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benlehman at 03:39pm on 06/04/2004
benlehman at 03:39pm on 06/04/2004So the Forge, a cool RPG-discussion board, is having a birthday party, which is represented by an off-topic forum (normally it's a very heavily moderated board.)
And, in this forum, there was a thread about "what games do you want designed by whom?"
And in this thread, I wrote:
"I want a game set in Heaven, the early Christian conception thereof, and I want it to be written by Shreyas, and I want to cry at the beauty while playing it. I want bonus dice for crying at the beauty."
And this is the design thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10598
Ethan, I would love to have your theological advice here, because I would love to have a game that is unabashedly Christian and gets it right.
yrs--
--Ben
And, in this forum, there was a thread about "what games do you want designed by whom?"
And in this thread, I wrote:
"I want a game set in Heaven, the early Christian conception thereof, and I want it to be written by Shreyas, and I want to cry at the beauty while playing it. I want bonus dice for crying at the beauty."
And this is the design thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10598
Ethan, I would love to have your theological advice here, because I would love to have a game that is unabashedly Christian and gets it right.
yrs--
--Ben
(no subject)
Didn't he already sort of run that? Or did you mean, like, a system? In which case, I can't wait to see the Confession/Absolution mechanics!
MW
(no subject)
Vidi Aquam had "system." Just no mechanics. I get to be a snob about this because I just came up with the division yesterday :-) I also don't think it was set in Heaven.
yrs--
--Ben
(no subject)
I'd suggest looking at the works of Rilke for inspiration, particularly the Second Duino Elegy, but a lot of his stuff touches on these themes. (I like the Stephen Mitchell translation, unless you or your collaborators happen to be able to read German.) Rilke's got this idea that the reason humans exist is to bring the world into eternity through their connection to or observation of it, in some sense, and that angels aren't so much things that have emotions or do things, but rather are emotions, self-contained and complete in a way humans aren't. This seems related to the whole idea of human souls remembering Creation into being that someone in the thread brought up.
Also, with regards to the whole Satan-as-servant-of-God concept, the webcomic sinfest (http://sinfest.net), despite being more than a little irreverent, has a whole series of relatively recent strips dealing with the issue.
The game as a whole is an interesting idea; I don't necessarily have Ethan's theological grounding, but it's certainly stuff I've thought about a good bit and I'd be happy to talk to you about it.
Neat.
On your comments: the comment you made about time periods is absolutely vital. Any game and gameworld that purports to be about the Christian timeline must be applicable to any time period: otherwise you get into an "in the Beginning, there was the Word, and in the End, there'll probably be the Word again, but you know, right now, you're probably out of luck." Dealing with Heaven in a game is inevitably going to drag you into the pulsing, bleeding heart of time itself, and if you haven't thought that out better than it takes to say "eh, set it 6000 years ago," you're not going to have a game that paints the required picture.
I also agree that angels make bad player characters, because they're just really hard to get your head around. I would caution, though, that they DO have free will. They just exist in a flow of time external to our own (it seems to me analogous to the relationship of eternity to angelic time, but that's bonehead speculation; still, useable in a game.) Their choice has already being made, or rather is made and was and will be as far as our perspective is concerned, as the basic data structure of our time appears to be composed of their choices, but it is theirs. Still, making the angelic accessible is key, and the world of angels is an appealing mystery to explore in a "real-world magical"esque gameworld. The most important thing in dealing with them, I think, is not what to make them abstract representations of (as your colleagues seem to be debating) but to make them people. That's the most amazing part of angels as Christianity treats them: these perfect cosmic entities are in fact people, with souls and choices and personalities and loves and needs and all the rest. Losing that under a clever cosmology is disastrous for the impact of the game. The understanding that the fundamental disposition of the world created by conscious choices, made by persons and not inevitable mechanism, is key to Christianity, and necessary to any game that tries to deal with it.
Shifting up an infinite number of gears: dealing with God the I AM too directly can be really difficult, for obvious reasons. Any GM who starts playing the part of God the Father really needs to start evaluating whether he/she/it is in way over his/her/its head. I think a Nephilim-esque setup, in which angels reveal themselves to humans as influences, and begin drawing the players out of time in stages, first through simply synchronicity, identification with historical and mythical figures, until time-periods begin to become interchangeable in the narrative, would be good to deal with the worldly part.
The Heavenly directly is just insane to attempt. This is not to say it shouldn't be attempted. But it is insane. Words fail by definition. To describe Heaven, though words fail twice in sequence, and the failures compound exponentially. Keeping the touch of Heaven itself light, given occasionally in dreams and visions, in familiar symbols much of the time (not traditional, but familiar) is key.
I should start writing Babel stuff again. It's a good story, should get written. Mer. I don't know if this is what you were looking for at all, or if I'm just ranting.