Day 19 of RPG a Day 2025, with the prompt of Destiny, led me down another strange rabbit hole. I began thinking about the concept of destiny, the Marvel Character Destiny, with her precognitive abilities, choices in role-playing games, and a short story by one of my favorite authors, Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths. Let’s see if I can make a coherent post out of all of this!
When I recently wrote about my influences and inspiration, I missed a pretty big one: the Choose Your Own Adventure Books. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 46 years, I’d like to share a video from one of my favorite channels that explores the history of Choose Your Own Adventures.
The first of these books, in which you were the protagonists and your decisions changed the story in different ways, was The Third Planet from Altair in Spanish, El Tercer Planeta de Altair. A friend of mine loaned me the book, and I became obsessed with this type of book. I read everyone I could get, including my favorite series, the sci-fi adventures of Be an Interplanetary Spy.
In many ways, these types of books, with their choices that took the story in varied branching directions and to different endings, were a primer for the tabletop role-playing games that would be so formative and influential for the rest of my life. I could read all the different destinies the characters lived. I continued reading them long after I started playing RPGs and moved on to game books like the Lone Wolf series.
I can’t remember what issue of X-Men I first read about Destiny, but this bling elderly mutant with precognitive powers captured my imagination. I based a few NPCs on her early in my D&D campaigns, but I don’t think my player ever picked up on the fact. Later, when I had her stats for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, I ran a solo campaign for a player of mine, where this mysterious figure guided Daredevil to save the Black Widow from the Crimson Dynamo in the Soviet Consulate in NYC and embark on a wild series of adventures. The secret benefactor who guided him and whom he never managed to find, Destiny! In case you are curious, you can see the stats for Destiny in the Marvel Super Heroes, aka FASERIP, here.
Much later in college, I first read one of my favorite stories by the writer Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths, or El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan in the original Spanish. I won’t spoil the story for you. You can read it in English here or in Spanish here. Alternatively, you can also watch a video discussion below.
Without going into specifics, one of the short story’s topics is alternate realities, not unlike the many-worlds concept, or the multiverse of DC, and the much-maligned version of the same concept in the MCU. The ideas of multiple realities, that decisions branch into endless possibilities, that I grew up with, from the Choose Your Own Adventure type books, the comics, to Borges, and more, were immensely influential in my Game Mastering style. I embraced the idea of letting players choose their destiny, allowing them to take the story in unexpected and wild ways. Instead of seeing this as them breaking the story I created, I viewed it as them weaving it together.
It also influenced my world-building, and to this day, I still yearn to play that game where multiple characters from different campaigns meet to unravel a secret across the realities of all my campaign worlds.
As a final note, my love stories about destiny, non-linear storytelling, and hypertextual mysteries continue with my love of books such as The Prestige and House of Leaves, the author of this last one being a fan of Borges himself, to movies such as Memento and Inception.
What does Destiny mean to you in the context of your games? Did you know about some of the stories, books, and movies I talked about? I’d love to read your thoughts on the topic; feel free to share them here in the comments or tag me wherever you do. If you choose to join in the conversation, don’t forget to include the #RPGaDay2025 hashtag so the community can find your contribution.
Allow me a last thought, I recently reconnected with the player of the Daredevil game I mentioned above after many years. Maybe I should call him and tell him about Destiny.
