[quote=Animus]
You're right, I shouldn't have used that example. I just wanted to explain how diaries should not contradict each other when noone has acted to change the future.Also, lets all stop the whole argument and just pretend we never happened.And ooh ooh, I was thinking of a 'mission' diary! All the entries will be based the current 'mission'. E.g. to investigate X person. The diary entries are 1-2 lines explaining different checkpoints of a mission. Sorta like entry 1: "Stalking X was a failure. Lost him when he got off the bus. 6.35PM", entry 2: "Discovered X's address by hacking into the local police database. 9:50PM."It'd be really powerful and useful for completing objectives. The drawback would be that it only predicted stuff related to the mission. It might give an entry like "Killed when chasing after X. 4:30PM." so I could avoid death but entries would stop there unless I resumed activities and acted to achieve the mission. To receive new entries, I can abandon the mission but afterwards I can no longer take up the same mission.So if 'investigating X failed' so I could receive new entries, I can no longer take up 'investigating X' as a mission again.I think its pretty unique and sounds balanced.
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It seems like you already got a good balance on it, but I'd like to reinforce that a diary like that should not be able to tell you how to complete the prediction, only that it was done. So for "learned about X by hacking database Y" shouldn't tell you how to get to that data base or how to hack it.