9 new replies while typing. Not a record, but close.
Just got 8, and you will have a hard time beating my accidental ~1500 when I loaded an ancient cached "post reply" page in non-offline mode and it was from ancient times in the Space Station 13 thread...
Now, somewhat of a tangent, but to make you think...
First, on creation:
Look at every TV series and game. The viewers/characters never have more than a partial perception of reality at once, since they are limited to what they can see/sense..
Now, the person running the game can have a wonderful backstory that they haven't revealed to the players, but something that one of the players brings up reveals a contradiction in the story, but rather than revealing it anyway, since the players never learned it, it can be changed without them knowing any better. Thus, God could have retconned quantum physics into reality once people started snooping around with the underlying structure of the universe. Or, maybe those fossils didn't even exist until 10 minutes before the first of them were unearthed.
As long as you have a slightly better understanding than the players, you may as well be infinitely knowledgeable as long as you never contradict yourself. Thus, you can never truely know how many years old the universe is.
Next, cheating: If they never saw you roll, you can always reroll. Imagine, on a universal scale, manipulating subtle probabilities to shape evolution. Once again, it would require near-omnipotence, and once again it would be undetectable from within the universe unless a mistake is made.
The implications are that you will *never* be able to tell if a higher being is involved, and if so, when everything started, unless they make a mistake or intentionally reveal themselves. But being a good player, you might want to consider actually believing their intracately woven backstory, lest they get frustrated and quit to go LARP somewhere.
Finally, unrelated, just a nifty theory to think on. I have never really strongly believed in or against a purgatory of any sort, but what if death is like this: When you die, your mind is separated from your body, with no senses left. You are still able to think, but robbed of all of your senses, it would feel like nonexistance, devoid of all life except your memories. What if, then, you could progress beyond this into a new realm of the previously dead, but to do so you must fully come to terms with yourself and every decision you ever made? Thus, someone who couldn't ever live with their choices, even given an eternity, would be trapped in "hell", with no contact with any other being, no way to just kill themself, just them and their memories for the rest of the eternity that they have trapped themselves in. Meanwhile, some people(especially *very young* children) who truely have nothing to regret(mostly as they never really made a choice that they can regret) pass through almost instantly. Everyone else takes "time", but makes it eventually through to the other side.
I'm not saying I believe this, and neither am I saying that I don't, but it's a facinating concept, isn't it? Might make a good novel or two, maybe a movie.
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