The world is my oyster

The weather cleared and we are off to Safeton. If things go well, we'll be there early.

Being an adventurer is kind of like being in the military: Hours and hours of boredom, followed by seconds of stark terror. Fortunately, we don't have to salute anyone.

For the past few days the trip has been B-O-R-I-N-G. It's times like this I miss my internet and iPod. Man, if I just had an x-box 360....

I complaining about the boredom, but in reality it's probably a good thing. There have been no bandits and no attacks from humanoids. This is largely because the elemental temple is no more. And I mean no more. The whole fricking building collapsed into the ground. I mentioned all of this to the gang and it prompted an interesting question from Anna.

"How did you know how to destroy the temple anyway? Is it because of the game thing?"

"Game?" Kantos Kan said. We had gotten into the habit of just calling my sword Kan. "What game do you speak of."

I had told them about the game thing earlier, that this world was just a game in my world. We hadn't discussed it in a while, and certainly not in Kan's presence.

So, I dove in. I explained everything about the game Dungeons and Dragons. I rattled off as many city and country names as I could think of to prove my point. I throughout some spell names, which made Marc raise an eyebrow. I even explained the rules a little.

"This is all just a game on your world," Audry said. "To be honest, I don't think I've accepted that."

"So we are play things to you?" Saul asked, a little more forcefully than I expected.

"Not really," I said as calmly as I could. "On my world we don't know about the existence of other worlds. My world has no idea that this world exists."

"But you know so much of it," Marc said. "That would suggest that, if this game is as ubiquitous as you suggest, that many others know of it as well."

"Everyone back home thinks that the Flanaess, Greyhawk, and so forth, are all fiction," I said. "Two guys named Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer invented this game where the players could pretend to be adventurers. They created a world, this one, to play the game in. No one has any idea the world really exists."

"Little do they know," Kan said. "It seems to be more than a coincidence."

"Perhaps this Gygax and Mentzer had been here before," Marc said.

I shrugged. "Maybe. I guess if I got here than they must have as well."

"It would explain some things," Saul said. "Forgive me, but your people seem both highly intelligent and yet ignorant about a great many things."

I nodded. "Yeah, sure seems like that now that I'm here. But you know, there maybe something else at play here. Maybe Gygax and Mentzer really don't know that this world is real."

"What, lucky guess?" Anna said. "I kinda doubt it."

"What he means is that thought is real," Kan said. "So are the rules of the planes."

"Uh, ex-squeeze me?" Anna said.

"This world is but one of many in the prime material plane," Kan said. "And the prime plane is but one of many planes."

"Oh, I gotcha," Anna said. "The nine hells, the seven heavens--"

"The proper names would be Baator and Mount Celestia, respectively," Kan said. "There are also the planes of Bytopia, the Abyss, Arcadia, Ghenna, the Wastes, and more. These planes surround the Outlands."

"And Sigil is the center of the Outlands," I said.

"You know of Sigil, eh?" Kan said.

"Part of the game," I said. "You forgot the inner planes of fire, earth, air, and water."

"I did not forget," Kan said. "I was getting to that. Plus the Astral plane, the Ethereal, the energy planes...the multiverse is a big place."

"And they are ruled by thought?" Audry said.

"Indeed," Kan said. "The inner elemental planes gave birth to the prime plane and its infinite worlds. The intelligent life on that arose on those worlds gave rise to the outer planes. That is the secret of the multiverse--thought is real, matter is illusion."

"What Dreams May Come," I said. Everyone looked at me strangely. "Uh, never mind. But I get your meaning, Kan. On my world there is a theory of highly advanced mathematics called string theory, which eventually gave way to the more powerful theory called M-theory. These theories talk about how all objects are wave forms, but those wave forms are not real objects until they collapse. And wave forms collapse when they are observed."

"Sounds like you and the sages of Greyhawk would get along great," Saul said. "But what does this have to do with your world dreaming of ours and not realizing we are real?"

"There are two possibilities," Kan said. "First, in the process of believing this world exists, that belief created our world. On the outer planes, if enough people believe in something it becomes real."

"But we have many centuries of history," Audry said. "That seems so unlikely."

"Not if the original fiction included a large back drop of history," Kan said. "It wouldn't be the first time. Of course, this is only one possibility."

"I think I know what the other is," I said. "Gygax and Mentzer, along with others, wanted a fictional world in which to play their game. They 'dreamed up' this world, never realizing that it was real."

"Thought is real," Kan said. "It is possible in the process of inventing their fiction they were merely channeling information about a real place. A scholar in Sigil once speculated that there was no such thing as fiction. All creativity is merely a reflection of a real thing or a real place."

"Ah, too deep for me," Anna said. "Whatever. All that really matters is where we are and what we are doing."

That sounded like something Yoda would say.

"Indeed, young lady," Kan said. "It is what we do that matters, and what we do with what we have right now."

That pretty much ended the conversation. Oh, we bantered back and forth about various things, but we avoided the topic of Greyhawk the game. I can imagine how unsettling it would be to learn that everything you live and die for is just a game to a bunch of people on some other world. It makes my world sound indifferent. In truth, if people knew that Oerth, the Flanaess, and everyone in it were real, they would take it much more seriously. They might even want to come here.

Take my word on this one: You don't want to be here. I lucked out and fell in with the right group. I could have easily have ended up troll dinner. If I had come across some humanoids before I met Saul I would be dead. You may think you are prepared for this world, but believe me, you're not. I don't care how many gaming books you've read.

Sometimes I still think I'm not ready for this. If the problems Dame Gold has are what I think they are, I don't think I want to be there.