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[[File:GodGameBook.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|It was Nathan's fault that I became God.
It is, as I would learn, Hell to be God.
|Opening lines}}
'''''God Game''''' is a 1986 science fiction novel by the late Rev. [[Andrew M. Greeley]], who is better known for his [[Bishop Blackie Ryan Mysteries|"Bishop Blackie" mysteries]]. It recounts the experiences of a nameless first-person narrator, a Catholic priest who is asked by his nephew Nathan to beta-test an early version of a [[Simulation Game]] called ''Duke and Duchess''. The game isn't very impressive at first, but when lightning strikes his satellite dish during a violent storm, the game's primitive CGA graphics become impossibly high-resolution video of what are apparently ''real people'' -- and the narrator quickly discovers that he is now very much responsible for them and their small, but complete, world called The Land. ▼
▲'''''God Game''''' is a 1986 science fiction novel by the late Rev. [[Andrew M. Greeley]], who is better known for his [[Bishop Blackie Ryan Mysteries|"Bishop Blackie" mysteries]].
The Land is split into two ancient nations who have been enemies from time immemorial -- one led by Duke Lenrau, the other led by Duchess B'Mella. But both have tired of the eternal war, and each finds the other attractive, even if only from a distance. The narrator realizes that the best hope for peace is to pair these two strong personalities up, so he begins to matchmake, discovering how to manipulate events around them even as he directly addresses them to offer advice and guidance. Unfortunately, there are forces and factions within The Land who do not want to see peace, and the narrator quickly learns that he must be vigilant to discover and thwart those working against his plans for duke and duchess and the whole of the world. He soon finds himself caring deeply about the people whose lives are in his hands as he hears their prayers and does his best to find a happy ending that ''sticks''. His closest ally and tool in this is Ranora, an "ilel" -- a combination prophet/jester/bard/fairy in the form of a dancing blonde teenage girl with a panpipe, wearing a peppermint-striped dress. Even with her not-insubstantial help, the narrator finds that being God, even for such a small world of limited focus, is a daunting and emotionally exhausting task, and he dare not rest on his laurels too early. Worse yet for his own sense of reality, some of the characters whose lives he has been manipulating cross the wall between the worlds to visit him, begging for a bigger role in the story or changes in their lot in life -- or crying for help.▼
▲The Land is split into two ancient nations who have been enemies from time immemorial -- one led by Duke Lenrau, the other led by Duchess B'Mella.
With the help of Ranora and a game parser that almost seems like an A.I. (when it isn't utterly braindead), the narrator does his best to juggle the politics, personalities, and even the weather of the Land in an attempt to unify the two ancient nations, by bringing together their rulers in a marriage of mutual love and respect. But lacking the omniscience of the real God, he cannot know that he has guaranteed a permanent peace -- and a permanent love between Lenrau and B'Mella -- until he pulls off a real miracle and finally defeats all the forces working against them.▼
▲With the help of Ranora and a
{{tropenamer}}
* [[God Game]]:
{{tropelist}}
* [[Alien Sky]]:
* [[Aliens Speaking English]]:
* [[Ambiguously Human]]:
* [[Another Dimension]]:
* [[Author Avatar]]:
* [[Camera Lock On]]:
* [[Card-Carrying Villain]]: Very subtly done. The reader may never notice that not one of the villains in the story ever prays to the Narrator (in his office as "the Lord our God") to bless their efforts because they think they're doing the right thing. They ''all'' seem to go out of their way to avoid drawing the Narrator's attention to themselves (not that it helps).
* [[Dating Sim]]:
* [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]]: A claim Nathan explicitly makes about ''Duke and Duchess'' while convincing his uncle to test it for him.▼
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: The game interface/parser, sometimes. Whether this was an intentional feature by the developers, or something added after the lightning strike is unclear.
* [[Expy]]: Several of the people inside the game appear to be Expies of people the narrator knows in the "real world":▼
▲* [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]]:
** Kaila and Malvau seem to correspond to a couple named Hagan. Both couples are having problems with their marriage, and it appears that the narrator's efforts to help Kaila and Malvau carry over to the Hagans, who have gone into marriage counseling by the end of the book.▼
▲* [[Expy]]:
** There is a profoundly strong connection between Ranora and Michele, a teenage member of the narrator's large extended family with whom he has frequent contact. At one point in the story, Ranora contacts the narrator by briefly ''possessing'' Michele and having her phone him.▼
▲** Kaila and Malvau seem to correspond to a couple named Hagan.
* [[Free Rotating Camera]]: Averted, though not to the point of [[Camera Screw]]. Although the narrator can switch his P.O.V. to any of the people in the game (and he has most of the major ones hotkeyed for fast access), he has no control of the "camera" positioning. At one point he notes that the camera auto-positions so that people praying are always looking right into the "lens".▼
▲** There is a profoundly strong connection between Ranora and Michele, a teenage member of the narrator's large extended family with whom he has frequent contact.
* [[A God Is You]]: In-universe: the protagonist is given an early [[Interactive Fiction]] game to beta test that transforms into a [[Simulation Game]]; after his experiences result in a dramatic rewrite of the game, it is actually renamed from ''Duke and Duchess'' to ''God Game''. This makes the book the [[Trope Namer]] for the "God Game" genre, the first real-world example of which (''[[Populous]]'') came out three years after it was published.▼
▲* [[Free Rotating Camera]]:
* [[Gosh Darn It to Heck]]: The people of the Land seem to have no strong oaths or swear words; the narrator notes that "the Lord Our God condemn you" is strongest curse of which they seem capable.▼
▲* [[A God Is You]]:
* [[Heroic Fantasy]]: The world to which the narrator is connected is very much a pseudo-Medieval swords-and-sorcery setting -- except where it isn't.▼
▲* [[Gosh
* [[I Just Want to Be Special]]: N'Rasia asks the narrator to give her a bigger, more important part in the story. Subverted slightly when the immediate results of this request embarrass and distress her, and she decides that [[I Just Want to Be Normal|being a background character is better]] -- but she ends up a critical part of the ending anyway.▼
* [[Guilt-Based Gaming]]: A possibly unique literary example, a bit more extreme than in "real" games -- when the narrator (erroneously) believes he has fixed everything and stops playing the game, Ranora actually reaches across the wall to possess his niece and beg him to return. And once he comes back to the game, several characters explicitly ask (via prayer) why he abandoned them.
* [[Ice Queen]]: The narrator nicknames G'Ranne "the ice maiden".▼
▲* [[Heroic Fantasy]]:
* [[Interactive Fiction]]: The original type of game ''Duke and Duchess'' was intended to be. Instead, it turned into a [[Simulation Game]].▼
▲* [[I Just Want to Be Special]]:
* [[It Only Works Once]]: After successfully and ''permanently'' ensuring peace in The Land, the narrator is never again able to reach across the wall between worlds, no matter how many times he tries playing the game afterwards, even using the save data from the original run.▼
* [[Leitmotif]]: In-universe, this is one of the things that Ranora as an ilel does -- she can reveal and celebrate the true nature of a person by creating a "theme" for them on her pipe. ▼
▲* [[Interactive Fiction]]:
* [[Life Imitates Art]]: The narrator comes to realize that the wall between The Land and the "real world" is more like a thick fog, and some of his actions in the game have repercussions on the people and events around him.▼
* [[Irish Priest]]: The nameless narrator/protagonist.
▲* [[It Only Works Once]]:
▲* [[Leitmotif]]:
▲* [[Life Imitates Art]]:
* [[Lightning Can Do Anything]]: A lightning bolt striking the narrator's dish antenna turns the game from low-res [[Interactive Fiction]] to something disturbingly real.
* [[Lingerie Scene]]:
* [[Magic Music]]:
* [[Magical Flutist]]:
* [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl]]:
* [[Mission from God]]:
* [[Narrator]]:
* [[No Fourth Wall]]:
* [[No Name Given]]:
* [[Player and Protagonist Integration]]: The protagonist priest is thrust into the role of God for a small fantasy world he interfaces with via the video game.
* [[Possession (1981 film)|Possession]]: Ranora briefly manifests in the "real world" by possessing the narrator's relative Michelle and calling him on the phone.
* [[Post Modernism]]:
* [[Punctuation Shaker]]: Lightly applied to some of the few words of The Land's native language that come through the computer interface untranslated, such as
* [[Raising Sim]]:
* [[Rule of Funny]]:
* [[
* [[Shout-Out]]:
* [[Small Secluded World]]:
* [[Technology Marches On]]:
** Nathan's predictions of how powerful computers will be in "just a few years" are amusingly quaint as well.
* [[Text Parser]]: The game's parser almost seems to be a character in itself, running mostly on the [[Rule of Funny]]. It is alternately dumb as a box of rocks and practically an [[Artificial Intelligence]], thwarting or enabling the narrator as dictated by the needs of the story and The Land.
* [[Translation Convention]]:
* [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]]: Averted. Everyone speaks (or [[Translation Convention|seems to speak]]) modern idiomatic English.▼
* [[Unintentional Period Piece]]: Is very firmly anchored in the middle 1980s, to the point that some of the settings and events in the Narrator's "real" world might seem incomprehensible to those born after that decade.
* [[You Can't Get Ye Flask]]: The natural language parser for the game interface that the narrator uses to do anything more than speak directly to the characters in the game is amazingly sophisticated for 1986 -- but is still prone to this trope at the most frustrating moments. (And sometimes it seems to do it just to annoy the narrator.)▼
▲* [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]]:
* [[You Have to Believe Me]]: Subverted. The narrator manages to videotape almost everything he sees in the game (albeit without sound), which he shares with the game company and their hired experts afterwards. Additionally, the disk on which he stored the game data is also preserved and subjected to analysis. ▼
▲* [[You Can't Get Ye Flask]]:
▲* [[You Have to Believe Me]]:
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction]]
[[Category:Pages Original to All The Tropes]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
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