And no, I haven’t finished on this topic, which brings together aspects and attitudes that are often poorly integrated, poorly understood, and even less well accepted, and which have far-reaching consequences in role-playing on Gor Second Life. This is a question that was asked by a reader: “is BtB conducive, or not, to the construction of stories and adventures in the world of Gor SL?”

Here, I’m going to ask you to think about this question: are creative role-playing and the creation of plots and stories compatible with the BtB approach to roleplaying? Because, as I know from my own experience, I am faced with a paradox: some players consider me very BtB, others accuse me of not being so, and you know what? Both sides are wrong.

I am a role-player, and before I was on Second Life, I was on MMORPGs, including an MMORPG entirely focused on role-playing (which only a few French people know about, it was called Saga of Ryzom), and before that, I was a tabletop role-player, which I still am (part of my professional work is devoted to this sector).

I am not BtB; I could be considered as such because I am familiar with John Norman’s work on the Gor saga, but also with the rest of his publications. I could also be considered as such because I am committed to respecting the spirit of Gor, that is, the spirit of the novels, and I write documents and guides for Gorean Archives to help people discover and understand this universe so that they can role-play in it.

But you could also say that I’m not, because, and this is the first paradox, I take into account all the novels, which is on average 98% more content than what people have read, and from this content, I can deduce what Norman was forced to leave out. Because when you write a novel, you’re not going to devote 25 paragraphs to explaining how the Goreans produce wire, steel, or create blood analysis machines if it doesn’t advance or enrich the story. So I write content that has either never been read by Gor SL players or is not in the novels, but can be deduced directly from them. Content that a player who claims to be BtB does not know and may, and sometimes will, reject.

But if I say that I am not BtB, it is because I am simply a roleplayer: I respect the spirit, the rules, and the content, but I enrich the rules, invent stories, enrich and invent content, to ultimately create a living role-playing world. By the way, check out my Gor discovery guide in PDF format!

A tabletop role-player is given a universe, even one directly inspired by a literary work, and will invent content, ideas, and stories to enrich the fabric of that universe. It’s a reflex; it’s pure creativity, the engine of the imagination, the essence of the human brain. It’s the same motivation that drives people to write fan fiction, and it’s even what inspired me to write my saga of novels that became a tabletop role-playing game, completing the circle.

And it’s a perfectly positive reflex, but one that runs counter to certain attitudes among some players who claim to be BtB, for whom it’s a problem.

Closed categories and gatekeepers

Here is a diagram where I contrast the way tabletop role-players think and act, with a universe, and what some of the players in Gor Second Life tend to do:

Why this image? Fortunately, some of the roleplayers on Gor SL do more or less the same as tabletop role-players. But many consider that the three main categories of approach to role-playing are incompatible. You can’t respect the content of the novels and create content or stories. This leads to exaggerated attitudes among some players who practice a closed and aggressive conservatism that is quite damaging. They categorize players into boxes, which they rank, and these boxes are watertight and cannot interact with each other:

BtB attitude: respect the novels as faithfully as possible, both to the letter and to the spirit. But the closed attitude is harmful! In general, it is actually absolute respect for a very small part of the novels, with an exaggerated attachment to details, to the detriment of meaning, and a strong tendency to adopt onlinism as part of the novels’ content, without knowing that it is not. Above all, it is a stance that rejects any change or evolution in the narrative, content, or context. The worst of them would make Mormons look progressive.

GE attitude: adding innovative content to the world of novels. But the closed stance is also harmful! In general, we see the opposite effect of the BtB stance, with a refusal to respect the spirit of Gor and an alteration of its fundamental principles by adding content that is difficult to defend or even contradictory, including onlinisms that are also confused with content from the novels or deduced from excerpts taken out of context. In short, the most radical stance is… another universe and therefore another role-playing game than Gor. Which is not a bad thing, by the way, but only if it is fully accepted. And it is often on this last point that things get stuck right away.

Storytellers attitude: I haven’t come across many, but there are a few, and they too can have a closed stance, where the choice between respecting the spirit of Gor and the content of the universe takes a back seat to the need to invent and enrich a story (their own, in general), even if it contradicts the most essential content of the novels or the stories of other players playing with them. The main problem with storytellers? Well, in fact, the other two attitudes tend to reject them, either deliberately or through passive ostracism, and storytellers never stay long on Gor: they arrive with their heads full of dreams and good intentions, and leave disillusioned and demotivated, often rejecting Gor roleplay for good.

I’m leaving out the lifestylers, because even though their approach to the world of Gor is very different, their attitude towards role-playing can also be described in the same way as all the other players.

Now, I’ve always hated putting people in boxes. Categorizing people ignores the richness of human nature, but it also ignores the diversity of choices and options available to each and every one of us. Categorization, the creation of boxes, and confinement within them is the prelude to the hierarchization of these boxes, to forced normalization imposed by the category that believes itself to be the most powerful, and ultimately to discrimination and hatred.

And this is of course the case in role-playing, including on Gor Second Life! And with these boxes come the gatekeepers, those who consider themselves the guardians of these categories, i.e., players who give themselves the right to arbitrarily judge and rank others, to put them in boxes, and to discriminate against them more readily, believing themselves to be, or even asserting themselves to be, totally legitimate in doing so.

This behavior is a communitarian and sectarian reflex, which I find both thoughtless and selfish, and which has more to do with greed for power than with any notion of sharing role-playing in a spirit of brotherhood and equality.

And worst of all: the more an individual behaves like a gatekeeper, the more you can be sure that they have very little culture and knowledge of the subject they claim to be the guardian of! Yes, this is exactly the basis of the subject I addressed in “The Spirit of Gor, or the True Meaning of ‘BtB’,” which refers to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Building stories

Unsurprisingly, for me, the three ways of approaching Gor role-playing are not closed boxes, they are trends, whose interaction and intercommunication build narratives, contexts, stories, and create a living role-playing game.

My best example? The late, lamented sim Imperial Ar III. I’ll try to quickly summarize its principles and how it worked.

Imperial Ar III is the largest city in Gor, Ar. Of course, the sim featured several neighborhoods within the city. Ar is almost as big as ancient Rome, it doesn’t fit on a single Second Life land! It was very populated when I arrived, and remained so for quite a long time, until bad choices and internal tensions within the admin team disrupted its dynamic.

But I loved the concept, both the rules and the storytelling around the sim itself! The rules were clear: they defined in a few points what the world of Gor is in its spirit (with a quick guide for beginners), then insisted that everyone is welcome, as long as they understand and accept these few points. The rules also insisted that no one is more legitimate than anyone else to claim to be a “true Gorean.” Not to mention that the rules were inclusive: no one cared who was behind the avatar, and discrimination of any kind, even passive, was not tolerated.

Added to this was something I had very rarely seen on Gor role-playing sims: animators. In addition to the usual admins and moderators, there was a group of players whose job was to welcome new players and help them find their feet on the sim and in the roleplay. But they were also there to help sim players set up plots and adventures for their characters, which were then shared with everyone. For example, a thief wanting to stage a burglary could be helped by the animators to turn their theft into an in-game event with real repercussions and lasting impact. In short, they built role-playing stories!

And of course, to manage all this, the Imperial Ar III admin team had their own narrative framework, which they unfolded through adventures and plots on the sim, with espionage, agents from other cities, tense diplomatic relations, strange events, etc. They integrated the adventures created by players and groups of players into this storyline, ultimately creating a rich narrative and, above all, a very lively and active sim. It was a sim that I experienced and felt as a thrilling and wonderful adventure—even if everything wasn’t perfect, mind you—and one that I remember vividly. Because it wasn’t just a setting, but a living, active community full of adventures.

Because, and I can’t say this enough, why come and play a role in a world as rich, complex, and teeming with narrative hooks and incredible stories as Gor, if it’s just to do nothing? I can understand very well that some people might be content to play the everyday life of a simple inhabitant of Gor. But the everyday life of a kajira, a warrior, a farmer, or a scribe is just as boring as the lives of all of us RL players! Everyday life is only a small part of the possibilities offered by role-playing on Gor Second Life. Even raids and other city attacks are only part of it.

You have to build stories to create a living, captivating world. And to do that, you can’t stay locked into a mindset that limits or even prohibits creativity. And of course, you have to organize yourself to manage the resources needed to create a living world. That’s what motivated me to write a guide for a Gor meta-community, with that in mind! You can read it here: https://www.psychee.org/gorpedia/from-larp-to-role-playing-on-sl-a-gor-meta-community/

Conclusion

Any closed attitude is harmful to story building, and the BtB attitude is no exception. Blindly sticking to the content of novels, often knowing only a very small part of it, amounts to denying oneself the ability to create, invent, and construct stories, narrative threads, adventures, and ultimately, to renounce a living world in favor of a frozen backdrop of everyday life for characters who will quickly start going around in circles.

But there is another factor that depends directly on these closed attitudes: fear of others. Any closed attitude is a categorization, a box. And it gives some players the pseudo-legitimacy to judge those who do not strictly fit into these boxes.

Any closed stance goes against the essential principle of role-playing: playing with others in a spirit of fair play and with an open and inclusive mind. And because this stance, even if it only concerns a minority of players, is widespread, all other players are afraid of what will happen if they dare to create, invent, innovate, and build stories.

It’s not BtB that prevents stories from being built: it’s the sectarianism of players who think that their playing stance gives them the right to judge others and discriminate against them. The solution is simple, actually! All you need is an open mind, fair play, and a willingness to not reject other people’s ideas, but rather to see what you can do with them, to create adventures and stories together, and, finally, to collectively tell the Gor sectarians to go screw themselves.