A Road Less Travelled

Being an collection of odd likes, dislikes, interests and hobbies can be a bit peculiar sometimes. A thought from this part of my head will break loose from its moorings and drift off into that part of my head where it collides with something from over there and sparks a brand new thought process. Dietrich Bonhoffer’s writings on community bump into Joss Whedon-style television which bumps into a lecture series on the life and works of Thomas Chalmers and so on. Pretty soon I’m relating Proverbs to Firefly and back again. It can be confusing for other people so stick close with me.

I am a storyteller. I collect stories like a crow does shinies and I either keep them to retell or I mix them together into something new. I also like people. When I was younger I was introduced to role playing which is storytelling done by a group. It was a perfect match. I keep in my head a collection of tales that various segments of us have told together. Many of these stories have become almost our folk tales, the stories we tell that helped us figure ourselves and each other out or find answers when were contemplating issues and ideas. There are moments from one game or the other that have become such a part of our group’s culture that we’ve almost forgotten where that phrase came from or why we laugh at that quote.

Many of these moments have come about as a combination of the group’s collective awesome and some pretty intense randomness. Many role playing games will use some sort of randomness to decide what happens in case of disputes. I say, “I kick down that wall and find you cowering on the other side.” But you don’t want that to happen. You say, “No, no, I’m so totally not cowering on the other side. I’m forty yards away and still running fast.” Okay, who’s right? What happens? There are lots of ways to decide and one is with some sort of randomness, usually dice.

So, there are these awesome moments in gaming (that look nothing like the example above) that are determined largely by rolling some dice. That thought broke from its anchor in my head and floated off towards a dock somewhere down the way.

Proverbs 16 says “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Sometimes Israelites cast lots to make decisions like who got what land, or who was responsible for what crime. In essence they would roll dice and see what happened. It looks weird, but the Bible is clear that God’s totally in charge of things like dice. This wasn’t some bizarre act of randomness; this was one of God’s ways of communicating with His people.

Fast forward a bit from ancient Israel to, I dunno, last Friday. We’re playing a game called Mouse Guard which has to be my all time favorite game about mice. You, or more accurately we, are members of the Mouse Guard, those who are responsible for protecting the mice from the dangers that lurk in the wilderness. Life is very scary for mice. There are predators to think about, any kind of bad weather is harsh for a mouse and then there’s the distances between the towns. It’s the Mouse Guard that keeps the paths blazed and the roads open. It’s the Mouse Guard who guard the borders, watching for weasels, stoats, snakes, owls, hawks and pretty much anything else that’s bigger than they are. Think of Tolkien’s Rangers and then shrink them down to mice. The game is based on a graphic novel which is thrilling and moving and deeply affecting. Seriously, follow the link and check out some of the artwork.

A couple Fridays ago we’d made characters and last Friday we played for the first time. Our patrol is made of one veteran who’s only still out on the trails because someone’s got to do it, a scout who’s kinda shady, a healer who must be made of steel to deal with what’s waiting for her out on the trail and, the youngest of the group, a big, strapping Viking of a mouse. Our assignment was mail delivery which is a lot more difficult than it sounds like. They were close to their last stop when they got horribly lost and ended up bumping into a raven. Now, there’s not much to fear from ravens; they’re scavengers not hunters. But they are still a lot bigger than we are. And this particular raven happened to spot the mail bag which it decided it simply must have. This, of course, was unacceptable. So, fight!

The fight went okay for a little while. Our mice were working together to blah, blah, rules stuff no one cares about, I had a huge handful of dice to put lots of hurting on the bird. I take the elven dice into my hands. I’m already smiling cause I have an awesome move in mind. I shake the dice a bit and then I roll! I’m looking for fours or better. I rolled one 5, one 6 and a bunch of 1s and 2s. I rolled eleven dice and got two successes. That is really pathetic.

I was more upset than I wanted to be, but life goes on. We were getting badly hammered by the bird who was barely scratched. Then Finn, the veteran, stepped into the fight. He’d been mostly giving support up to this point, but now he stepped up. With his old, battered shield he gave that bird such a whoopin it flew off leaving the mail behind and also one of its toes. It was brilliant.

If we’d been making a movie I would have written it that way. This was the patrol’s first battle together and it should have gone like that, exactly like that. And the reason it went so perfectly is because I completely blew my roll.

Or did I? I was casting lots to figure out what was going to happen in the story we were telling together. We were creating, we were having fun. I believe God cares about that sort of thing. And I threw my dice on the table, but the decision came from God. He still controls that sort of thing. So He wrote us the perfect battle sequence cause He thought it’d be cool.

That’s why it’s doubly fun being a Christian gamer. I not only get to grouse about how the dice hate me, but I still carry the understanding of where the dice results come from. There was a collision between those two thoughts a while back and I’ve never forgotten. So our perfect gaming moments are rarely completely our fault. They come from our Father Who controls everything. Even the roll of the dice.