A good gamemaster plays God with gusto;
He's a deity that delights in deviousness,
An architect of puzzles and pitfalls
Crafted in arcane clues and obtuse riddles.
Why can't a god speak to us with clarity?
What sadistic strain of inscrutable malice
Or puckish perversity of the divine mind
Cloaks our path of life in a fog of confusion?
Rick was a consummate gamemaster.
To play a character in a world that he'd created
Was to live in vicarious fear of the god
Who took such fiendish delight in confounding us
By hindering a quest or orchestrating a demise.
Fate became as irrevocable as die rolls
Coming up "snake eyes," the fangs of a disaster
Sinking its venom into one's character.
Life is so damned unfathomably random.
Maybe that's why we've come to personify fate.
"Luck be a Lady tonight," or to beseech it
With craven appeal. "Baby needs a new pair of shoes."
Words mouthed in vain. The only certainties of life
Are the disappointments that come of dreams deferred,
The emptiness of desires unfulfilled, and the awful finality
Of death There's no saving throw for cancer.
There's no saving throw for a tumor that has returned
A second and third time. We've shaped God in our image;
Jealous, vindictive and cruel. There's no solace in
The adamantine coldness of such an unforgiving creed.
Rick, you were a consummate gamemaster
Whose intricately imagined worlds were only matched
By the brilliant future that you were advancing toward;
A degree in computer geology, love and a family.
You rolled a character that seemed destined for greatness.
But there's no saving throw against cancer,
No logic to random fate; no reason to it.
Perhaps some divine worldcrafter is chuckling
With fiendish delight at the ironic turn of events
That shattered the snow globe of dreams that you held,
But your friends can no longer take delight in a game
Where the outcomes seem so unfair, so unjust.
