A conversation with one of my Bifrost colleagues

 A conversation with one of my Bifrost colleagues (Onogonath in the campaign) a week or so ago prompted me to look again at the Bifrost Rules with a fresh eye.

“Creature description tables – what’s the rationale?” he asked. “Why are the creatures there? What are they doing? How do they reproduce?”

“Well,” I attempted, already realising as I spoke that here I was, clutching at straws. “In the rules it does say that they may have strayed from one plane or dimension to another.”

“Hmm. And the descriptions ... some of them really need to be edited.”

“We tried to inject some humour into this.”

“Tried is the word. Let’s face it – it was of its time.”

I felt bound to agree: There we have it –it  pains me to admit it but the rationale and some of the descriptions are somewhat lacking in the cold light of day outside the trance-like state of mind that is most ideally suited to Role Playing Game participation  (although it was evening at the time and we were not hunched over a kitchen table rolling dice and calculating our chances of survival; we were actually hunched over cold drinks in The Merchants Inn, Rugby, UK ).

In the rules’ defence I should point out however that as anyone who has taken the trouble to read the previous blog entries and to peruse the links they contain will be aware, there is plenty of material attempting to establish a rationale for Magic - in some cases material that was written nigh on 30 years ago in the context of setting up our Bifrost campaign. Part of the Rule System deals with Cosmic Magic.

The Rules actually state (Volume 3 - in the section “On the Origin of Monsters” – p82 – my italics):

“The monsters described as existing on “Earth” would all have required different physical, chemical and biological conditions and laws (Not including magic) to have evolved. Thus it is our theory that these monsters originated in other dimensions and have accidentally found themselves on “Earth” through stumbling through portals and being whisked here from the void.

                “If this is assumed then other dimensions are likely to be populated by these monsters, in fact some will be the dominant life-form. Thus even humans will be found settled in other dimensions, cosmically shipwrecked by the vagaries of the ever-shifting void. This will save the referee many headaches trying to invent hundreds of new monsters as he can fill up dimensions with monsters already known, but under different conditions.”

One of the difficulties back then was where to find useful material that could be incorporated into our campaign – in fact anything (let alone Magic) that required research and the ferreting out of information was a major task. Nowadays of course that is no longer the issue. The quality and reliability of sources may be a concern but a dearth of sources there certainly is not.

There were two fundamental points that came out of the discussion above. The first one has to do with the nature and origin of all these creatures and the second one has to do with why they exist at all.

Any attempt to address either point will not be trivial. One of the strengths of Bifrost (and arguably one of its major weaknesses as well in terms of playability!) is that the rules try to model “reality”. To achieve that effect requires internal consistency. Anachronism that jars or goes against the “feel” of the scenarios presented by the GM pretty quickly kills the game.

But this is Fantasy I hear people cry – what does it matter?

Try playing the game and you will quickly see why it matters, is all I can say to that.

In the next posting I will look at the nature and origin of these creatures and why they would exist ayt all. This is not a trivial subject and nor are the implications of it, either.

And after that?

If we want to really modernise and make playable this remarkable set of rules then we would do well to consider the fact that Bifrost takes place within the mind – it is a shared experience, enjoyed by a group of minds. It is an act of collective creative effort; mind modelling “reality” and deciding whether that “reality” works well enough to convince.

What Bifrost really needs therefore is a set of tools to make the rules more streamlined and playable - luxuries we did not have back in the day. The creation and testing of these will be the main focus of this blog going forward. Armed with those the mind can free itself from constant distractions - rolling dice and doing frenzied mental arithmetic on the hoof mainly - and can concentrate on the enjoyment of the experience.