tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-474822155726017607.post7163900302066133516..comments2023-04-03T18:40:42.735+09:00Comments on The Caffeinated Symposium: Religion in D&D: SacrednessDave Cesaranohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01454928720043301400noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-474822155726017607.post-5399133325911340662014-08-06T04:51:13.794+09:002014-08-06T04:51:13.794+09:00I feel that this comment has so much interesting s...I feel that this comment has so much interesting stuff going on that I'm going to post a response as a regular blog entry. Give it a few days and I'll have something up.Dave Cesaranohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01454928720043301400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-474822155726017607.post-55297101142620678132014-08-04T12:31:28.389+09:002014-08-04T12:31:28.389+09:00-continued-
These were not seen as acts of consci...-continued-<br /><br />These were not seen as acts of conscious or unconscious favoritism any more than an American would label karma as cosmic favoritism or accuse Jesus of favoritism for choosing apostles instead of letting anyone who could make a d20 saving throw become an apostle. They were seen as an underlying pattern of meaning that any genuinely involved game master could not help but impart to a campaign by dint of his or her humanity, and they were welcomed not resented.<br /><br />Of course, that all changed with the decade plus of anti-game master outcries.<br /><br />It always reminds me of a friend who adored GM-less gaming and hated the notion of a game master, a deist Christian, who once told me something to the effect of "I resent the very idea of miracles because miracles are nothing more than God's disrupting scientific law for the sake of His agenda, and I want a world where I can rely on scientific principles to stay the same at all times so I can get on with my own agenda without any interference from God's messing around with physical law!" He was the same way about gaming: he didn't want mystery or meaning (or a game master) or any sense that there might be anything beyond the game mechanics because a person can't control those things, and he wanted to have absolute control in his gaming.<br /><br />And you can never have the sacred where you have absolute control and the deification of rules lawyering.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-474822155726017607.post-12676711249734822682014-08-04T12:30:41.141+09:002014-08-04T12:30:41.141+09:00A lot of the sacredness you mention was present ba...A lot of the sacredness you mention was present back in the 1980s and 1990s, back when there was no movement to vilify or erase the gamer niche of game master. Let me explain:<br /><br />Sacredness often comes from a sense of an underlying meaning to reality that can be glimpsed but not yoked to human (or sapient) control, including the perceptual control that comes from quantification. Many people focus on the seeming randomness or inexplicability of the lack of quantification, but that quantification is only a manifestation of the central notion that the sacred can not be reduced to formulae, to books of rules, to unvarying principles or "laws", or to any of the other means through which humans attempt to flatten meaning into finite sets of tools they can wield, dismantle, modify, or put away into storage whenever they wish.<br /><br />This essence of the sacred can be seen in Judaeo-Christianity when God provides no name except "I am" and when God confronts Job, in Hinduism when Arjuna is urged by Krishan to adhere to his dharma even when he can not understand it, in Buddhism when we are reminded that the insights can not be harnessed within words, or when Lao Tse reminds us that the Tao which can be explained is not the Tao.<br /><br />In the gaming of the 1980s and 1990s, before the anti-game master movement came into power, that sense of the sacred was inherent in having a game master embody the campaign reality.<br /><br />Just as secular science can be expressed in formulae and books of rules or "laws" that can be leashed and driven forth by anyone with enough knowledge of science and/or its practical crafts, so the campaign's physical science is expressed in game mechanics formulae and game mechanics rule books. Want to know the composition of water? Look in a chemistry book and realize that (barring a miracle) water is always two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Want to know how to cast magic missiles or aim a starship phaser? Look in the rule book for the unvarying game mechanics involved.<br /><br />However, an individual game master would have his or her own aesthetics, interests, sense of humor, eccentricities, etc., many of which could be noticed and taken into account but none of which could be quantified into controllable rules because humans are not dry iterations of formulae and rules.<br /><br />So the player who was attuned to the underlying meaning provided by the game master's unconscious humanity -- i.e. the sacredness of the campaign world -- would notice that when this particular game master had to make a sudden judgment call about whether the horses were spooked, the PCs who had been kind to cats were more likely to be able to calm their horses. A bad player would say, "Oh, Bill likes cat-lovers, damn his bias!" but a good player would say to himself, "Ah, I see, cats have something to do with the poetry of this universe." Similarly, the player would notice that moments of good luck came more often to those PCs who did not torture. A bad player would grumble, "Ah, Mark's subconscious wussiness is giving an edge to the good PCs, and that aint in the rule book for me to find loopholes, so damn him!" while a good player would think, "Hmmm, there seems to be a universal morality to this universe beyond what we can play 'rules lawyer' with." Or the player would notice that this game master tended to describe safe magic fountains as silvery but cursed magic fountains as flashy, and instead of personalizing this as an eccentricity of the game master's descriptive habits, she or he would realize this is one more manifestation of the underlying patterning of the campaign universe provided by the game master who had created it for the players.<br />-to be continued-Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com