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We then wandered into my current favorite topic, Shamanism and Gamesmastering. I kind of went around the mulberry bush on the topic, explaining what I mean by it and how it would apply to Role Playing Games. Is the Gamesmaster really a form of Shaman, taking the Players on a group journey through their 'OtherWorld' as their kind of Spirit Guide, I ask? If so then we speculated that the GM might make out for the OtherWorld him or herself to find the divine inner-stories with which to return and bring with them into the game; a kind of shaman's quest for GMing source material, perhaps? We also touched briefly on the psychoanalytic possibilities, and I explained a bit about how and why I created the Elthos Cosmological System – to aid in story telling by providing a comprehensive series of Symbolic-Shamanistic correspondences. So it is important for the Gamesmaster to understand the substance and meaning of their World, and the stories they wish to reveal from within it should be meaningful intrinsically, regardless of how the Players behave. Yet we agreed that Perfect Gamesmastering is an art whose time has not yet come. I proffered the idea of the Enlightened Gamesmaster, which I believe is alluded to but not quite achieved in 'The Glass Bead Game' by Herman Hesse, and believe is as possible as a Zen Monk is possible. It's simply something that has not yet been done. Yet Role Playing Games are really so new and the art has not yet had time to catch up with the comprehensive multi-faceted effort involved with running a Great RPG.
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