Rebecca's Razor

Obsessed as I'm becoming with the potential dangers of Lord Entropy and the Cammora, they nevertheless provide one possible - and viable - solution to a genuine problem. R. Sean Borgstrom enunciates the principle:

There's a standard I've seen pretty often in RPGs for when the GM/HG should step in to prevent world changes: the "if it were that easy, wouldn't someone have done it already?" standard.

The principle makes perfect sense to me. An example from another cosmology: In Amber fandom (game and books) there are people - I am one - who argue that if the "Logrus" power introduced in Zelazny's second quintet of books really existed at the time of the first series, the events of the first series could not have taken place. That's because Logrus as described provides the forces of Chaos with greater mobility and power than they are plainly seen to possess in the chronicles of Prince Corwin. Working backward from the facts of the first series - Chaos did none of the things they could have done had they possessed Logrus - we dispense with Logrus rather than with the Corwin chronicles.

Returning to Nobilis, a pure intraworld rationale can lead to something very like the Council of Four:

1) There is a society of a couple of thousand Nobles who have an interest in maintaining stability during the Valde Bellum. Even if the Valde Bellum is not going on, a society of Nobles may, on balance, prefer the status quo to massive changes that benefit some at the expense of others.

2) Any rule in favor of preserving the status quo needs an enforcement mechanism.

3) An enforcement mechanism means something like a government. It needs to be run by someone tough.

4) Oh by the way, Noble institutions, like human ones, will act to preserve and extend their power. (This is Public Choice theory in the mythic world.)

5) Oh by the way, the most ruthless will tend to rise to the top. (This is Friedrich Hayek in the mythic world.)

It all follows logically. What I'm looking for, I suppose, is a kinder, gentler solution to the Rebecca's Razor problem. Possibilities:

a) Perhaps major world-changing miracles happen frequently and we just don't realize it because prosaic history rewrites itself to accomodate them. There is support for this view in the GWB.

Problem: It also disempowers the players, at least potentially, if, in the middle of the current story, everyone suddenly lives under the ocean and breathes through gills. (Stole this from Noblist.) Possible solution: But this kind of thing could, if handled discreetly, provide interesting opportunities between adventures. In Sandman, Morpheus doesn't appear as a cat creature in every issue, but he does in "A Dream of a Thousand Cats." Let time be fluid, let the PCs be recognizably themselves, but have the occasional adventure in Atlantis or Cloudcukooland or Dune-on-Earth.

b) Seriously downgrade the infectiousness of "dementia animus." People are great rationalizers. Let them rationalize away most miracles. There is support in the GWB for this too. We are told that if someone is so gauche as to shoot the sun out of the sky, and someone else puts a new sun in its place, prosaic reality will experience it as an eclipse, and even as a predicted one. The GWB actually goes so far as to note that the destruction wrought occasionally by the actions of Aaron's Serpents is one of the few miraculous happenings that prosaic reality can not explain. Restrict dementia animus to those instances where mortals have their noses rubbed in the mythic world, not simply where strange things happen.

Under this protocol, if the Power of Cold creates an ice floe in the middle of Denver, most people will be convinced it was some kind of major accident involving refrigerants, unless said Noble goes out of his way to make it impossible for the world to believe this - say, by going on TV and cackling "You fools! I am the Power of Cold, do you hear me! This is all MY doing!" Lord Entropy's salience shifts away from dementia animus and toward the Windflower Law, which anyway strikes me as his more interesting role.

c) The Acacia Rite. Some people like to come up with new flower rites. Invent one that cures dementia animus. It need not always be simple or practical to conduct...

d) Some cosmological principle that provides a disincentive to engage in world-changing miracles for PCs and NPCs alike. There's the "opposites dodge" familiar to us from Sandman, where Delirium defines Sanity, Destruction defines Creation, Dream defines Reality etc. So the Power of Cold doesn't cover the world with ice because his own estate simply doesn't exist apart from the concept of Heat. This works for a lot of estates, though it doesn't seem to explain as readily why the Power of Insects doesn't fill the world with cockroaches. Perhaps major miracles simply "don't count" toward strengthening one's estate somehow. (Invent your own reason.)

e) Let the Good Times Roll! Junk the whole Entropy/Council of Four apparatus. Perhaps there has been a period of stability that is now ending. See what happens.

I incline temperamentally toward b and d.

Posted by supplanter at August 25, 2002 02:08 PM