There are a huge number of kinds of historic divination methods, some very codified (like Kabalism) and others just astonishingly silly (like divination by belly button, or divination by buttocks).
Anyway, dice and cards were of course long ago used as divination tools, and now are two of the most common randomizers in gaming. But it occurred to me that casinos use roulette wheels which are a variation on spinners, in conjunction with a carefully laid out table. While the wheel itself is random, betting on particular combinations of color and number make it also a strategic game.
But I was looking at a long list of divination methods in which a number of objects is dropped and the patterns formed used to make the augury. So it got me thinking about a way to gamify that. It seems to me that the way the game is skinned is the really interesting part, as otherwise the way the handful falls is entirely subjective, random, and not particularly interesting. So the board needs to be something conducive to a story. As such, it seems that it should be a map of some kind that allows the creation of relative relationships in either space, time, or condition. For example, it could be the map of a country at war, or intersecting time clocks, or interpersonal relationships of favors, debts, or obligations.
The board determined, the next part is the randomizer, the "divination" or the "fortune" in which dropped stones or dice are cast on the board and their position relative to each other and relative to their space on the board determines the capacity and character of action available. The cast could be a fortune up front, fortune in the middle, or even fortune at the end mechanic, and it would be interesting to experiment with all three.
I have a vague picture in mind of a board with a host of intersecting rings with nodes, and circles around the rings that represent action, looking something like asymetric crop circles.
Will have to think more on this.
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