In the introduction to his book, “The Matter With Things,” Iain McGilchrist points to the way in which music is created. An analogy he uses is that jazz has no rules, but that there are many things that one does not do when one performs jazz. In this approach, McGilchrist points towards the Apophatic Way of knowing: the idea that we can know something not just by stating what it is, but also by saying what it is not.

In my recent conversation with Daniel Jones, in which we discussed his particular appetite for a “primaeval fantasy”, Daniel applied a similar approach. He has done this each time I have pressed him on defining the elements of this imagined fantasy world. Only as I read McGilchrist’s introduction did the penny drop: working out the beginnings of one’s world by saying what it is not, working apophatically, is perhaps more valuable than working cataphatically.

This realisation has energised, at long last, my desire to create my own fantastic worlds within which to play. The pressure I have felt to define in positive terms the nature of those worlds (for there are more than one), and the perceived need to immediately describe them, has acted as an enormous barrier to my creativity. By allowing myself space to say what my fantasy worlds are not – to define them apophatically – is a great release.

As an example, in our conversation Daniel and I shared some points of agreement. Both of us are seeking a non-modernic fantasy, that is to say that our fantasy worlds are not faux-medieval skins stretched thinly over modern and post-modern preconceptions. While we would say that magic is real, we would both agree that it is not systemised and neither is it scientific in any sense.

This reveals a method we can apply towards the imagining of a fantastic world. We can begin by listing and refining what that world is not. The apophatic way, long used in philosophy and theology, allows us to clear a space for what we will cataphatically assert about the people and places we are creating. This insight is enormous once you begin to use it in practice.

Today I am beginning to imagine what my world is not. I am clearing imaginary space for the construction of what might be instead. There is high value in sweeping out the misconceptions, tropes, and general fantasy clutter that has accumulated in the roleplaying scene over 50 years. While D&D gave us a great gift in cataloguing the mythic and imagined, there is no rule that says we must feel bound to include it all.

As with all insight, this seems obvious on reflection. Yet the behaviour of most gamers would suggest that it is not at all obvious (because obvious never is to another). My game is not seeking to be bound to the traditions and methods, nor the rules and procedures, of the gaming majority. The world it accesses is one which might be discovered more clearly in walking the apophatic way, a road less travelled yet more directly leading to the experience I seek.

Game on!