The Mystic Art Of Game-Mastery - or - The Lightning Path To Sublime Refereeing

Now friend, you might ask & I will answer (I’m taking this in a more conversational route because we’re friends.  You’re a Ref, I’m a Ref – We Make Worlds – that’s a lot for us to have in common, so I say we’re friends) – aren’t you taking something mystical & maybe a bit sacred and making it into something… not those things?  You’re looking at my modification of the tree of life thinking – are you a crazy person?  Just wicked? 

Well, let’s get right down to it friend.  See, we make worlds.  The tree of life, in the minds of the ancient people who devised it, was meant to be a map to understanding the mind of their creator.  Well, here we are.  Creating.  Creating rather a lot.  You might be running your game, building your setting and get the idea that really, you need to rewrite the laws of physics for your setting.  You wouldn’t be the first.  This Thing We Do is an act of vast creativity, and maybe, in our way, in our imaginations we are like gods.  Don’t let it go to your head though – you need players and they’re good at subverting your will – you’re a creator of place & scene & people, but this Thing We Do – it’s still an act of supreme creation & I realized that the map of understanding it from the perspective of those who wanted to understand the mind of the creator was a good place to start at mapping a path toward accomplishing This Thing We Do.  The idea isn’t to subvert anyone’s mystical or religious practice – rather, it’s to co-opt it whole cloth and use it as I see fit. 

Magicians & priests talked about the different sefirot – the different sections of the tree of life as aspects of the world and they devised a path through all of them to achieve the mind of god by passing from the bottom to the top.  Discussed here is the journey from the top to the bottom – it’s a method & a style for running your game that covers all the elements at work & that creates a journey of creation, just for you. 

The top of the tree is called Keter & it’s meant, in kabbalah to be the very peak, the Crown – which is what I’ve positioned there.  The Crown.  In the description of sub-games previously the crown was shown to indicate the Duel.  In this case, for your purposes – it’s a bit of both.  Here, you’re devising your villain.  The villain may seem like a weird place to start, so let’s clarify.  This is the Conflict.  There’s no story without a conflict & creating one is what you’ll have to do to invent the story.  In many cases what you’re creating is not your players enemy – but a slate of potential enemies – a conflict in the game that guides the events of the setting.  This conflict will draw sides & your PC’s will chose one or the other or all sides or none-  all of these are choices & they’re forced, in some way, by the existence of the conflict to make a choice. 

The lightning path that goes from the top to the bottom – the path we’re looking at follows from the crown of Keter to the scepter of Chokhma.  Here we have the spiritual component of the game.  For the players this means vision quests & battles of identity – it’s all very high level, in terms of play.  Not all players are up to this kind of transcendent thinking at the table.  Insofar as you, the Referee are concerned this is the motivation.  Villains exist, conflicts exist – but why are they opposed & what is the threat that they pose to the setting & the players thereby?  This is where you put together the villains ideals, their ambitions & plans.  What’s the thinking that is the basis behind their schemes?  Knowing this, knowing the rationale behind the conflicts allows you to really sell the conflicts as concerns – things that the players can grasp & understand & get involved in.  You’re creating an ethos here – competing ones  - and this creates a spiritual, ethical axis that the PCs are forced to put themselves on – somewhere.  Is this a battle between good & evil?  Where do the PC’s lie on this spectrum?  They’ll have to decide  - you’re just creating the relevant options here. 

From Chokhma we travel over to Binah – the spider.  We’re doing away with Kabbalistic approximation here to address the spider & its web.  The spider is your conflicting forces – they exist, so what then are their manipulations?  Who are their minions, where are they set up?  You’ve got to establish mini-bosses, hierarchies or orders – networks through which the villains & their plans interact with each other & the rest of the setting.  If you’re pitting the gods of Law against demons of Chaos – here’s where you’ll create the churches of Law & the cults of Chaos. 

Now, on to magic.  The sefirot Da’at is the unity of all the other sefira & is also knowledge.  Here we have it as magic & it is your magic, as the referee.  Here you’re combining all you know of what you’ve created to concentrate – to tell the story as it will happen – as it will unfold without the intervention of the players.  This is you, moving your pieces on the board, playing chess against yourself – this is you communing with your creation to really understand it, what forces are in motion & what will become of the world.  You’re creating a future here, predicting it from the hints you’ve placed.  This is the whole of your invention – you’ll return here often, but for now, on the path we are taking – you’ll be consider the conflict you’ve invented, its cause & the groups & forces that work to create that future.  Should good & evil be in collision, should their Templars & Anti-Popes be battling it out – you’ll have to know, in your planning – what will happen if the PCs don’t get involved.   

   

The journey from this introspection flows to Chesod – to love, in Kabbalah – for us it is the talking game – the social game.  Here you’re going to conceive of allies & friends - helpful contacts & allied NPCs for your PCs.  They needn’t love the PCs, they could very well hate them – but you, you should love these characters you’re creating because you are going to portray them.  Create NPCs that you’d have as friends, lavish as much thought & attention as you’re able onto these characters.  The richer they are, the more likable they are – the more the PCs will respond, the more they’ll attempt to protect or serve or help them. 

Now to Gevurah – to the element of fire & to the fight.  Here’s where you need to put together some confrontations.  You’ll run any number of fights in your campaign – some may be completely incidental, those aren’t what we’re thinking of here.  Here we are planning out large encounters, important & pivotal ones.  These are the milestones of the character’s struggles – the points of articulation where the campaign’s secrets will be revealed through some confrontation.  Confrontations can be battles – big, interesting fight scenes with all sorts of embellishment – fighting atop a collapsing, burning castle – or aboard a sinking ship in a whirlwind – anything you wish – but just make it a pivotal scene – something where great matters are decided.  You want to have these scenes in your mind far in advance of them ever being fought out at the table. 

Now on to Tiferet – the adornment, decoration.  Now you’ve got the big ideals, their resultant thematic allies, friends for the PCs and big scenes for them to chew – now you’re into the biggest job – the most rigorous of your tasks – now you’re building the world.  The balance here is the balance between effort & reward & that balance is always in your favor.  This is where you, the referee – can lose yourself into the deep wells of conlang & cryptozoology – you can spend a lifetime on a world, figuring out every type of tree in every woodland and every continent.  This is the place where you are thinking up the details that comprise your world.  It is an endless task but its own reward.  The other aspect of balance here is determining how much detail you can present to players, how much is too much is a very difficult question to answer & it really is something each player determines for themselves – but you can’t even ask the question until you’ve created something for them to seek or ignore.  Good luck.      

Everything below Tiferet – the balance – the Adornment of your setting is a specific aspect of the setting that you are adorning.  These are all deep wells of specificity that all relate to one another.  The first thing we get to is the materialist Sefirot – Netzach.  Netzach suggests permanence & here you’re filling in the blanks on what is, not permanent exactly, but what is permanent in human perception – institutions, symbols, material wealth, magic artifacts.  You’re creating the material culture of your setting – all that will remain for the archaeologists in all the centuries to come.  Corollary to this creation is the invention of material wealth for your players.  Treasures & relics – the wished for & wanted trappings of power & wealth that drive so many PCs. 

When working on Netzach you are creating your own mithril-silver, your own unobtanium & your own master-sword & your own great pyramids – you are making the materials that define your setting’s civilizations – and by doing so you’re implying its history & its likely futures. 

From Netzach we move on the lightning path to the entertainment Sefirot – Hod.  The Glory, the Splendor.  This is your performance – your ability to manifest the setting as a shared imaginary place between you and your players. 

There’s no end of the tricks & tips that have been offered to Referees for making all the player’s minds eyes focus into a single vision – your narrative vision.  Cues, including music, artworks, cast-lists – there’s a lot you can do to try and make the scenes pop out into shared existence. 

For us, at this moment though – for us the thing that really matters – that’s essential – is that this rests upon everything else, it’s caught in a net with the rest of the Sefirot & contextually, it can’t exist without the rest.  Really Refereeing well means being prepared.  You have to have all the rest of the setting, the world & its people well defined enough that you can produce, at will, any variants or improvised elements of that setting.  Should the players choose (as they are so often wont to do) to ignore a plot & to wander off in another direction – you must be prepared with interesting locations, people & events.  More than that you must know what occurs without the players’ actions.  Time must pass & urgent events must transpire whether or not the players intercede – this is a lot to do at the table, and it’s often a virtuoso performance for an audience of three or four – you must find the pleasure in the performance itself, for yourself. 

After Hod we find ourselves in Yesod – the foundation – the base.  This is matched to the survival, environmental game.  Here’s where you’re creating an environment – ecology & populations – maps & monster-lists.  You’re making the world all the more real through devising its rich substance.  Atlases of continents, maps of cities & travel guides – all the distances between all the rest of the things you’ve created comes up here – here you combine all you’ve made & apply it, like pigments to a canvas.  The map becomes the map of your setting, of your whole creation.  It is the reference document, as well, that will guide your players- as the world opens to them, as they experience more & more of it, the map is the graphical chart of the group’s progress through your imagination. 

And from there we find Malkuth – the kingdom – the world – or, in this construction – the Table.  The place where we do This Thing We Do Together.  Here, if all has gone well, if you’ve made the magic that’s needed to invent & populate a world of your own imagining – the game becomes transcendent, the players are moved by your cleverness & the peaks of this hobby rise above the peaks of other activities.  It’s also where the players roll dice, where they interject endlessly with comedy references, where they get distracted & confused – but.  But if you are on your game, if you’ve mastered all the Sefirot – you’ll find that you have an attentive audience, engaged players & a final outcome that is superior to the components that comprise it.

“Alright Methuselah.”  I hear you sighing.  Nice with the rapturous, breathless tone.  Nice work trying to get all mystical with something that should be easy.  Nice.  You clap slowly & smirk.  Well, maybe you’re not a sarcastic jerk, but you might be looking at all of this thinking – well, that’s not how I do it.  I start by making the map – after all, conflicts come from geography – not the other way around.  Or perhaps I start with the unobtainable treasure – the McGuffin – these other steps fall into place after. 

I hear you and understand.  I don’t present this map of creation as a strict system of storytelling grammar – I think of it more as a checklist – you need these things – all of these things – if you’re going to be the best Referee.  The order that I’ve outlined here is one that I suggest, and that is working for me after having made a few dozen pretty detailed settings.  That said- I think that it’s worth looking at the paths between these Sefirot.  The routes are sometimes overlooked – but the ways that the connect from one Sefirot to another does tend to give useful instruction.