable (yet fragile) they are. The total of a skill and item bonus shouldn't exceed 7, otherwise bad event has no chance of occurring.

A character is assumed to carry at most 4 items at a time that they could use for the oracle. As for what the nature of a random outcome is, it should be something that raises the stakes and is perhaps typical of the genre played. For example, zombies appear in a zombie apocalypse story. The expected outcome is anything that could happen any moment now to raise the stakes (such as guards bursting into the room after activating the alarm in a heist), and you can get the countdown amount by tripling the number of rounds you think this should take. The math likely doesn't check out, but I don't mind too much, this is a guideline, not a hard rule.

The numbers 7 and 9 could be shifted up or down individually based on an outcome being more or less likely, I just picked these two numbers because they'd be easy to remember after a while.

The random outcome, the items, and the countdown to an expected event are all optional. You do not need to do them with every roll, they are just there in case you need them.

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As you can see, I've tried to squeeze as much use out of 2d6 as possible. One could still in theory replace the 2d6 with a 1d12 for a reckless attempt at it, but that would complicate the matters of equipment durability and random outcomes. I actually dropped some parts of it, like 2 and 12 being an automatic bad outcome and good outcome respectively, but both getting an extra "and". I've considered going beyond what it is at the moment too much. This is good enough, considering all you need is two six-sided dice (or one rolled twice).

Anyway, that's it. I originally wanted to make it into a 200-word TTRPG, but honestly... why would I. Making it into a dice oracle is pretty neat. Besides, this game borrows so many of my ideas from other systems I published that it barely tries anything new. It's a culmination of the ideas I've been processing this year with my monthly game design challenge, and I'd say it's a pretty good outcome.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!