Staff Blog: Chaos Psychology in Form and Practice

For thousands of years man has struggled with the idea of thought and mind. Even today, arrogant as we are, we don’t really understand where thought comes from. A lightening storm enacting strange patterns stimulates a complex biological computer, a series of single cells that come together to work in symbiosis, the building blocks of life and unlife. Scientifically, chemically, there’s little difference between what lives and what does not. Ancient cultures explained the difference as being one of possessing a soul – or, in the oldest cultures, multiple souls.

Imagine for a moment that the pantheons of yesteryear are not as simple as they appear. Instead, imagine them as the archetypes of Jung, or the portions of the psyche advanced by Freud. Imagine Zeus as the culmination of mind and imagine mind as a structure where multiple souls meet. Ares as the part of yourself that wants to survive, Aphrodite as the portion of you that wants above all things. The Tree of Life was an allegory for this, the Egyptians and Sumerians and Chinese not even bothering with allegory. All posited the presence of multiple souls within the mind.

And it makes sense, really. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, merely changing form. The souls leave the body at death, splitting apart and finding the other souls they need to create mind. That’s why different people can remember the same life but from different perspectives. The souls create the construct of mind, act within it, conversing and conflicting with one another, each trying to determine what to do with the precious gift of a lifetime.

Other role-playing games typically present the idea of alignment, a strict code that defines how someone acts but actually has little impact on the actual game. More complex games present a single archetype to act in, giving small reward for playing up to that archetype but limiting the character and not really requiring the player to get into the mind of the person that they create.

The Triune Legacy goes deeper than that. The player defines the various souls of their character and is directly and immediately rewarded for playing in accord with that character. Preferences are presented, established, and played within. This is a game about philosophy, about epic stories told about real people in the modern world, about getting into the head of a fictional person and understanding why they do the things they do.

And maybe, just maybe, by understanding why someone else does the things they do so completely, we can come to better understand ourselves.

Jan Bosman is the Lead Designer, Webmaster, and Community Manager of The Triune Legacy. Find out more about Jan and the rest of The Triune Legacy Team. This Staff Blog entry was posted on September 8th, 2009.