[Torg] The Center of Existence (Genre and Being Real, 1 of 6)

[Jones Jasyn]

Torg is a trans-genre game. Characters from a number of realities, each representing a different fictional genre, can adventure in these realities, allowing cross-genre play that few other settings can match. (On a personal note, this is what I love most about Torg.)

Yet this very strength- genre emulation- also presents a conundrum, one not satisfactorily answered in the game material: 

Q: If Core Earth is our world as it exists in the game, why do the other cosms reflect genres of fiction from Core Earth?

Why would another world reflect our pulp tales and comic books? Why would another world reflect our fantasy tropes, like elves and dwarves and wizards and dragons? Why would another world reflect our cyberpunk, when our cyberpunk is so unrealistic? Just what the hell is happening here?

Has our fiction somehow been brought to life? Do these cosms exist because we think they do? Is Core Earth really that important in the scheme of things? Is Core Earth the Center of All Existence?

A1: Oh, Apieros (the sourcebooks said). Apieros created the cosmverse, not Core Earth.

Q: Okay, then why did Apieros create cosms that match the fiction of Core Earth? Is Apieros an avid reader? Does he/she love trans-genre settings or just genre fiction in general? Did Apieros have access to fiction from the real world? Wouldn’t that be the same problem, but on a much larger scale?

A2: What about the Terry Pratchett “Diskworld” solution: Torg itself is fiction, it reflects fictional structures (like acts and scenes), so everything in it reflects fiction. Nile Empire people talk like B-movie villains, because they are. PE is a measure of the character bribing the scriptwriter. And so forth.

Q: This answer explains it, but in a way that ruins the suspension of disbelief. If Torg is fiction, self-aware as fiction, it seems less real, like it matters less or not at all. Plus, wouldn’t the characters in the world recognize this? (Wu Han did, in “The Chekov Solution”.) 

Who wants to play a game where the world is fictional, and the characters realize they are characters in a fictional world? That’s meta-fiction, like the last three Gunslinger books, by Stephen King. I hated the last three Gunslinger books by Stephen King.

Torg is trans-genre roleplaying, not meta-fiction role-playing. Not for me, anyways.

A3: Oh (another said), it’s people. Realities only exist as what people think they should be, so they only exist for people.

Q: So why do people on other worlds act like and believe in fiction from our world? Elves and giants and dwarves and vampires and werewolves and masked heros and minotaurs and centaurs and ninja and cyberspace and deckers and insect aliens and lizard people and… “Other people” isn’t an answer.

A4: They don’t (some have said). Cosms are not genres, world laws don’t enforce genres, and if a cosm happens to resemble a genre, that’s just coincidence.

Q: This solves the problem, mainly by making it go away. The problem is, it isn’t true. Torg is a multi-genre rpg, it’s in the rulebooks and on the face of each sourcebook: The Magic Reality, the Pulp Reality. Torg is multi-genre, and it’s meant to be that. Taking away the genres takes away what I love about Torg.

A5: It doesn’t matter, (I and others said), that’s what the game is- by definition- and we shouldn’t think about it too much. It’s a game, put down the philosophy texts and just play!

Q: “Don’t think about it” only lasts until players say: “We’re being invaded by comic books and fantasy novels? That’s a little too strange for me. How about a nice game of Dungeons & Dragons?” In other words, it’s fine if everyone plays along, but not everyone does.

The group of people I’m going to play with fall into that camp. Torg was fine, so long as we were vaunting among other alternate Earths and I didn’t press the “genre” thing (Lost Worlds campaign, 2005), but as soon as it moved to the “Real World”, well fiction appearing in the real world was too unbelievable.

It’s a problem. Torg cosms are genres and genres are fictive constructs. How do we reconcile this? How do we acknowledge that, in the game world itself, the various cosms reflect tropes of fiction, Core Earth fiction, but themselves are not fictional?

I’ve been motivated to find an answer (so I can finally run Torg again). And I have. (Of course I have. Otherwise, why would I be blathering on like this?)

It’s an answer perfectly in tune with Torg metaphysics, that clarifies what each cosm is and why they mirror Core Earth fiction. It also gives us an insight into the nature of Core Earth itself.

--
Jasyn Jones
jasynj (at) gmail (dot) com

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Check out my Torg webpage, Storm Knights:
web.me.com/stormknights/