Prophecies and Predictions

[Albertosaurus Rex]

Like everything else, this can be done right. After all, we're all fans of Robin Hobb here, who devoted a number of books to the White Prophets. However, prophecies have been done so often that most of the time, it's going to be cliched and lame.

I remember reading the Magic Legends Cycle (a trilogy of [i]Magic: the Gathering tie-in novels by Clayton Emery) that poked some fun at this. It featured the prophecy of None, One and Two. Over the course of the story, the characters come up with various interpretations, but in the end no one gets any closer to answer and they decide that it isn't important after all.

In addition to being cliched, prophecies come with a host of questions: if the future is apparently foretold, does that mean that our heroes' universe is deterministic? Why are prophecies so vaguely worded? (Yes, to keep the story suspenseful, but what is the in-universe reason?)