A Paradigm- Magic, Knowledge, and Belief in RPGs

So, this is a post I've been working on, thinking about, and refining for a little while now. I have other posts in the works, but I keep on coming back to this one, trying to finalise and fully articulate what I actually think about the matter.

If a degree in Anthropology has taught me anything (aside from the fact that it will never be relevant for the purpose of job interviews), it's that human systems are interesting. As myriad and multifarious as the human species itself, and a product of countless iterations of the most complex object we currently know of (that being the squishy lump of fat in our skulls), human culture and society is a source of never-ending brilliance and baffling oddity in equal measure. Ingenious and flexible and enduring.

So why not take inspiration from it? Why not use the massive amounts of scholarly and anecdotal information available to make some vaguely interesting stories for an RPG? Hmm?

(as an aside, I hate the use of the phrase 'why not.' Such as 'why not try one of our tasty new cinnamon sugar bagels, now with added STUFF?' or 'why not treat yourself to a relaxing bath-soak-bubble-bliss-bomb-ball?' (which doesn't sound very relaxing, really) because they're only trying to sell you something. They're only trying to appeal to the part of your brain which says 'oh, people say you should always try new things, even if I think I shouldn't. In fact, if I think I shouldn't then I probably definitely SHOULD.' And don't get me started on the word SHOULD. It's all total garbage.)

Think about gods as concepts, personifications or representations of time, place, object. A manifestation of the anthropic principle. It's the time/place/object's importance to the people that need them which makes a thing sacred. Regardless of whether they exist physically or not, a people's deities are important because the objects around them are significantly intertwined with their lives.

In many RPG systems and settings the presence of belief in a person's life seems all too often to be a mere addendum, a bolt-on to be considered after the fact- the fact itself being the creation of a society or culture in which the belief structure resides. It seems like many settings are merely a secular society much like our own which has merely had a pseudo-feudal veil draped over it. But then feudalism was only considered a right and proper way to govern because of the divine right of monarchs- something people actually had to believe in, or at least pretend they did. More often than not, a set of religious, spiritual, or metaphysical beliefs is quite integral to how the inhabitants of a given culture understand themselves and negotiate their life within this system. The feudal system was intertwined with the idea of 'God and the King', with the church being the reason why most people did anything at all.

And this is heavily linked to how people view their daily lives- the normal and profane sphere of their existence as well as the special and sacred. Consider a more polytheistic or animist setting. A pantheon of deities and spirits specific to one village might be subtly different to one a few miles away. Different saints, different spirits, different festivals, different rites to observe, and different sacrifices to be made. Belief is about culture, and culture can be argued to be a manifestation of a person's deeply held beliefs about themselves and their world. I don't even want to use the word 'religion'. It has too many connotations, and what I'm talking about isn't the 'go to church on Sunday and feel bad for an hour about your life and how you're not living it properly' kind of thing a lot of us are vaguely familiar with (in the anglophone-sphere). With the ideas which I'm trying to get at here science could belong, too (and I mention this specifically as a cultural posture and not the scientific method, which I consider to be different). It's a set of precepts by which you understand the world and how to live within it.

(before I go any further with this, I want to point out that I'm not trying to equate religion and science. I don't want to get into an argument about empiricism and research and evidence or lack thereof when it comes to informing someone about how to conceptualise their world. I'm not going to address how someone comes to have this information, nor whether or not it is 'correct'. I only want to talk about what they do with it and how it influences the way in which they interact with the world, themselves, and others. For the purpose of this post, consider *all* knowledge as an epistemology on an equal footing with any other systemic and intra-dependent system of knowledge. An economist might view the world different to a physicist, a conservationist, a teacher, an artist, etc etc. based on how they think and what they know and believe to be important. In a way, it touches on cognitive linguistics and could be a certain manifestation of the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis.)

The scope of this article is quite huge in an RPG sense. It could be applied to a myriad of things and I could devote hundreds of hours to writing about it. Indeed, more eloquent and informed persons have done so already. I intend to write more on it, but for now I will content myself by suggesting that I think it adds so much more flavour to a setting and makes something in the way of an attempt at verisimilitude, or the approach to something with the appearance of the authentic. I feel it makes a constructed world like that of an RPG setting more cohesive, more real, more engaging.

This book features quite a lot in my thinking on the matter

As does this one. I recommend it- it's pretty interesting.

So, how can this be related to an actual game session or a setting? Imagine a pantheon of spirits and deities which represents the metaphysical beliefs of a single village somewhere in the countryside. I'm thinking along the lines of bucolic deities of the woods, the fields, the mountains, the sea. That kind of thing. Personifications of those forces that lord over the elements, the sky, stars, winds. They reflect the world in which people live, and represent not only aspects of humans and their lives, but also that which is external to society. That is to say, in this context, that the gods are the bridge by which people conceptualise the line between the tame and the wild- that which is civilised and that which is savage. It's a dichotomy that people carry with them at all times, and one which informs the extent of that they consider human or humane, and that which is inhuman, that which is monstrous or unknown or unknowable. They are deities with two sides- the inscrutable aspects of divine beings who are beyond the knowledge of mortal souls.

Mortals honour them, love them, and fear them in equal measure.

I want to continue with my thoughts on this theme in the future, so watch this space, if you're interested in what I think.