This will be my first attempt at making a game.  The basic idea for the game is that the PCs all have received a prophecy about their personal futures, a prophecy which is known will turn out to be completely accurate.  My reason for wanting to make this game is to create a game that allows the players to address the premise of whether or not knowing the future is a good thing, how it relates to free will, etc. 

Basic stuff:
Setting:  I'm leaving this deliberately vague.  Sci-fi, modern day, historical, fantasy, whatever else, it all works.  The one constant is that there are people in this world who receive completely accurate visions of the future.

Characters:  The PCs are ambitious people, highly motivated by their own desires.  By default, they don't quite have the things it will take for them to choose their goals, but they may seek knowledge of how to succeed from an oracle

The situation:  After the game has started, each of the player's characters has had the opportunity to receive information about the future from one of the people who get such visions.  How much information about the future he obtained from that opportunity, and the details of what that information was is left undetermined when the game starts.  All those details will be determined during play.

System thoughts:  I'm leaning strongly towards using FATE as a basis for the games system.  The aspects will provide the means to getting the type of characters needed for the game, and I have ideas of how the invokes/compels of the system can be used as a mechanic for retroactively determining what the characters learned from the oracles.

My intent is to design this game to facilitate a Story Now approach.  I want any of a wide range of themes to emerge through play, mainly by how the player engages with the mechanics used to determine what the prophecy for their character said.

I'll go into more details about my thoughts for the system in another thread.  My main purpose for this thread is to identify design pitfalls that I'll need to avoid in order to keep a strong Story Now focus in the system.  I'm a little bit concerned that there is too much potential for the prophecy mechanics to lead to more Step On Up play where the goal is to reveal details so as to gain the highest chance of succeeding at some task, rather than Story Now, where the goal is to address how the existence of such prophecies interacts with human free will.

If you have not checked out Fiasco, I am wondering it the style of play might suit your game a bit...

I like the idea of the characters knowing their end, but not how they will get there... or even the significance of aspects of the prophecy.

Fiasco gives a simple narrative flow to fill in the blanks and bring the relationships together...

there is a Fiasco playset that involves time travel that made me think it could be adapted for prophecy some how.  Check it out and let me know if you think any ideas are worth grabbing.  you will find them at www.bullypulpitgames.com

I think there is even a forum for it in here somewhere.  Hmmm.... now I am starting to wonder if I could build a Fiasco playset revolving around prophesy and how trying to avoid them usually screws everything up...

I don't know the FATE system or my comments might have been more directed that way.

Good luck with your project!

Thanks for the advice philip!

This is the first I've heard of Fiasco, and I'll definitely be looking into it.  I'm not sure if its really the play experience I'm wanting to get for Oracle, but it looks like it might have some components that could be useful or give me ideas.  For Oracle, I want support for longer games, probably in the 6-10 sessions range.  And I also don't want the end to be a forgone conclusion, which in the case of Fiasco, looks like the conclusion is always disaster.  The characters know some of their future, but the players don't until it is defined in pieces throughout the game.  Things could end tragically, or could end with everyone where they started, or even with the characters achieving some goal.