PC Worship of the Metagame

[Jonathan Walton]

Yes, this is me playing with IC-OOC distictions again.  I'll get sick of this eventually, don't worry.

In comparison with the metagame powers of the Players, the in-game powers of the gods seem very small and insignificant. From the characters perspective, maybe their pantheon should be the Players, with the GM as "king of the gods." Why worship anything less?

So, now I want to see if that would actually work.  No, really.

I'm thinking specifically of my current project, We Regret to Inform You (The GM is Dead), where the PCs suddenly realize that they are characters in a roleplaying game and that the GM has died, leaving them with little direction.  How would the PCs react to this idea of god-like beings who exist outside of their reality and control everything that they do and say?  Holy terror, I think, is not out of the question.  When something blows your mind, the first instict is probably to destroy it and, failing that, the second is to make sure it's on your side.  Hence, worship.

Though you may not personally buy the argument that this is where all religion comes from, it's almost an objective sociological fact when it comes to the formation of new simplistic, superstitious beliefs.  One day, you walk under a ladder and something bad happens to you.  Afterwards, ladders become a taboo and you avoid walking under them, wanting to avoid bad things happening.  Hopefully, this idea isn't too controversial.

So, the PCs discover bits and pieces of the Actual Truth, that they are fictional characters in the minds of a collective group of powerful beings.  Life is but a dream, after all.  Of course, only one of these godlike beings can be said to truly be omniscient and omnipotent, and that's the GM, who is clearly the head of this pantheon of gods.  However, even the GM requires the services of the other Players and so each of the lesser deities are also worthy of devotion.

The gods follow a code of conduct called the Social Contract that governs how the world is to be governed.  It's like a loose code of laws for the gods.  Generally, the GM is the final interpretor of these laws, but the other gods can occasionally use it against him, forcing the GM to obey his own rules.

Additionally, the gods have several powerful artifacts that enable them to govern the world, much like Zeus' thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident, and Hades' helmet.  One of these is a set of cosmic Dice, which seems to be critical.  Also, there are rulebooks containing both the details of the Social Contract and secret knowledge of all the world's infinite spendour.

Anyway, basically I'm just trying to imagine what the PCs would be likely to think of the metagame and how they might interpret it through the lens of religion.  Obviously, this kind of thing would vary from game to game.  PCs from Call of Cthulhu might see the PCs as Old Ones or Outer Gods while those from Bunnies & Burrows might think of them as the Rabbit-Gods, eternal friends of the Folk of the Earth.  But what elements would be universal enough to apply across different games and genres?

[szilard]

Oooh...

Just got an idea from this.

The Gods Play Dice: A Role-Playing Game of Petty Divinity and Heroism as Chess

Inspired by the machinations of gods who use heroes to further their plots... from the pantheon of the Ancient Greeks to Discworld.

Actually, it would be a lot like Discworld. Players would portray bored gods with petty rivalries. As gods, though, they are immortal and invulnerable to each other directly. Thus, they choose champions from among the mortals and pit them against each other in contests.

Since the players are gods and can, as a result, define much of the world, this should be a breeze to handle GM-lessly.

~szilard

[lumpley]

szlizard: Check out my (incomplete) game Before the Flood.  It's not precisely what you described, but you might be interested.

-Vincent

[szilard]

szlizard: Check out my (incomplete) game Before the Flood.  It's not precisely what you described, but you might be interested.

-Vincent

Vincent,

Thanks. What you have there is pretty nifty. As you said, it isn't precisely what I'm thinking (in particular, different emphases and scale), but there is certainly some food for thought there.

~szilard

[Alcar]

There's an Over The Edge scneario where players do find out they're characters in a game. It's rather entertaining and I shall someday end (or climax?) a campaign with that thread in mind. In my games we have a general joke about Delta Mu (DM), the god who oversees everything, whose name no one mentions etc. I even made it into a god once for a session summary that got into some NPCs reacting to a PC visit to their world (I do really odd session summaries).

However, I think most pcs would be really, really afraid. Or assume there was no difference between this and their actual gods. The universal element accross genres etc. might be harder, but a nebulous "entitity" might work best.