In the world of fairy tales it is not uncommon for the protagonist to have an interesting godfather or godmother. The best known of these is the variant of the fairy godmother, a creature of great power that the godmother would provide her godson with great gifts as she needed them in life. Less well known, but for role-playing purposes perhaps more important, are the godfathers of “El Dios Padre” and “El Padrino de la Muerte”, since in these two stories the godfathers are the devil and death itself ( respectively). In both stories, the father decides to ask the first person he meets on the street to be the godfather of the child. “The Godfather of Death” is in many ways the more interesting of these two stories, first because it develops the relationship between Death and his godson more than any other fairy tale, and second because although the father has decided to ask the former, he sees himself as a godfather, he ignores god and the devil because he believes that both discriminate against the poor. However, upon meeting death, he rejoices because death treats all people equally, taking them as their turn to die.

Within RPGs we can take from this the idea that a person could indeed on rare occasions choose a godparent for their child, regardless of normal parental handicaps. It would be interesting to play a character with a godfather who gives them some big gift, but in return makes difficult demands on them. In the case of the Godfather of Death, the person knew how to stop Death from taking someone, but was told never to do this if Death was at the person’s head. However, realizing that Death loved him, the godson ignored this, for he loved those who were dying. In role-playing games, this may not be much of a challenge for players, although their characters may be tied to someone the player may not be. Unless the player can more honestly play his character. And then, what could death demand in exchange for saving someone’s life?

To take this idea a step further, the godfather in an RPG might be an evil god, who waits until long after the character is good to give him his gift. Imagine the conflict of being caught between a godparent one has come to love and the ideology and beliefs the character holds dear. Once again, such conflicts require a good role-player; however, there is real value in such stories, as it is these conflicts that make fantasy so interesting. Because within fantasy the conflict itself is invented and thus is capable of questioning much more deeply the reality in which we live just as fairy tales are.