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The rules of play, rules of the game, (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) logic of play, (PROSE: The Two Auteurs [+]Loading...["The Two Auteurs (short story)"], The Book of the Snowstorm [+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"]) or rules of fair play, (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"]) were, according to the Fourteenth Doctor, the rules which "bound [the] entire existence" of the Toymaker and "governed" the Toymaker's domain, to the exclusion of the conventional logic of the rules of the universe.
As such, the Toymaker could ignore the ordinary "rules of the universe" and change reality according to his whim, in a process which wasn't even anything so scientific as "manipulating atoms with the power of thought", but he had to abide by universal, inviolable rules governing all game-play, including the principle of "best of three". (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
After the Toymaker's child Maestro emerged in the Toymaker's wake, the Fifteenth Doctor browbeat them into explaining how they had broken into the universe by reminding them that their father had "established" the "rules of fair play". (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"])
According to Maritsa's understanding of Applied Theology, the "logic of play" was one of several alternatives to rationality which had been proposed by the founding Archons before Urizen's proposal of "mathematics and geometry" was chosen. Because these alternative logics, which also included the logic of narrative and the logic of faith, had been at the back of some of the lesser founders' minds when they performed the ritual of Cosmic Genesis which created the ordered universe, they were "buried at the very heart of space-time like a counter-melody to the great harmony". (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm (part 16) [+]Loading...{"part":"16","1":"The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"})
However, this was not enough for Urizen's game-master, who, piqued that his suggestion of the "logic of play" had been overruled, "packed his bag and stomped off to the cosmic basement to make his own universe, with blackjack and… well, and more blackjack, really". (PROSE: The Two Auteurs [+]Loading...["The Two Auteurs (short story)"]) Even so his "urge to build destructive toys" was "woven into the very fabric" of the universe he'd left behind, (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm (part 16) [+]Loading...{"part":"16","1":"The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"}) creating the Toymaker and others like him. (PROSE: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (novelisation)"])