Roleplaying Games as Theological Analogy Part 2: World Building

The purpose of a roleplay game is to have fun.  The clue is in the ‘game’ part.  Obviously the players are playing to have fun, and presumably most people who GM enjoy it as well, or at least are willing to do it for the enjoyment of their friends.

Assuming that the person running the game has created their own setting (as I tend to do) rather than using a pre-published setting, of which there are a great many, they have done so with the enjoyment of their players in mind.  Even if they have created worlds purely for the enjoyment of the act of doing so, certain details will be concentrated on while others are ignored.  Politics and warfare tend to receive quite a lot of attention, while economics is usually touched on only briefly.  This is because there are very few (if any) games where the Player Characters spend each day running a small shop.

So a GM’s fictional world is usually created and shaped to enhance the enjoyment of their players, but the world also has to be challenging.  It would make for a very dull game, and remove the need for any rules or adjudication, if there were no obstacles, or only very easily overcome ones.  Almost all RPGs include some sort of experience system, where character grow and develop as they defeat challenges and complete missions.  The point is that it may well be great fun for the players, but for their characters, experiencing that reality, there is a lot of pain and fear and hardship, and an awful lot of arduous drudgery that is lightly skipped over.  “You walk for two weeks without incident” is a common thing for a GM to say.  There’s no fun in roleplaying two weeks of boring, wearying trudging, but that doesn’t mean that the characters get to skip it.

As I’ve briefly mentioned before a common question is why God would allow bad things to happen to us (or at all), why he wouldn’t cure every disease, right every wrong.  There are plenty of answers to this, but one of them is that the question assumes that the universe is here for our benefit (which it may be) and that that benefit is a short-term, worldly one.  I’ve never come across any reason to think so.

The Great GM in the Sky hasn’t created a world for the benefit of his characters.  He’s created it for the benefit of his players, and that benefit exists largely outside of and after the game.  I firmly believe that we were not created to enjoy ourselves (not that I’m saying that we’re here to be miserable, far from it!), but we were created with our good in mind.  We were created to learn, and to grow.  What is good for us as characters within a created world is not always the same as what is good for us as beings that also exist outside that world, but that can use that world to grow and develop, and become something more than we were born into the world to be.

Roleplaying Games as Theological Analogy- Part 1: God the Good GM

Quite a long post today, since it requires a bit of an introduction.

One of my main hobbies is table-top roleplaying; mostly games in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons, although actually I don’t particularly favour D&D itself due to matters of personal taste in terms of the game rules.  I tend to prefer rather simpler rules systems, and have even written my own (which you can see here), purely for my own use.  I have created several entirely fictional universes, again just for myself, and partly for the pleasure of creating them.  I have no intention of trying to publish either the rules or the setting at any point.  I have no delusions about my chances of success in shoe-horning myself into an already saturated market.

Anyway, I tend to run more games than I play, and almost every rule set has as its most unshakeable tenet ‘The Games Master is Always Right’.  When you sit in front of a group of players, you are God.  You hold the laws of physics, the workings of a world, the past, present and future of every single living thing in that world, in the palm of your hand.  Now not even the most obsessive GM takes into account every sparrow that falls (although you could make a table, and then roll a set number of dice per day, based on regional weather, predator numbers, food availability and prevalence of disease…  No!  Madness that way lies!), but nonetheless, you are omnipotent.  Within the world that you have created and populated inside your imagination, and which you have permitted your players to enter, you are all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-seeing (at least in theory).

This is heady stuff, and for some running a roleplay game becomes a power trip, being able to do things to your players’ characters just because you can, to needlessly assert your authority.  Omnipotence does not always come with Omni-benevolence.

What this is all leading up to is an analogy with the Great GM in the Sky.  There seems to be some interesting food for thought here, and my google-fu has not presented me with anything similar, so I’m hopefully not rehashing something someone else has already thoroughly thrashed out.

Before I actually get started, I should probably just briefly cover something.  Back in the 80s and early 90s when roleplaying was extremely popular with teenagers, there was a huge public backlash against the games, primarily led by what we now call the Christian Right.  The fact that many roleplay games include magic, and often feature demons and devils, alongside the elves, dwarves, orcs and dragons, made some people extremely worried that these games were corrupting their youths with unholy and unhealthy ideas.  There were attempts to link D&D and similar games with Satanism and witchcraft, due to their ‘magical’ content, in the same way the Harry Potter books would be fifteen years later.  The American evangelist Jack Chick published his now-infamous Dark Dungeons comic strip, fanning the flames of hysteria.  It was all what can most politely be described as bunkum, and it gradually died away, but there are still some Christians out there who are extremely twitchy about RPGs.  Well I am a keen roleplayer, and I’m not now, nor have I ever been a Luciferian, Witch, Satanist or Demon Worshipper.  (Although I suppose that’s exactly what I would say if I was…)

Free Will and Railroading

RPGs work by the GM presenting a world, and a story within that world which the players interact with and take part in, in the roles of characters within that world, be it traditional mediaeval-style fantasy, science fiction, modern horror etc, etc.  Unfortunately, as the old adage goes, no plot ever survives contact with the players.  They might be meant to be travelling to the distant city to help fight off the invading army, but the nature of the game means that technically there’s nothing stopping them going off in the opposite direction. 

Some GMs will come up with increasingly contrived ways to prevent the players from straying from the plot.  This is frowned upon, and generally considered to be Bad GMing, and is referred to derogatorily as ‘railroading’.  The best GMs accept the unpredictability of the players, the fact that they (or their characters) may not fully understand the mission they’ve been assigned, and work with and around it, hopefully gently steering the game back in the right direction, but otherwise catering and compensating for the change of direction.

I know at least one person who when he GMs games will not allow player vs player conflicts.  Player characters are not allowed to fight or attack each other, even for good in-character reasons.  It is simply not permitted.  Presumably this is due to some prior bad experience, and if a player is just trying to ruin the game for everyone else, or is bringing a real-life grudge to the gaming table then it’s not unreasonable, but the nature of RPGs means that it may well be perfectly possible for 2 player characters to have very good reasons for fighting, maybe even to the death.  If that’s the case, then I personally would have no problem with them fighting it out.  It may not be the best thing for the player party or the plot, but ultimately it adds to the game, as long as it’s done in a good spirit.

By railroading your players, you are removing choice, negating free-will and usually reducing their enjoyment of the game.  Taken to extremes, you get to a point in which you are no longer running an RPG, you are just telling a story.  You have effectively nullified the point of the game, which is for your players to take on a role, and act within it.  You have become a GM in the Calvinist mould, in which your Sovereign Will is more important than the choices of your people.

Being brought up Methodist, I have a fairly heavily Arminian theology.  I believe that like a good GM, God allows us to make our own choices, make our own mistakes, even to ignore or potentially derail his plans for us.  But I also believe that like a good GM, He takes our waywardness into account, He goes along with it, He turns even our mistakes into good and steers us back on track, and as a result, the Game is richer and finer, and at the end, whatever shape that may take, we will have chosen to do what was right, not been forced into it by a narrow and inescapable story, written even before we were thought of.

Theory, Experience and Understanding

One of the criticisms of religion that I frequently come across online is that religion (usually taken as a single homogenous phenomena) deliberately discourages questioning and enquiry.  One of the pithy catch-phrases I’ve seen is:  “Science has questions that can’t be answered.  Religion has answers that can’t be questioned.”  The apparent assumption is that if you’re religious, you have to take everything ‘on faith’, as opposed to science, where everything is (supposedly) based on fact, experiment and evidence, and where questioning is not only encouraged but mandatory.

Now, that’s never been my experience, at least of religion.  I’ve always been encouraged to question, and to consider everything, including religion, critically.

I think that the problem is that religion is not something to which the scientific method can really be applied.  Religion is accused of starting with the conclusion, and then trying to find the facts to justify it, rather than gathering the facts and using them to form a theory.  The implication (and quite often the explicit demand) is ‘Prove that God exists’, as though you can gather your facts and link them up to form a cohesive ‘theory of God’.  To me though, trying to apply this method to religion is like telling a child not to open their eyes until they have studied optics and electromagnetics. 

Sometimes, you have to start with an experience, then work to try and understand it.  We don’t start with a theory of rainbows or flowers.  We can see them; it’s a direct experience.  We can then start to ask how we are able to see them, and why they look the way they do, and we can philosophise about whether different people see the same thing when they look at an object as everyone else, but the fact that there is a flower isn’t really open to debate or investigation.  It’s not a theory, it’s an experience.

The problem I have is that often the people I talk to don’t have that shared experience, and don’t understand a non-scientific, non-evidence-based way of looking at the world, and so it’s almost impossible to get across my point.  I’ve come across two quotes, one by St Augustine, and one by Thomas Aquinas that resonate quite a lot:

“Seek not to understand, that you may believe, but to believe, that you may understand.”  St Augustine.

“If you believe, no explanation is needed.   If you don’t, no explanation is possible.”  Thomas Aquinas

Religion, Sexuality and Choice

I’m quite happy to admit that I mostly read the comments on the BBC News website to annoy myself (and renew my faith in my own ability to use written English).  It’s an absolute certainty that whenever a story comes up with any religious bearing or involvement whatsoever, a tide of antitheistic bile and mockery will flood the comments.

I tend to be a very reactive sort of a person.  I might want to do a thing, but if you try and make me do it, especially if you badger and hector me to do it, I will absolutely refuse to do it under any circumstances.  This may or may not be a character flaw;  I haven’t decided yet (and don’t try and force me to!)  Anyway, because of this, my faith is never stronger than when I’m reading derisive comments about ‘sad people who believe in sky fairies and magic’, and how ‘all religion should be banned’ or ‘religion is a mental illness’.  Purely out of reaction, they make me feel extra religious.  This is probably not really a Good Thing.

What this is leading up to is a recent story on the re-criminalisation of homosexuality in India, which the article (probably entirely accurately) attributed largely, although not exclusively, to pressure from religious groups within the country.  Cue the usual flood of anti-religious bigotry (whilst decrying the stances they oppose as bigotry, naturally).  Within this though were the few reasonable people trying to have a sensible debate around and between the antitheist fanatics and the equally fanatical anti-gay posters.

A point was raised which I’ve seen several times before, that while religion is a choice, sexuality is not.  I didn’t bother joining in the debate, but I simply don’t agree.  Not about sexuality that is.  I don’t know whether sexuality is a choice or not, although I suspect not, like most aspects of a person’s psychological make-up.  I certainly never chose to be heterosexual and I think the most you can do, if you feel that it’s necessary, is to choose to try and ignore that aspect of yourself as much as possible, although it doesn’t strike me as being wholly healthy to do so.

What I was thinking about though was religion.  Now I was brought up Christian, in a Christian household.  I was brought up believing, and although as I grew up I questioned and researched, and my actual beliefs underwent significant changes, adjustments and readjustments as I pondered, debated and read, I have emerged a Christian.  You could therefore argue that I didn’t choose to believe in God any more than I chose to speakEnglish or learn to walk.  It was just a part of my upbringing, as a result of factors beyond my control and fixed before my birth.  But then, I could have chosen to reject it I suppose.  I could have chosen to learn French, and never spoken a word of English again, but I can’t think why I would.  I could now choose to eschew walking, and crawl around everywhere, but it wouldn’t get me very far, both figuratively and literally.

Ultimately. I believe in God, because it makes sense to me, on a rational level, and borne out by personal experience.  It means that I don’t really have a choice about whether or not I believe in God, any more than I can choose to believe that planes fly, or that grass is green.  I could choose to claim that I don’t believe these things, but I would be fooling no-one else, and I certainly wouldn’t be fooling myself.

In the words of that great theologian, philosopher and thinker Meatloaf:

“I can’t deny what I believe; I can’t be what I’m not.”