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August 2007
Pardon me this month if I borrow my daughter's concept for her regular column as the basis of my subject matter: Playing God. It's been a theme in an ongoing discussion I've been having over the internet, and I'd like to collect my thoughts on it for this month's Newbie column.
I've drawn the comparisons between fiction writing and role playing before, and the idea of playing god is one where the two disciplines are very similar. Whether or not we believe in the reality of an omnipotent, divine entity overseeing the universe as we know it, we all understand the basic concept of a god. For many of the world's religions, the belief is that a supernatural being was directly involved in the creation of the world, the emergence of living creatures, and the establishment of rules and laws. In playing god, we emulate that concept by creating the world we either write in or role play in, the kinds of living creatures populating that world, and the rules and laws governing said world.
Both gaming and fiction allow the gamemaster or writer the ability to tailor the world to suit the scenario. One of the biggest parts of this, for both, is the establishment of the rules by which that world must exist.
At the most basic end of the scale is a story set in the world as we know it, abiding by the rules we all are bound by. This kind of story could feasibly take place in real life, without any magic or technology that does not currently exist to our knowledge. For the most part, this is where we all tend to start from in building our worlds.
Depending on the kind of scenario we're exploring, we may leave all those rules intact, or we may begin deviating from them to accommodate elements of the story. The super hero genre is a good example of this. The Flash, for example, is a super hero capable of running at incredibly high speed. In the real world, the energy expenditure necessary to maintain such speeds would be such that Flash would need to eat high calorie foods almost constantly to keep up with his body's demands. It's kind of hard, though, to fight crime and be heroic when you're noshing from the moment you wake until you fall back asleep that night. The writers of the Flash suspended this aspect of real life, allowing the hero to sidestep basic biology and physics with a "super power" that enables him to run so fast. That is the rule they established over their world. Almost everyone else in the world of the Flash may have to live by the same rules we do, but part of being "super" is not being bound by the laws of reality.
Fantasy introduces numerous avenues for diverging from the rules of reality. Introducing practical magic into a world requires deviating much farther from life as we know it. The person playing god determines where the magic comes from, how powerful it really is, what the limitations on it are, who can use it, etc. Science Fiction is very similar, only it's technology that must be defined by the rules rather than magic. What does our technology in the story enable us to do, and what difficulties do we face that said technology doesn't immediately override?
These rules lend depth to both a story and a game; when the writer or the game master establish the rules and keep them consistent, the characters have both abilities and limitations. Reasonable challenges can be presented to the characters, who will have the necessary skills to overcome them. A good time is had by all, right?
Unfortunately, no. It seems there are always a few who have to question or argue about the rules governing a story or a campaign. They may even disparage the motivations for setting those rules in the first place. They default instead to the rules of the real world, insisting that a true correlation exists between the fictional and the factual. They ignore that the correlation exists only as far as the writer or gamemaster says it exists.
Fiction and roleplaying both require something from the person partaking in them; they require a temporary suspension of our adherence to the real world. We can't enjoy a Flash comic book if all we can think of is, "Where the heck is he getting all these calories he's burning by running at such incredible speeds?" We can't enjoy Star Wars if all we think is, "The Millenium Falcon isn't big enough to carry sufficient fuel for a jump to light speed."
Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." This is especially true when we're partaking in fiction or gaming. For the duration of the story or the campaign, we have to allow our imaginations to take the lead, and set aside the knowledge that given aspects of the narrative are impossible according to the laws of physics. We have to trust that person playing god, and allow them to take us on a journey according to their rules.
I heard a Christian speaker once say that if I wanted to walk on water, I had to get out of the boat. Enjoying fiction or gaming is like walking on water. If we want to do it, we have to leave behind the solid reality of the boat for a little while. The writer and the gamemaster are like Jesus standing out there in the Bible story, telling Peter to "Come here."
When getting out of the boat seems like the most logical and intelligent thing to do, we're on our way. It means we trust the person setting the rules, and our imaginations are free to walk on water.
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