The Role of the Cosmographer
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi18.1197Keywords:
Cosmographer, TRPG, Cosmagraphic Technology, Oracular SimulationAbstract
This article suggests that the most distinctive element of role-playing games is not that they allow players to take on the role of fictional characters but that they represent a historically significant development of humanity’s capacity for imagining other worlds. It describes this development as an innovation in cosmographic technology, or interlocking procedures and techniques that enhance our ability to imagine and explore worlds. In other words, the most essential role that a player takes on in a role-playing game is that of cosmographer, or explorer of multiversal possibility. The novel cosmographic development represented by the first RPGs came from a synthesis of two imaginative technologies: the ironic imagination of early speculative fiction and the oracular simulations of wargaming. RPGs draw on technologies for simulating space and time, but most importantly they draw on the oracular technology of using probabilities and dice to propel games into cosmographic territory that the human players could not have imagined unaided. Through the synthesis of these elements RPGs enhance human imaginative capacities offering players the ability to take on the role of cosmographers utilizing powerful technologies to access vast and unexplored swathes of possible worlds.
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