IN> Re: the Heavenbound

[Nigel Cole]

On Tuesday 25 July 2006 08:48, Bill Adlam wrote:
>
> Presumably in this case the teacher's fate was 'to discourage one of
> the most promising minds of the next generation', or something like
> that.  It would be a very strange person who was incapable of
> anything worse than 'make a snide remark'.

I don't entirely agree - I see destiny & fate as tied to the choices 
made by a particular individual, not connected with facts beyond their 
ken. If the teacher realised the person they were discouraging had the 
potential to be brilliant, and discouraged them anyway, then I'd agree.

I don't know if it's stated explicitly anywhere, but IN mostly defines 
evil as selfishness, and good as selflessness. It could be that a 
seemingly trivial act happens to be the most purely selfish one that 
person could make, whereas apparently 'worse' actions might not be 
purely selfish. (GMs willing to mess with players' heads can pull some 
really nasty surprises here, limited only by how easily-offended their 
players are.)

But there's a bit of smoke-and-mirrors about destiny & fate in game 
terms anyway, since the very idea of an individual actually having 
pre-determined best & worst actions runs counter to the idea of free 
will. There's also a meta-game aspect: it's an appealing idea that a 
person could be damned for a seemingly minor act, while at the same 
time it's an unpleasant idea that someone who devotes their whole life 
to selflessly helping others could be undone by a single selfish action 
when they were young.

My own, non-canon, approach is to assume destiny (& fate) can change 
over time, depending on the person's actions; you can only be certain a 
person has met their destiny or fate at some point in their life when 
they die. In limited cases, a person may be able to undo their fate (eg 
the teacher has a change of heart and goes out of his way to encourage 
the student instead) or perform sufficient selfless actions that their 
fate changes (eg the teacher subsequently encourages lots of other 
students).

Any in-game requirement to know whether someone still alive has met 
their destiny or fate can be handled by assuming an implicit "...if 
they died right now".

-- 
Nigel Cole
zebekia at zebekia.co.uk
www.dreamlyrics.co.uk: Zebekia