Destiny is a strange advantage

If you search "Destiny" on p
pinterest, all you get is
references to some weird
Warframe knockoff

My apologies for my absence from the blog lately.  I write, because I always write, and I've managed to build quite a backlog of material that I should wind up and publish, but recent events in my home country have weighed heavily on my heart and I find it difficult to concentrate of focus. I say this not in pursuit of sympathy, but as way of apology and explanation.

One of those things that I've been obsessed with lately, after playing Cultist Simulator (which, I must confess, likely also plays some small factor in my absence from the blog) is the Destiny advantage and a more thorough treatment of it. This has led to me making a deep dive into Destiny in GURPS, as well as its treatment in other RPGs, and the result has left me scratching my head and more disappointed than I expected at a paucity of Destiny mechanics in other games, as well as the surprising lack of support of the Destiny advantage.

The first thing I notice is the mean-spiritedness of the text, talking about punishing those who try to avoid their fate, or suggesting that maybe a character who achieves a glorious destiny might, like, immediately die thereafter.  This, I suppose, is meant to prevent people from exploiting the advantage, but what is the purpose of an advantage if not to be exploited.  I think if I took a 15-point Destiny Advantage to, say, become King, and the GM allowed it, if my character became king and was immediately killed thereafter by some jealous courtier, or I "technically" become king because some looney cultist crowned me the "King of Fools," I'd feel pretty cheated.  I'll chalk that up to the legacy of GURPS being originally from an era of a more hostile GM/Player relationship than is fashionable in today's gaming culture.

The next thing I notice is that I can't find it anywhere.  I've done quite a few searches for Destiny in various books or works featuring worked NPCs, and it doesn't show up at all, and I've only found a few templates with it: the True King in GURPS Fantasy and the Mystic in Horror.  Of all the campaign frameworks, only Monster Hunters allows its highly modified version of it.  I can't actually remember a single PC taking it in any game of mine.  In fact, I searched over several books for a reference to it, and while a lot of things talk about how to use it (Curses might create negative destinies; precognition might act as a form of Destiny, and lots of references to lower-case "d" destiny), there are no worked examples of it.

Why doesn't anyone take Destiny?

I think the core problem with Destiny-as-written is that, first of all, it's very nebulous.  There are other nebulous traits, like Higher Purpose, but this brings us to the second problem: Higher Purpose gives a concrete benefit, while Destiny doesn't.  Destiny acts more like a compact to allow a particular story.  For example, if I'm destined to Reclaim my Rightful Throne then you, as the GM, agree that there is a throne, it is rightfully mine, and I'll reclaim it.  What does that mean in practice?  I dunno.  But at some point, that needs to happen. For 5-15 points, that's a pretty steep price to pay for a nebulous promise from a GM that, at some point, I'll achieve my destiny, with no promises after that (what happens when I reclaim my throne?  Can I lose it immediately? Rules say yes).

You can find a thread on the forums exploring it, mostly griping on these topics (To my embarrassment, I'm in the thread.  Oh those were the days). I think they hit on a core problem there: you're paying a lot of money for something that will happen eventually.  Maybe.  If the campaign lasts that long.  Now, me personally, I find a good rule of thumb is you shouldn't rely on a campaign lasting more than 3-5 sessions.  Sure, there are campaigns that last years, and I've certainly run my share, but even then, I'm strongly of the opinion that pretty much every trait should see some use in 3-5 sessions under ideal circumstances.  Setting aside 15 points for something that might happen 50 sessions later feels like a waste, especially given how much can change in a campaign after 50 sessions.

It should be noted, even worse, that you don't actually choose your destiny.  The GM does.  You purchase Destiny 5-15, and the GM decides what to do with it.  That's how it's written!  So, essentially, it's really just a promise to have something cool happen to your character.  This feels a bit like Common Sense, where GURPS charges you for something the GM should be giving you "for free" anyway. It also violates other secret advantages I've seen, which should give you double their value when revealed.  So is a 15 point Destiny actually a 30-point trait?!  Nope, because by the rules, once your destiny is achieved, you can convert it into Reputation on a point-for-point basis.

Monster Hunters did a lot to fix this by giving Destiny a fixed mechanical benefit in the form of Impulse Buys, and I love this version, but it's left me scratching my head.  Christopher Rice dives more deeply into it in "Impulse Control," but I must confess it left me even more confused.  See, as I understand it, this new version of Destiny replaces the original rules for Destiny by treating it as generic trait (you are never destined for something), and you get 1 impulse buy point per 5 points spent.  This makes sense: if you buy an expendable piece of signature gear, such as bullets, you pay 5 times the cost and then you always have a single use of that expendable gear per session, right? So you spend 5 points to have one expendable impulse buy point per session.  But that's not how it actually works.  You recover 1 impulse buy per session.  So, if you spend 5 points, you have one impulse buy point at the beginning of the game, and if you spend it, you'll recover 1 per session.  If you double that cost, you have two impulse buy points (okay, makes sense, twice the points for twice the power) and you'll recover... one per session.  And if you pay 15, you'll start with three and recover 1 per session.  So, a 5-point destiny looks the same as a 15-point destiny character, if they spend 1 impulse buy point per session, except that for the extra 10 points, the 15-point destiny character can spend 2 extra destiny at some point.  I'd rather pay 7 for that, if I'm honest: 5 points for the 1 impulse buy per session, and 2 spare points I can use "at some point."

Impulse Control helps by offering some new options and converting existing luck-manipulation advantages into forms of Destiny, and discussing how to increase the number of destiny points per session.  It suggests a stand-alone advantage worth 10 points per +1 destiny point, but I'm not clear what the thought process behind that is; you're effectively paying 15 per +1 IP and +1 IP refreshed!  You don't "save points" until after 15 sessions at least, and it doesn't really break down well for other traits.  For example, Chris suggests Luck might be Destiny 1 (Aspected, rerolls only -20%) [4] + 2 IP per session [10].  This means you recover 2 IP per session, but you can only have one (so how does that work), and you get a single Luck-style reroll per session, or two if you allow the character to go over their limit.

I find the idea of Aspecting the IP from Destiny to be a very interesting one, as it fits my vision of Destiny better.  I rather like the idea of Destiny being a way of declaring what your character is fated for, which is sort of how it's sold in the core book (except for it being secret).  By declaring what you intend to be, you can sort of help direct the story a bit, and this also fits with the other uses of the trait, such as a curse being an Affliction that gives you some disadvantageous destiny or, more importantly, the "temporary" destiny suggested with Precognition, which has some interesting interactions with the Impulse Buy rules.

So let's explore a few possible variations.

First, what happens if we dispense with the 1 IP per session recharge rate and go with every 5 destiny gives one point of IP per session.  This seems much more intuitive to me, and more obvious.  If you have Destiny 15, you get 3 IP per session, period, whether or not you use them.  Thus, Destiny [15] is 3 times more useful than Destiny [5].  The problem with this is that Serendipity is only really worth essentially 2 points of Impulse Buy, but is 15 points, so that skews the trait cost.  It doesn't for Luck though: Luck is (assuming a 4-hour session) roughly on par with a 20-point Destiny with Aspect (Rerolls only -20%), clocking in at 16 points.  So this might have some issues.

If we assume the "directed destiny" idea, that's essentially an aspected version of Impluse Buys, thus -20% to the cost.  So, buying 2 IP is 8, rather than 10 points, and buying +1 refresh (thus 2 IP per session) is 8 points, giving us 16 points total for 2 IP per session.  You're still paying about 12 points per +1 IP, though.

A "Temporary" Destiny should be a "one off." If I look into your future and I see that you're going to win the next fight, I might give you a Destiny to win that fight, and once that fight is done, so is your trait.  This is a single-use trait, which are... 1/5 the cost.  So if that's a Destiny [15], that's 3 points.  And that gives you... 3 IP to use.  That's convenient!  But it also returns us back to our idea that 1 IP per session should probable be 5 rather than 3 (that is, you're better off collecting a series of temporary destines every session than you are buying 15 destiny, even though they should be literally the same thing).

But what if we treated all Destiny as like Temporary Destiny?  Rather than give the PC 1 IP per session and up to 3 for 15 points, what if we... just gave them 15 impulse buy points?  Chris addresses this in his article and points out that points that don't ever recover are just... earmarked CPs.  And that seems an interesting idea too.  5-, 10- and 15-point Destinies grant this highly specific magnitude of power: you get this number of IP points to spend, and when they're gone, your destiny "is fulfilled."

This feels somewhat arbitrary, like why earmark them at all, but if we give our Destiny an aspect, like "I shall reclaim my rightful throne," then we're effectively getting a "promise" from the GM for free.  We can even assign the -20% modifier to our cost, requiring our points to be aspected.  This means that we should get 6 IP for every 5 CP spent.  That seems like "free points," and it is, but we're taking CP that you could spend on your character, turning it into IP that you can't and limiting how those IP can be spent! You get your GM/Player compact "for free," as you should, you get a small IP reward for that fact, and you're limited in how you can spend your IP, mainly in advancing your destiny.  We could even stick with the rule from GURPS Basic where, once your destiny is achieved,  you can spend your Destiny points in traits.  In this case, what IP you didn't spend get converted back into CP that you can spend on traits appropriate for your destiny.  Again, we're getting free points... but it amounts to 1 per 5 points invested in Destiny, which is a far cry from the 2 cp per 1 invested in most secret traits, and it feels like a reasonable reward for someone who has managed to achieve their Destiny... and it assumes they didn't spend any IP to begin with.