Haven

[Originally posted 21 May 2017]

Have you read Strikeforce chapter 17? No? Ok, go on. I'll wait.

...

One day many years ago, probably in the pub after a Game session, and possibly under the influence of alcohol, I said to the players:

"Haven is where everything touches but never meets, while the Parallax is where everything meets but never touches."

If I'm honest, I don't think I had any idea what that meant. It just sounded cool. My ideas of multi-universal cosmology were still a work in progress. But from that statement, or rather, from trying to subsequently justify that statement and make it true, came the so-called "Beermat" model of the multiverse, the five demons, and basically everything that underpinned the big concepts of my Game universe and drove stories for the next 25 years (and is still doing it).

I was just reminded of this today when reading some old notes and came across this (reasonably accurate) transcript of a conversation between the players arguing in-character during the course of a Game: 

"Supposing you're right and the Demon itself wasn't destroyed during the Event. What you seem to be implying is that it's fleeing from Earth at the speed of light consuming whatever 'magic' it encounters, growing stronger as it expands. If this is the case it will have the power it needs to achieve criticality and complete its takeover of the universe long before it engulfs the entire galaxy. Considering the situation, we don't see any other choice but to utilise the Doomsday Device against the Event field!"

"You are missing the point! The Demon is the outside of the Event! The Event itself is non-Demon. It is a purging/pushing/repelling field, not an all powerful Demon containment field! Look, the Event MUST survive to progress through the whole universe before the end of Time so that the entirety of the Demon energy is destroyed before the Universe restarts!"

"You possess absolutely no evidence to support that hypothesis! As has been proven by subsequent events the Event field is self contained and has no link to Earth. Besides which, it's not an anti-Demon field! It's an improbability manipulation spell!"

(And there was a lot more of it, it goes on for pages) 

Bear in mind that this isn't me writing the argument, it's two players (speaking in character, based on the characters' knowledge and experiences) with differing interpretation of how the universe -- my universe -- works, each trying to convince the other they are right, without reference to me. I'm just watching them.

This is why I love the Game. It's the player input. They really care about it to the extent that they don't just listen to my explanations of stuff, they think about them in character and have their characters come up with new theories to explain the facts they've been given. 

 And then they argue with each other about them. 

 It's awesome.

 I have the best players.