The opening
The characters visit Delphi after receiving identical invitations to a private night tour. Their guide, Phoebe, takes them to the temple floor and asks each person one question about the future. Her answers contradict one another, yet all begin coming true before the group leaves the site.
On the road down, the party passes their own car driving back toward the ruins. Phoebe acts as if this is expected. The next morning two towns occupy the same valley, and each remembers a different result from the previous night's choices.
What the party is trying to do
Return to the oracle, find the source of the doubled future, and stop the two versions of the valley from destroying each other.
A route through the campaign
- Cross checkpoints run by people who remember opposite versions of the same accident.
- Enter offering vaults where gifts contain futures their owners refused to accept.
- Find centuries of photographs showing Phoebe beside every recorded Pythia.
- Repair the cracked omphalos while duplicate versions of the party arrive with different plans.
- Confront Apollo's radiant aspect as he orders Phoebe to choose one future and erase the other.
Possible endings
- Defeat Apollo's aspect and restore the oracle's guarded uncertainty.
- Merge the futures and help people reconcile two sets of lives.
- Choose one future, carrying the memory of everyone erased from the other.
History and invention
Delphi was a sanctuary of Apollo where pilgrims consulted the Pythia. Greek tradition called it the omphalos, or navel of the world. Rulers and city states sent valuable offerings there. The split futures and stabilizing prophecies are fantasy.
Content notes: war, religious authority, identity confusion.
I would ask each player what their character believes about public trust before session one.
The best part of Oracle of the Split Future is that the antagonist can be right about one important thing and still be impossible to support.
ambiguity is such a strong pressure point for this story.
The second campaign beat in Oracle of the Split Future is the one I would build the trailer around: Enter offering vaults where gifts contain futures their owners refused to accept.
Saving Oracle of the Split Future for our next campaign.
That The sanctuary at Delphi backdrop is doing real work here. It does not feel pasted onto a generic dungeon.
I would keep the real history notes for after each Oracle of the Split Future session. My players love checking what was true once the spoilers no longer matter.
The job in Oracle of the Split Future is to return to the oracle, find the source of the doubled future, and stop the two versions of the valley from destroying each other. There is a nasty moral problem inside that objective.
Session zero for Oracle of the Split Future: ask everyone what their character would never trade for safety. Then bring those answers back near the ending.
The 5 to 8 sessions length feels right for Oracle of the Split Future. Enough room to build suspicion without losing the thread.