We didn’t start the show knowing how we would end it. And yet, for the past three years, Luke Navarro and I have been ending our hour long conversations about faith and tabletop gaming the same way.
God is the Game Master, and no matter how the dice fall – the game plays on.
As Game Store Prophets recently celebrated its 3rd anniversary, and InnRoads Ministries is speeding ever onward towards its first full year, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this phrase that has been such a staple of our podcast.
There are some that hold that the game master’s responsibility is to brutally attack the 
players. He creates gauntlets for them to push through, escaping each room by the skin of their teeth before facing the next gruesome trial. If they survive through the end of the campaign, they will have proven themselves worthy of his admiration. That is, until the next – more difficult – dungeon breaks them down the next day.
If this perspective is placed on God, it paints him as harsh and stoic. He crafts the world to be defined by pain where only the righteous who endure it will be able to see the reward after completing the task he has set for them. Life itself becomes nothing but a brutal series of trials designed to either prove that the faithful are worthy or punishing those who fail to live in step with strictest statutes and strategies. It is a picture of God as absentee judge.
But what if that picture is flawed? What if it was only showing one part of a larger image? There is more to good game mastering than crafting difficult combat. It is useful for providing challenge and tension in the campaign, but there is more than one way to accomplish this. There is character interaction, puzzle solving, character skills, and more. To choose just one is to needlessly limit the game master. It would make things simple, but is simpler always better?
It would be like a golfer trying to play with only a driver in his bag. The disadvantage of only one club might go unnoticed at the tee, where the club’s benefits shine. But what happens down the course when the ball is on the green? The golfer’s struggles would begin to show when he tried to putt the ball. The club simply was not designed to be used for that purpose, and that is why the game is played with a full bag of them. Each club has a purpose set to bring about the desired result in the game.
Rather than defeat the players, the goal of the GM is to tell a story. He plans the direction of the story, guiding the players through scenarios based on their back stories. The combat oriented characters get their battles, the wise get their puzzles, and the charming will speak into what the GM is doing. The decisions that he makes are focused on answering one over-arching question. “What can I do here to make my players feel like they are a part of the story I’m building?”
God’s story began before any of us started playing in it. It is a story of challenges and victories, villains and heroes. Like any good tale, it does not always go the way you might expect it, but its turns are revealed by the author to be part of a greater whole. How would our vision of God change if we thought of our challenges and difficulties as a means to place us in the exact place we need to be in for the story to continue? How would our relationship with God be different if we understood that God wants us not only to survive life, but to join in on the work that He is doing to bring about a celebration of His glory for all eternity; that we are invited to participate in the story He is telling?
God brings many things into our lives, building the world around us as well as the relationships that will develop our characters. Step into the story and see what happens when God is that game master. Win or lose, flub or crit, no matter how the dice fall – the game plays on. His game. Do you want to play?