As I sit down to write this (April 2004), I can tell it's going to
be an essay that develops long and slow. I'm going to add to this
one again and again as more thoughts come to me.
I've long had an idea in mind to write a fantasy gameworld that
really makes sense from a deep level. If you've read my other essays
you may have spotted this theme running through them: I keep going
on about the need for things to make consistent sense, for things
that exist to have a comprehensible origin, and for people's
behaviour to be how it would really be in the situations
depicted
(consistency,
the feeling of involvement,
human inventiveness,
building from the ground up,
economics,
magic,
gods).
When this all comes together in my mind, it makes me long to write
a fantasy RPG where the whole world and everything in it can be
understood as originating from a set of sources fundamental to the
world.
BASIC APPROACH: THE CLASSICAL RPG TRADITION
Most fantasy gameworlds seem to be basically like ours, with
other interesting things added. Their basic physics is like ours.
Many of the additional things are things that might have come
to exist in our world: there might be horse-sized lizards used as
riding animals, or humanoid felines. The processes of nature, the
seasons, plant growth, animal feeding and reproduction, disease
and weather are treated as being like they are in our world.
Writers come up with a lot of interesting things to happen to
people (formation of societies, natural disasters etc.)
that are fundamentally like things that would happen according to
our scientific understanding of our own world.
Supernatural elements like magic and gods are then tacked onto
this: magic spells, gods and curses all exist but in parallel with
the normal physical world.
This is a fine way of writing a fun gameworld to play games in
and I'm not knocking it. It's just that I yearn for something deeper.
MY BASIC APPROACH: SUPERNATURAL RADICALISM
I would have the supernatural at the root of everything.
By saying 'root' I mean not only the immediate cause, but the chain
of causes all the way back to creation. For example, a superficial
supernatural explanation of a phenomenon would be to say that
disease is caused by disease spirits. A radical supernatural explanation
would explain why these spirits exist - perhaps a god made them, in
which case he should have an understandable reason for doing so.
These are my aims:
1. Everything that exists should have an explanation. This procedes
from a set of root causes close to the creation of the world - either
gods created the world and made it how it is, or the gods came into
a largely formless world and shaped it. The consequences of this led
to the world of men that we know.
2. Things are like in spiritual beliefs, mythology and fantasy
stories. The gods take an active part in the world. Gods do things
for reasons understandable to men. Good and bad fortune are caused
by spiritual influences. Day and night, summer and winter, are the
result of the waxing and waning of a life-giving sun god for
spiritual reasons (maybe he battles with the demons of night and
winter, bringing summer when he's winning and winter when he's losing).
3. The world is still recognisable as our own world. Trees grow,
people are born, grow old and die, people need food to eat, human
societies function as usual, and animals live in an ecosystem.
It is going to be very difficult to square up (3) with the other
two. I could accept a world with a glowing sky rather than a sun,
because that's really a superficial background thing. But to make a
world close enough to ours I'd want to see an ecosystem: plants
grow by taking up the life-giving power of the sun, then animals
live by eating plants or other animals. Clearly they are stealing
life from their food, whether that be life-force (spiritual) or
chemical energy (physical). But why would any creator make a world
like that? Who would a creator give us a need for food? Why not let
all things simply exist without the need for food?
World-schemes have been invented before now that try to make a
kind of sense in these terms:
TOLKIEN
Tolkien wrote a world that's like ours but fundamentally flows
from a spiritual essence, the Song. In the beginning, Iluvatar (God)
made the Ainur (Powers) and they all made a big song. During the
song a vision rose to them of how a world would be. Then they looked
and saw a raw, unformed world, and Iluvatar told them that it was their
task to make it as in the Song. They set about doing this, but the
rebellious Ainu Melkor (Satan) and those he seduced into his service
wanted to rule the world with an iron grip. The faithful and rebellious
Ainur fought over the world, creating lots of trouble for.
Everything that ever happened was a reflection of part of the Song,
which had three themes. Iluvatar's first theme was the Elves (or
perhaps more broadly beauty and joy). Melkor started the second theme,
because he wanted to do something of his own that was utterly unlike
Iluvatar's work: his theme became evil and suffering. Iluvatar responded
with the third theme, which became Men. This represents Iluvatar's will
that the world is specifically built for his children (Elves and Men)
to dwell in.
This is really a non-explanation for the world. Presumably if
Melkor had never rebelled and created his second theme, the Song with
its one theme would have created an idyllic world for the elves to
live in. But presumably this would have had animals living in an
ecosystem and eating each other, and Elves would have needed to eat,
unless the need to eat is a form of suffering and part of the second
theme.
The wars between the faithful and rebellious Ainur created a lot
of natural phenomena: Melkor deliberately made icy cold in the north.
The faithful Ainur kept making lights to light up the world, and
Melkor kept destroying them, so eventually they made the sun and moon,
so high up that Melkor couldn't get at them. Sea storms are the
anger of an Ainu of the sea who has a nasty temper.
But a lot of fundamental questions, like why the sun has to set,
and why there are seasons, are left unanswered.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
Here follows a series of ideas in no particular order about how
a supernatural world could work. Some of these ideas contain radical
supernatural explanations while others are only superficial.
The Creation of the World - In the beginning there was
only the Great Unknowable, vast and limitless. For unknowable
reasons, it formed a 'bubble' within itself, which is the universe.
The outside of the bubble is a barrier impenetrable to those within,
known as the Ultimate Boundary. The nature of this universe is that
it has three dimensions of space and one of time, giving six natural
spatial directions (up, down, north, south, east, west). Fundamental
features include a gravitational force operating in the down
direction and a magnetic force running in the north-south direction.
The universe is an ellipse, about a hundred thousand miles wide
(north-south and east-west) and about a hundred miles high.
When first created, the world contained only raw stuff that was
void and without form.
Matter, life and spirit - In the universe, there are two
natures of stuff: matter and spirit. All matter has spirit. Where a
the matter of rock is, there also is its spirit - this is
quiescent spirit. Some matter is living, which has active
or awakened spirit. An awakened spirit has a more controlling
relationship with its matter: it is the guiding force of action.
Where many awakened spirits cohabit, they often infuse the local
quiescent spirit with a special vitality, which is spread over a
wide area. This leads to a larger form of awakened spirit, which is
tied to the locality and has a close relatioinship with the smaller
active spirits within it, somewhat like a hive-spirit. For instance,
a river or forest might have such a local spirit which is bound
to all the active spirits within it.
The Gods - Either the first gods were thrust into the
world from outside by the Great Unknowable, or they formed
spontaneously from the raw stuff of creation. The first gods
wanted to order it in the manner of their liking. Perhaps they
all agreed to begin with but then fell out later, or perhaps they
started out disagreeing and did different things from the start.
However it happened, the universe ended up with different groups
of gods trying to make the world different ways. The contradictions
they created led to the varying world of disorder and change that
we know.
Groups include:
- The Strict Gods: Gods who want human civilisation and order
to control the world. They teach law, kingship, obedience to authority,
craft, agriculture and trade.
- The Beast Gods: Gods who want all life to live in a state of
passionate animalistic vivacity, with animals (including man) warring
and eating each other and mating wildly in an orgy of hot blood.
- The Cold Gods: Gods who regard all life and activity as unseemly
and want everything to stop. Their aim is to reduce the temperature
of the universe to zero so that nothing ever moves and there is no life.
Solid Ground - Early in creation the Cold Gods saw that the raw stuff of creation
was mobile, which they regarded as unseemly, so they started turning
it into an immobile form, rock. The other gods (at this early stage a
single faction, the Warm Gods) didn't like this, so they
stopped the Cold Gods from turning the whole universe to rock. What rock
there was fell to the bottom of the universe, filling about half of it.
Other Elements - Water, air, the sun, the moon and other
elements of nature formed. I don't know how yet.
Life - The Warm Gods created life. They started with simple
things first like plants, marvelling at how a simple thing could make
more of itself. Then they started making bigger and more complicated
things, mobile animals and eventually animals with sentience and
feelings. Some Warm Gods got really enthusiastic about this and
created more and more passionate creatures that really enjoyed the
animal pleasures of life, the fighting, slaying, feasting and mating.
These became the Beast Gods.
Other Warm Gods, who were of more conservative temperament,
thought that this was going a bit far and sought to curb the wildness
of life. They became the Strict Gods. The developed animals that had
a sense of order, wanting them to bring order to the world. These were
men, or perhaps multiple humanoid species. But the other groups of
gods were scheming away, trying to use this creation for their own
purposes. The Beast Gods were always appealing to the animal nature
of men, trying to turn them to the ways of the beast within them.
The Cold Gods saw these reasoning beings as a tool for their own
purposes: Man had a capacity for bringing order by the destruction of
life, and the Cold Gods whispered to men that it was good to
exterminate. Thus they hoped one day to end all this noise and chaos
of life and bring the universe to the tranquility for which they
thirsted.
The Three Worlds - Within the universe, there are three
worlds, layered one above the other. At the top, far above the rock,
is the Celestial or Upper World, mostly inhabited by gods. In the
middle, on the top of the rock, is the Terrestrial
or Middle World, the world of living men, in form like the surface of
our earth. Below that within the rock
is the Underworld. The spirits of dead mortals
usually go to the Underworld; a lucky few may be drawn up to the
Upper World by gods who favour them. There are deep caves in the
surface of the earth which lead down via winding tunnels to the
Underworld. Through these a mortal could descend into the Underworld
to visit or even retrieve the spirit of one departed, and the spirits
of the departed may return to the world of mortals. Of course there
are all sorts of restrictions on this movement between worlds, and
for the mortal at least there is a dange of not being able to get back.
Seasons - The Cold Gods keep trying to freeze the world.
This is winter. The Warm Gods keep beating them back. This is summer.
Are there regular cycles? If so, why?
Disease - The Cold Gods sought to exterminate life, so
they invented killer spirits. But the Warm Gods struggled against
them, and they could only make killer spirits of limited power.
These are disease spirits. They attack living things (often in their
limited power they can only attack a limited range of species). They
also have only limited power to move, and so can only attack
organisms that come close to their position. They can suck life-force
from their victims to make themselves more powerful, but must spend
this life-force in attacking and moving.
Magic can give people spiritual defences against disease spirits,
and magical attacks can weaken or destroy them.