God - "The Omnipotent Dungeon Master"

I have a shirt that identifies me as "The Omnipotent Dungeon Master - Welcome to my Table. Roll for Initiative." I got this shirt for my birthday, and I wear it because it's comfy and I like the color. Yet, it's a bit ironic for me to wear this shirt, given my thoughts on the omnipotence of God.

In D&D, the Dungeon Master (DM) controls almost everything. They control the world and everyone in it, except for the players' characters. But there are two things that can't control: the player characters and the dice. The players almost always directly control their characters, and the dice land however they please.

But even so, the Dungeon Master can exert some influence. There are spells that DM-controlled characters could cast that would dominate player-controlled characters, at least temporarily, if the player rolls low enough on their attempt to resist the mind control, putting that characters fate in the hands of the dice. And the DM can exert control over the dice as well. The DM can add modifiers to the roll and can set the target number as high or as low as it needs to be to make the die roll no longer matter. If the DM wanted to exert control over literally everything in the world they describe, they could. The Dungeon Master can be Omnipotent.

However, the DM's control only extends as far as the edge of the table. Outside of the game world, the DM has only as much power as anyone else.

This may be a shockingly good analogy for God. God is practically omnipotent. He created the world we live in and retains a great deal of control over it. He doesn't control people, at least not directly, but He controls the forces of nature, and He can tweak them however He chooses. Similar to the DM, God does not control the "player-controlled characters." That's us. We have our agency, and within certain physical limitations, we can do whatever we want, regardless of what God wants. There is also "the dice." In this case, I'd say that the dice are the laws of nature, like the forces of gravity and electromagnetism, the speed of light, and the laws of motion. God doesn't often break those laws.

But the fact remains that He could. God can tweak the laws of nature, if and when He has to, and He can use the laws of nature and His own great power to do things that seem impossible, or perhaps more accurately, miraculous. And I have no doubts that God could exert mind control over every living creature on Earth, if He so chose. God could exert power and control over literally everything in the world.

Yet, there may still be some things outside of God's control. In D&C 93:29, Christ Himself says that "Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be," so God cannot create intelligence. And in Alma 42, Alma (the Younger, I think) tells his son that mercy cannot rob justice and the works of justice cannot be destroyed, "If so, God would cease to be God" (Alma 42:25), so God cannot remain God after mercy has robbed justice or the works of justice have been destroyed. Yet, Mosiah reminds us that God has "all power, both in heaven and in earth" (Mosiah 4:9). Perhaps earth and heaven are God's "Game World" and "Table." God controls, or can control, everything in heaven and on earth, but perhaps not everything beyond them. Perhaps, while God controls everything in this sphere, there are spheres outside of His control.

This actually makes sense when we consider the profound truth revealed to Lorenzo Snow and confirmed by Joseph Smith: “As man now is, God once was:” and “As God now is, man may be” (Ensign, February 1982). If God was once like us, a mortal on a planet like Earth, He must have had a God who created Him and that Earth. That God (our Heavenly Grandfather, if you will) would have had a sphere of influence beyond that of God, our Heavenly Father. And, assuming that God, our Heavenly Father, will not become powerless as soon as we, ourselves, ascend to Godhood, it stands to reason that God, our Heavenly Grandfather, still has power as well. I expect that our Heavenly Grandfather still has authority over our Heavenly Father, even as or Heavenly Father will still have authority over us, even when we have spirit children of our own. Each God has ultimate authority in their own sphere, subject only to the God(s) in whose sphere their sphere resides, yet they have little (if any) power beyond their sphere.

Long explanation short, God is functionally omnipotent, as far as earth and heaven need to be concerned. There are powers beyond the scope of heaven, like the eternal law of justice, but we probably don't need to worry about that. As far as anyone on earth needs to know, God is practically omnipotent, just as a DM is practically omnipotent at a D&D table. There are things outside that realm that He can't control, and there are things within that realm that He chooses not to control, but for most intents and purposes, He is basically Omnipotent.