Me detuve, como es natural, en la frase: "Dejo a los varios porvenires (no a todos) mi jardín de senderos que se bifurcan." Casi en el acto comprendí; El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan era la novela caótica; la frase "varios porvenires (no a todos)" me sugirió la imagen de la bifurcación en el tiempo, no en el espacio. La relectura general de la obra confirmó esa teoría. En todas las ficciones, cada vez que un hombre se enfrenta con diversas alternativas, opta por una y elimina las otras; en la del casi inextricable Ts'ui Pên, opta – simultáneamente – por todas. Crea, así, diversos porvenires, diversos tiempos, que también proliferan y se bifurcan. De ahí las contradicciones de la novela.
- from "El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan" by Jorge Luis Borges
In Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths," a man learns to understand the real structure of a book which he had previously seen as a chaotic, self-contradictory mess. The book is about the nature of time, and how distinct choices and circumstances can all lead to the same result, like different routes through a garden that all converge at the central fountain. These moments of convergence, in the book-within-a-story, resonate with the full range of possibilities that could have led to them:
He read with slow precision two versions of the same epic chapter. In the first, an army marches to a battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the rocks and shadows makes the men undervalue their lives and they gain an easy victory. In the second, the same army traverses a palace where a great festival is taking place; the resplendent battle seems to them a continuation of the celebration and they win the victory. [...] I remember the last words, repeated in each version like a secret commandment: Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.
It is, perhaps, another way to express the ancient human sense of fate, that certain things are bound to happen no matter what we do. And, of course, the man who discovers the book soon finds himself in such a resonant moment ("It seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely saturated with invisible persons"). It is classic Borges, and it is wonderful.
It is interesting that Borges seems to imagine this Garden of Forking Paths as a disjointed work of high modernism, like Finnegans Wake or The Waste Land. To those without the key, it appears to be "chaotic manuscripts," "an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts," a labyrinth.
What if a garden of forking paths does not have to be chaotic? What if a bunch of wargaming nerds accidentally iterated their way to a tidier version of the literary form which Borges prophesied? This is the literary nature of the role-playing game adventure.
The original role-playing gamers began with procedures and probabilities, using dice to randomly determine the progress of improvised narratives. They developed rules and systems for delineating the potential capabilities of their fictional characters, defining ranges and options for their skills and motivations. Eventually, they wrote scenarios: texts that laid out possibilities, some of which a particular session of a game would actualize. The gamers believed, and usually still believe, that the texts existed to as aids to the actual game, which occurs "at the table."
But texts escape their authors, and these gaming books have found an audience beyond those who merely played the game. It is thought to be a shameful thing to admire these books without attempting to use them to extract a particular narrative. For this reason, role-playing texts have generally eluded formal aesthetic evaluation. Yet...
There are formal gardens that include high balconies, so that a visitor may climb the stairs and see the entire garden from above. A beautiful garden may also be beautiful when seen from a height. One can easily imagine a garden so beautiful that the pattern of its paths is sufficient for contemplative delight, perhaps even a garden where one's memory of the sight of all paths enriches any single perambulation among the flora.
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