[Torg] Cosms and Realities (Genre and Being Real, 4 of 6)

[Jones Jasyn]

What does this mean for other cosms?

In such a system, other cosms are no longer contingent on Earth (even vaguely). They are entirely separate and independent realities, and always have been. Their truths are just as valid as Core Earth’s truths, and their viewpoints just as real.

One could say (in the real world) that Tolkien made elves and dwarves (out of the raw material of medieval folklore), then the fantasy genre inherited his races. Aysle, being fantasy, borrows from Tolkien (as well as Arthurian tales), so has elves and dwarves.

But in the game, for Core Earth, Tolkien didn’t influence Aysle, Aysle influenced Tolkien (and medieval storytellers and modern fantasy writers). Aysle is the Reality of Magic, and Core Earth acquired its fantasy genre from Aysle. (Or another cosm or another cosm and Aysle, it doesn’t matter which.)

The Nile Empire may have influenced pulp writers (or another cosm similar to it did). Orrorsh may have influenced horror writers, Kadandra cyberpunk writers, the Star Sphere science fiction writers. These worlds, or others like them, are the Truth and our fictions imperfect mirrors of the myriad wonders of the cosmverse.

Contrary to what I implied in post 2, not every exact detail of Core Earth fiction exists (or must exist) somewhere in the cosmverse. Similarly, Core Earth fiction doesn’t have to exactly describe other realities (though, if GM’s wish, it might). Writers have their own imaginations and come up with their own worlds and scientific advances, but (in Core Earth) other cosms had an influence. Subconsciously, their realities molded our fiction.

This means other realities are actually real. Real places, with real flesh and blood people, whose existence is just as vivid, just as compelling, just as harrowing and painful and beautiful and wondrous as our own.

Reality is exactly and perfectly what it always was in Torg: a way to describe a different universe, a universe that works differently than Earth not just physically, but mentally.

Reality isn’t an illusion crafted by living beings, it isn’t some alien thing arbitrarily imposed to force a world to mirror a genre, it isn’t actually about genre at all: it’s about their world being a different place. 

Genre doesn’t cause realities, it mirrors the realities that always existed*. That these different places mirror our genres says more about us than them.

Let me repeat that: That these different places mirror our genres says more about us than them. Okay, what does that say about us?

Next message.


[* In game, mind you. From the point of view of gamemasters and writers, reality is a genre and world laws act to enforce genre. No one in the game world knows this, *because it isn’t true for them*. Anyone on Core Earth who said “world laws enforce genre” would be wrong, because they don’t. They caused the genre tropes, not the other way around.]
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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/