A New Spin on the Old Magic/Religion Question

[Gordon C. Landis]

The boiler question has not really been addressed. If it is PROVEd to you that your faith is a lie, how do you react? What is your response to the imminently exploding boiler? If your End Times happened, here and now - what would that mean for the infidels? At the moment, if the Christian Rapture happened, and people started literally vanishing up into heaven, the argument from the non-absoluet camp is that this would mean nothing to atheists, hindu's and muslims. Atheists would live in world that is true (these people never went up to heaven? dunno), the enRaptured christians have their beliefes totally verified, the Muslims don't see ny rapture or 1000 years of peace under gods kingdom as the christians do, they are waiting for their own end of thew world. The hindu's don't see any end times either, they are awaiting individual enlightentment.

So what is the world on day 1 after the rapture? Are the atheists and non-believers swimming in lakes of fire, or not? In THIS game world, was Revelations the truth, or not? And if neither, how do we reconcile multiple beleifs without positing relativism?

OK, let me interpret this one kinda like I did the chariot/beetle/eclipse in the other thread.  First of all let's be clear about the effect - what are we stipulating has actually happened here?  Some number of people just disappear from the world?  If we add that the enRatured christians have their beliefs totally verified, how do we know?  Do they come back and tell us?  In what form?  How reliable is that information?  How reliable is it that only "good christians" disappeared?

Call any of this into question, and we start to have a number of interpretations possible.  Maybe it's alien kidnappings, not the Rapture.  Or a plot by an extremist wacko cult with access to some unknown technology.  Let's limit the facts to just "a bunch of apparently good christian folks have simply winked out of the world," and nothing else.  In a certain kind of game, the PCs will work to find out for sure (or as close to sure as the game world allows) what explains this and take appropriate action.

But in another kind of game, maybe we'll never know for sure what the explanation is.  The people vanished, research indicates they were all-most good christian folks, but the rest of the world goes on as always (wasn't there an SF book like this?)  What happened?  Was it a Rapture?  Is everyone left in the world now in a Hell that just happens to respond just like the real world does/did?  Maybe the Rapture was "true," and it can be argued that so is the "spirit" of the rest of Revelation, even though it didn't happen in literal fact.  Religious scholars debate what corresponds to various other bits ("we can see that the profound doubt that arises from being cut off from our God in the same moment He Proved his Existence is what was really meant by the Horseman of Death").  Others claim that whatever the Rapture was, it wasn't religious.  In a world that's built mostly off our real one, this one supernatural event will be a BIG DEAL, and the lack of explanation (if there is one) will be a major factor.  But we could have a Rapture, and still not know if God is real or not.  

And in a fantasy mythological world, odd stuff might be happening all the time.  As long as the group is satisfied by the way events transpire, the lack of a unifying explanation isn't a problem.  The ways to explain why Geoffrey the Good came back as a nasty ghost while Edmund the Evil has angel wings in heaven (despite the fact that the cosmology says good people go to heaven and bad people become undead) are innumerable.  A satisfying explanation might be needed or interesting - Geoffrey still had a good deed to do, even as a nasty ghost, and Edmund found a way to fool the Guardian at Heaven's Gate.  The key for us has been separating what happened from the explanation, and being very careful with any final explanation.  Practical, operational truths are enough for a mythological fantasy world.

Is it possible to structure a set of hypothesized facts such that you must either have one True Way or Relativism?  Yes.  If we posit that everything that Revelations says, happens, we'll be hard-pressed to say "but Christianity isn't any more true than Buddhism and etc."  However, you don't have to let your game world accumulate such a set of facts.  And that's my advice, in magic/mythological fantasy games: don't let your facts back you into a corner.  Keep multiple interpretations open - not by saying all interpretations are equal, but by preventing ultimate metaphysical certainty about things that can be dealt with in practical operational terms.  You do have the problem of keeping your various practical operational events satisfying to the group (consistent, dramatic, or whatever attributes, in whatever degree/proportion the group finds important), but that's always an issue.  Having some central, immutable facts that you never break makes some of this game management task easier, but it also (IME/O) cuts down the feel of wonder in a magic/mythological game.

Gordon

[greyorm]

The first is distance

Jack, your points are well-taken, but I think you're missing something here: distance isn't a concern if the world is a mythic reality.
This sort of, "Well, they can't get to the sun to check because it is too far!" is the sort of "Hey, look, we're on Earth!" thinking that causes problems with games focused on a mythic reality...you're using what you know of the world in modern times to construct reality.

If we're discussing mythic reality, to check to see if the sun is Apollo or Ra, all you have to do is go to the mountains the sun rises from each day, or find the edge of the world -- or wherever your mythology says you find the sun before dawn and after sunset.

That, or you build a really high tower, or a ladder, and check out the fabric the sky is made of to see if the stars are really pinholes and wait for the sun to pass by, checking to see if it is a chariot or a ball rolled by a beetle.

This brings up another item in the whole discussion: two priests who want to find out which one of them is right are going to have to decide whose mythology they'll use to get to the "testing area."

If the priest of Apollo says the sun is kept in the stables of Mount Olympus and the priest of Ra says the sun is "beyond the horizon," they're going to have difficulty coming to any sort of agreement of where to go to find out. And once there, the priest whose myths these aren't is going to proclaim the whole thing is a sham, because the real sun is still...wherever he believes it's at.

And should the two build a tower to get to the sky, then all sorts of possibilities open up: the gods become angry at man's hubris and knock it down, the sun is far too hot and bright during the day to tell while it crosses the sky, they actually do discover what the sun is, etc.

[Le Joueur]

Just a moment to point the Rapture discussion in another direction.

If memory serves, there's a lot more to Rapture than Assumption.  As I remember it, there has to be a war on this hill in the middle east, whose name is something like Gheddon (the anticedant to armageddon).  There's something about the antichrist leading the world into war from a realm of seven hills.

Then the war ends.

Then the dead are resurrected and all are judged.  (A neat idea seeing that there are more living today then have ever died.)  Finally, all the remaining (including the recently resurrected) are made to forget everything.  So you have a world of people who can't remember anything, riddled with empty graves.

A bit more than simply a bunch of unexplained disappearances (whether I have it right or not).  The important point this undescores is, if you are going to make a religion literally true, you'd better do a bit more research.  Yeah, I think consistency is important.

Now, why were we discussing making religions literally true again?  Ask yourself what purpose it satisfies.  Serve that end more directly (rather than simply turning myth directly into 'reality') and then tell me what the problem we're trying to solve here is.

'Cuz I'm not getting it.

Fang Langford

[Jack Spencer Jr]

distance isn't a concern if the world is a mythic reality.

I disagree, but we'll cover that a bit later.

If we're discussing mythic reality, to check to see if the sun is Apollo or Ra, all you have to do is go to the mountains the sun rises from each day, or find the edge of the world -- or wherever your mythology says you find the sun before dawn and after sunset.

Is it just that simple and as easy to do as run round the corner to the chemist?

Actualy, never mind. I think I addressed this in the older Unified Religion thread. I don't think I have much more to add to the topic.

[greyorm]

distance isn't a concern if the world is a mythic reality.

I disagree, but we'll cover that a bit later.

Well, that wasn't the clearest way for me to put it. Distance can be a concern, if the edge-of-the-world is ten-thousand miles away it certainly is.

What I meant to say is that what a given modern individual knows about spatial relations between objects aren't necessarily true facts in a mythic reality: the sun doesn't necessarily exist millions of miles from the earth, floating in a void. It might only be the distance to the top of the tallest mountain -- where, of course, you can touch the sky, literally.

So for you to say, "How would we get up there to test it, anyways, because it is so far away?" is non-sequitur, because it isn't that far away in an imaginary universe/mythic reality.

As for "running around the corner to the chemist"...one, see my other post in the "Unified" thread in regards to the "why's" of doing it in the first place, and two, as an objective fact, most people in ancient times -- the times when mythic reality reigned as truth -- went no further than a few days travel from their homes during their entire lifetime, hence great journeys to mystical, far-off places were heroic in scope and never simple.

This ignores more mystical methods of getting up to the sky, such as climbing the air, or commanding the wind sprites to carry you to the clouds where the castle of the Sun's Rest is, or climbing the tallest mountain in the world and pulling yourself into the sky (or doing monkey-bars across it), or so forth.

Does my objection make more sense in that light?

I'll admit, I didn't really "get" your response in the other thread, either, because whether or not the group heading east to find the sun finds it or not is all dependent on how the gameworld is constructed.

Yes, the players or their characters could get there and not figure it out, they could spend lifetimes wandering, they could etc. But there isn't a "more practical" myth to prove/disprove...because the practicality is all ultimately based on the setting.

[greyorm]

A neat idea seeing that there are more living today then have ever died

This is simply untrue: http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw208. To summarize: there are ~60 billion dead humans; our current world population is only ~6 billion.

Now, why were we discussing making religions literally true again?  Ask yourself what purpose it satisfies.  Serve that end more directly (rather than simply turning myth directly into 'reality') and then tell me what the problem we're trying to solve here is.

'Cuz I'm not getting it.

The original discussion was about making mythology literally true so that it would impact the campaign and play/role-playing in the same way the myths impacted the human figures in the ancient tales: that is, you could go steal Apollo's chariot and turn night to day, or would know that it was actually Zeus hurling thunderbolts down upon the earth during a storm rather than some "natural phenomenon."

Or more simply, getting into character in terms of the time-period and source literature by making mythology real and overturning the modern naturalistic view of the world in favor of the classical, mythological view; it was also posed as a method by which to help prevent Mr. Wizard-types dependent upon modernist thinking about the way the world exists and works, and break their view of the campaign world as an already known entity in the broad specifics to get them into the spirit of things.

[Le Joueur]

Now, why were we discussing making religions literally true again?  Ask yourself what purpose it satisfies.  Serve that end more directly (rather than simply turning myth directly into 'reality') and then tell me what the problem we're trying to solve here is.

'Cuz I'm not getting it.

The original discussion was about making mythology literally true so that it would impact the campaign and play/role-playing in the same way the myths impacted the human figures in the ancient tales: that is, you could go steal Apollo's chariot and turn night to day, or would know that it was actually Zeus hurling thunderbolts down upon the earth during a storm rather than some "natural phenomenon."

Or more simply, getting into character in terms of the time-period and source literature by making mythology real and overturning the modern naturalistic view of the world in favor of the classical, mythological view; it was also posed as a method by which to help prevent Mr. Wizard-types dependent upon modernist thinking about the way the world exists and works, and break their view of the campaign world as an already known entity in the broad specifics to get them into the spirit of things.

Really?  I'm just not hearing that in Mr. Young's article.  Oh yeah, I'm hearing that again and again, every time we start another one of these threads, the fight bleeds over from the previous.  I just don't think it's relevant to what M. J. posted about.

See he started this thread basically saying 'I can't run unless I know the crux of how things work.'  He even thinks that everyone needs it that way.  Now I'm not one to argue that point, only that all he's given us is an opinion.  (Jack even stepped in to be the counter-example, but I digress.)  There hasn't been a question here as far as I've seen.

Sure enough though, those other arguments have waged themselves right over onto this thread.  Is it GNS or not?  Do you tell the players the crux or not?  Is it social contract to have a crux?  What if your in-game faith is disproven?  What about Science Fiction?  Or horror?

And then 'the mythic mindset' argument reared it's ugly head.  (Not to mention the whole 'sun thing' with a side of the new 'Rapture thing.')  Next Gordon treats us to yet another trip 'inside the world.'  M. J. said he wanted to talk about the crux of things, not a crux of things; I honestly wish people would drop specific examples until an actual question has been raised.  So much baggage has been dragged into this thread, I just want to hear what M. J. wants to know.

What is it?

I don't believe it has anything to do with the sun or the sky or wind sprites or skeptics (vis a vis 'idiot players') or otherwise, but you know what?  This isn't my thread.  I mean I read over the whole entirety of what we have here and I throw up my hands.  M. J. wants a "New Spin," but what does he get?  More of the same tired arguments about clashing cosmology.  I suggest we all take a chill pill and wait.  Jack, leave off Raven for a tick; Gareth, sit on your thumbs for a while; Kester, start a few (more) threads of you own.

Let the man talk!

I, for one, await his words.

Fang Langford

[contracycle]

Does my objection make more sense in that light?

No.

A massive part of the part of the problems with this debate is that it has been discussed in terms ogf abstracts and generalities.  I have now tried several times to posit a higvhly significant, discrete, in game event for you to show me how your model works, what it means for the inhabitants of this fictional world, and how they are supposed to parse the inputs.

I therefore vigorously oppose the idea that we should move back to abstracts.  If the advocates of a "mythic mindset" game believe that they are capable of playing and running such a game, it should be no problem whatsoever to demonstrate for our enlightenment exactly how they will do so.

I regard the MJ's initial proposition, and my own, that there must be an objective and universal truth in any game for the purposes of resolution (of all sorts of things), as so far not seriously challenged.  I have heard objections raised on the basis of this mythic mindset, but frankly no purported model of this "mythic mindset" has yet been given; failing a serious challenge, I regard MJ's position to win by default.  There has not, to my satisfaction, even been a demonstration which would allow me to comrpehend it as a simultaneously existing, parallel model.  I know say to the advocates of the mythic mindset, please give an actual demonstration of the resolution of contradictory data in the game, from the perspective of the characters, to demonstrate what you mean.

[simon_hibbs]

No, I want to know how to do it and keep the doubt, keep the mythic mindset that has a way to parse apparently contradictory information. Yesh, if I set it up as True it's a done deal, the same always applied to the solar dung beetle.  Why is the Rapture scenario not the same as the simultaneously-true ball of dung and Apollonion chariot?

Essentialy it is the same, and it's a good question. I suppose it all comes down to expectations. 'The faithful' of a religion (say, the Hellfireians) expect that if they follow the precepts of their religion they will get the appropriate rewards, and if they don't they'll get their just deserts. If we accept that their religion is essentialy true, then when Judgement Day comes, off they go.

What happens to unbelievers that have no involvement in the Hellfierian religion is a matter of perspective. They may have their own Heaven or Nirvana which they look forward to reaching, but which Hellfireian theologists place in the tenth circle of the outer hells. Take a desert nomad culture for example. Their idea of heaven might be a golden oasis surrounded by beautiful rocky hills under the warmth of their solar god. To Hellfirians this would look like a foresaken pit surrounded by desolate wasteland under a burning sky. It's the same place, it just depends what your expectations are.

There's no reason to suppose that these matters are irreconcilable unless you choose to determine them to be irreconcilable as a preconception.


Simon Hibbs

[contracycle]

Essentialy it is the same, and it's a good question. I suppose it all comes down to expectations. 'The faithful' of a religion (say, the Hellfireians) expect that if they follow the precepts of their religion they will get the appropriate rewards, and if they don't they'll get their just deserts. If we accept that their religion is essentialy true, then when Judgement Day comes, off they go.

I am well aware of their respective beliefs.  

They may have their own Heaven or Nirvana which they look forward to reaching, but which Hellfireian theologists place in the tenth circle of the outer hells.

Yes.  So what is their experience of the rapture?

There's no reason to suppose that these matters are irreconcilable unless you choose to determine them to be irreconcilable as a preconception.

There is such a precondition; we are attempting to portray the world as it is believed to be.

I say again: please give an actual demonstration of the resolution of contradictory data in the game

What happens to the unbelievers?  Are they swimming in a lake of fire, or not?

[contracycle]

OK, let me interpret this one kinda like I did the chariot/beetle/eclipse in the other thread.  First of all let's be clear about the effect - what are we stipulating has actually happened here?  

The Rapture.  Because the story was true, god is in his heaven, the faithful have been Redeemed.  All those people with the bumper stickers warning you that at any moment god may take them from the wheel are thus proved correct (and considerate for their due warning).

This is what is happening:

12I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
15Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

[simon_hibbs]

[I therefore vigorously oppose the idea that we should move back to abstracts.  If the advocates of a "mythic mindset" game believe that they are capable of playing and running such a game, it should be no problem whatsoever to demonstrate for our enlightenment exactly how they will do so.

I agree completely, a complete and fully explorable setting must provide such a framework. I have never disagreed with this and I have endeavoured to provide gameable examples of how to resolve apparent problem.

I have heard objections raised on the basis of this mythic mindset, but frankly no purported model of this "mythic mindset" has yet been given; failing a serious challenge, I regard MJ's position to win by default.  There has not, to my satisfaction, even been a demonstration which would allow me to comrpehend it as a simultaneously existing, parallel model.  I know say to the advocates of the mythic mindset, please give an actual demonstration of the resolution of contradictory data in the game, from the perspective of the characters, to demonstrate what you mean.

This is disingenuous in the extreme. I've consistently answered every example situation you've come up with, explaining how I'd run it in play :

1. The dung beetle/Appolo's chariot example - Run a contest of faith between the two priests involved using the game rules.

Although in fact  the physical reality of the sun as a ball of fire is irrelevent to the reality of the myth, which can be experienced through otherworlds (dreamtime, shamanic journeys, ritual trance, etc). Myth is inherently alegorical in nature, it explains through symbolism more than it describes physical relaity. I've explained this several times, and find it hard to find any reasonable explanation for why you continuously ignore it.

2. Is a summoned spirit a seperate entity or a subconcious manifeststion? It doesn't matter because even a subconcious manifestation may have access to otherworlds or the divine source.

3. I cite my recent explanation of ways to resolve the end-time scenario.
i.e. That one man's Heaven might be another man's Hell (c.f. John Milton's 'Paradise Lost').

You may not like these answers, and they may not fit your prefered way to design a game world, but they aren't going to go away just because they don't happen to suit you.


Simon Hibbs

[M. J. Young]

There's a lot here, and I'm trying to get through it and consolidate a bit.

Regarding Sorcerer, and Gareth has said, that's a red herring. No, the game doesn't tell you what the demons are. The game does tell you that the demons are whatever it is that tears down your humanity, and that you have to work out to some degree the realities of the demons and the nature of humanity for this game session to work. If in one game demons are tragic flaws and in another their spirit beings, it's because humanity is slightly different in those two games--but as the game begins, we've established what they are sufficiently to play.

Reverend Daegmorgan has put his finger on a substantial part of the question

Ah, but the question here (I think) is: what do I do as a gamemaster when the players decide they're going to find out?

The other part of it lies in

you can never be certain whether there's some aspect of your world that has repercussions you had not recognized.

My problem is that in order for me to understand how reality really is, I have to understand the foundations of that reality.

That is, if the world is really like X, then a great number of things will follow from X; but if it's really like Y, then the great number of things which follow from Y will in large part be different.

Kester brings up that the reality regarding magic is different in different game systems. Again, this is a red herring. The point isn't that the reality has to be the same in every system; it's that in any given system there has to be a reality conveyed to the referee, even if it is not understood by the players.

I presume this would apply to other genres as well? For example if you were to run a Traveller game you would want to know for definite how jump Drive wroks, and how it reconciles with relativity (it doesn't)?

Actually, in a sense, yes. But I'm not familiar enough with Traveler's space travel mechanics to be able to address the issue. On the other hand, I did read through Knight Hawks for Star Frontiers once, and remember enough of that system to be able to use it for an example.

In Star Frontiers, it takes one week per light year to travel between planets. Unless you're an astrogator or pilot, that's probably all you know about it. If you're a referee, however, you have significantly more information. You know that it was discovered that when a ship reaches 10% of light speed it suddenly drops into the void, where it remains for some time, and then it emerges from the void in another location as it decelerates toward the destination.

Now that I know this, I know quite a few important things. One is, I know that if someone is waiting at the midpoint of the journey, they'll never see the ship pass; the ship is completely outside timespace for the bulk of the journey, even though time elapses both on the ship and in the real world during that part of the journey. Another thing I know is that the ship is, in a sense, vulnerable at the end points--that it has to be on the correct trajectory when it hits 10% of light speed or it will get lost, and that at a certain point at the other end it will suddenly appear without having any ability to view its surrounds before doing so. All of these things, and more, have a significant impact on my understanding of what interstellar travel is like. Because I have this information, I know how to handle a great number of situations that might arise in play.

Note that this isn't even dealing with hypotheticals. The players aren't really asking, "what would happen if X?"; they're doing X, expecting something to happen, which might or might not be what would happen.

I suppose part of my problem is that I can easily see that if the reality is A, then X will do this, but if the reality is B then X will do that, whereas if the reality is C, X will do nothing at all. In our space travel story, if the players learn that there's a ship traveling between two stars and they want to hijack it, so they go wait out in space between the two stars for something to show up, it might be that the ship will never show up because (as in Star Frontiers) it's not in space when it moves between two stars; or that it will be going so fast they'll never see it until it's long gone, or that they will be able to detect its approach and stop it. I need to know how interstellar travel works, not in the sense that I have to believe it really would work, but in the sense that I understand the foundations and can thus work out the consequences.

Jack has several times said that it really doesn't matter how the sun moves across the sky because no one can get to it. In a game world in which my player characters and thousands of other non-player characters can, if they wish, visit the fourth heaven or the sixth hell or the two hundred thirty-third plane of the abyss or the elemental plane of air, it seem foolish to say that they can't get to the sun. Even if you say that they can't get close enough to the sun to get a good look because even in its fantasy form it's very bright and very hot (and goodness, wouldn't darkness and fire protection spells suffice to get us a lot closer?), that in itself reduces the number of possible truths about it. Saying that it doesn't matter because you can't get to the sun is ducking the question; more importantly, it's ducking the point of the question, which is that sometimes the characters are going to do things which make the truth about reality matter, even if they don't do it with the fixed idea that they are doing that.

We keep talking about the trek to the sun as if we were trying to find out which was true. But let's put a different spin on it. What if the characters need something from the gods. In addition to driving the sun across the sky, Apollo has been known to give special arrows to mortals. We need an arrow that will enable us to fight some evil kracken, and our cleric of Zeus says that Apollo will surely give us such an arrow, but we'll have to speak to him while he's driving the sun across the sky, so we're going to quest to speak with Apollo. But we've also got a Cleric of Osiris in the party who insists that we're on a wasted mission, because Ra has nothing to do with archery or arrows, and all we're going to find is the holy dung beetle rolling the sun across the sky. He goes along, because he's part of the party and won't leave them in the lurch (and besides, they might need him when they face Ra). The way Jack talks about it, you'd think that the only solution is they can't talk to Apollo or Ra. Sure, there are ways to prevent them from getting to the sun, if there's reason for them not to know. But this starts to seem a bit high-handed, if they can get everywhere in any universe except the sun.

Gareth, I think, hit the mark pretty closely

there must be an objective and universal truth in any game for the purposes of resolution (of all sorts of things)

As another practical example, let us hypothesize a game in which there are vampires. We all know that vampires cannot exist in the light of day. What we don't know is why. Why could be a very important point.

[*]Vampires are destroyed by the ultraviolet radiation of the sun. If this is so, then heavily-laden high-powered sunblock will stop it and high-intensity ultra-violet lights are a potent weapon against them. If it has nothing to do with UV, then these things are not so.
[*]Vampires are destroyed by the sun because it is the representation of the light of God on earth, and being creatures of evil they cannot stand in that light. If this is so, they can move about in the day as long as they stay indoors and away from direct light through windows, but they cannot go outside under any circumstances by day. No technological imitation of the sun would be of any use against them, as it is only the light of God and not the light of man that matters.
[*]Vampires are creatures of the night, and cannot exist in the day because their life is in them only when the sun is gone. If this is the case, then they cannot do anything between sunrise and sunset, as they are not truly alive in those hours. However, no technological reproduction of sunlight of any sort would be useful against them, as it isn't actually the sun but the day that destroys them.[/list:u]
If I don't know why vampires can't go out in daylight, and one of my vampire PC's puts sunblock all over his body and goes outside, he's obviously expecting the first of these to be the answer; and I need a way to determine whether he's right. The repercussions of this are immense, as if he is right, he's just found a way to overcome his greatest weakness; but if he is wrong, he's just disintegrated himself.

I think that the game has to either give me the information I need to understand how its important things work (and in a fantasy world, the supernatural realm is certainly one of the "important things"), or it has to make clear to me how I determine how those things work. The alternative, I suppose, is that it doesn't care how they work--but this inherently sounds like it's claiming that those things aren't important. I can't imagine a space travel game that doesn't have an explanation of how space travel works, or a vampire game that doesn't provide sufficient information about the effects of daylight, or a fantasy game that doesn't explain magic. I can certainly understand a sci-fi game that doesn't address whether any religion is true or whether the ancient gods were visitors from other planets. I can understand a vampire game that doesn't concern itself with social structures of human society. I've no problem with a fantasy game that doesn't provide rules for how technology advances. Those aren't really important to the game. But in the things that matter, I either must have an explanation or I must have something that enables me to understand the world well enough that I can create a consistent explanation when I need it.

There seems to be an idea abroad that games don't have to provide that. I don't understand how it can be avoided.

Please forgive both the delay of this post and any disjointedness from which it suffers. I spent a good six hours overnight with a son hospitalized for reduction of fracture (broken ankle) some time today, and had to interrupt my thinking to do that. I hope this provides the clarification desired.

--M. J. Young

[contracycle]

I agree completely, a complete and fully explorable setting must provide such a framework. I have never disagreed with this and I have endeavoured to provide gameable examples of how to resolve apparent problem.

Excellent, I'm glad we agree on something.

This is disingenuous in the extreme. I've consistently answered every example situation you've come up with, explaining how I'd run it in play  

And I have made it plain that I have found none of them satisfying, nor the proposed samples of play.  In fact, I kinda feel they proved my point, becuase of instead of straight answers we get a load of references to the story-qua-story rather than the myth-qua-myth.

1. The dung beetle/Appolo's chariot example - Run a contest of faith between the two priests involved using the game rules.

Fine.  If it is determoined by their faith, then it is NOT a game in which the mythology is true; its a Subjective Reality game.  This is NOT a response to the boiler scenario.

Myth is inherently alegorical in nature, it explains through symbolism more than it describes physical reality. I've explained this several times, and find it hard to find any reasonable explanation for why you continuously ignore it.

Because that was my starting assertion: mythology is moralistic, not descriptive.  We are not, however, discussing allegorical or symbolic myths; for if they stayed allgoric and symbolic, there would be no magic.  If magic happens based on mythic continuity, you must explain that continuity.

You may not like these answers, and they may not fit your prefered way to design a game world, but they aren't going to go away just because they don't happen to suit you.

In which case I restate my assertion that these are fundfamental flaws in games, sufficient to cripple them.  If you are claiming that this is NOT THE CASE, please provide an example model in which we can see this in action.  Please address the exploding boiler scenario; please provide me with an understanding of how to run the Rapture when I have one Christian character and one Buddhist character in the same room.

So far I see yet more evasion of the scenario.  Please provide in-game text representatrive of the dialogue you would use to protray the Rapture to the above two characters.  I want a sample of Actual Play showing how a referee reconciles contradictory mythologies.

[simon_hibbs]

1. The dung beetle/Appolo's chariot example - Run a contest of faith between the two priests involved using the game rules.

Fine.  If it is determoined by their faith, then it is NOT a game in which the mythology is true; its a Subjective Reality game.  This is NOT a response to the boiler scenario.

No, it's a game in which both myths are true (I'd rather say 'contain some truth'). Which is a more satisfying and revelatory truth is down to individual faith, which is what the contest is realy about.

If magic happens based on mythic continuity, you must explain that continuity.

Our disagreement is that I think I have, and you think I haven't. To a religious person, the fact that one phenomenon is like another is not a coincidence, it is because the world was created with that similarity as a design decision. The magical Law of Similarity is, if we believe magicians, a real laws of the universe just like Newton's laws of motion.(c.f. 'Authentic Thaumaturgy' by Isaac Bonewits)

Whether such laws are valid in the real world is immaterial, if we suppose a fantasy world in which they are valid. Here we come down to the axiomatic proofs problem. Since sytems of logic are not provable in the real world, it is obviously impossible to logicaly prove a philosophical truth in a fantasy world in ours - even if we posit that it is provable within the fantasy world itself. Awkward, isn't it?

Please address the exploding boiler scenario;

I'm not sure I entirely see it's relevence. The exploding boiler problem merely says that if you accept the doctrine of a faith, the rational response is to follow the tenets of that faith. That seems simple and non controversial enough.

please provide me with an understanding of how to run the Rapture when I have one Christian character and one Buddhist character in the same room.

First of all, I don't see any particular reason why I should. My point isn't that religious differences in arbitrary worlds can be reconciled. I'm saying (and have always said) that it is possible to construct a fantasy world in which they are reconcilable. Whether or not the real world is such a world is an interesting, but entirely irrelevent point.

I have already answered this question in relation to how I would construct such a game world, with a relevent example (the oasis). Why is that not satisfactory?


Simon Hibbs

P.S. Just becaue I can't resist it - Christians believe in the resurection of the body, while Budhists believe that the body is a mere physical source of distraction from our inner Budha nature. Therefore I'd describe the christian rising into the air towards heaven, while the Budhist's mere physical body would be consumed by the flames, freeing him to attain oneness with the cosmos. The Christian sees the budhist burning in hellfire, while the budhist sees the christian trapped in an unending otherworld of material distraction. As I said with my other example, it's all a matter of points of view.