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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: One Christian's view on D&D games
Message-ID: <1587@shark.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Oct-85 06:12:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1587
Posted: Sun Oct 20 06:12:10 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Oct-85 22:41:39 EDT
References: <1515@vax3.fluke.UUCP>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
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Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 178
Xref: tektronix net.religion.christian:01515 
Summary: 

In article <1515@vax3.fluke.UUCP> ptl@fluke.UUCP (Mike Andrews) writes:
>
>Hi,
>
>Just a few words on this Christian's perspective on D&D games.  A few years
>ago I researched D&D for a presentation in the prayer group I belong to.

How complete was your research?  What were your opinions before you
started this research?   How many games by different referees did you
watch?  You claim to have played; For how long?  How many different DMs?
If I sound bitter, sorry, but I've seen the ridiculous gossip-dealing and
superficial, prejudiced, one-sided tactics used by Pat Robertson and company,
in their "expose'" of the "e-vile dee-mon-ical game that's seducing our
innocent children to the Dev-ill" and it's made me ashamed.

>One of the women in the group was concerned about the long hours her
>husband and son were putting into the game.  Her son was also beginning
>to see images in the dark.

Some people put long hours into golf, or into bridge, or into doll collecting,
or into community theatre, etc.  Many children go through stages of seeing
things in the dark.  I hope there was more to be concerned about than the 
time spent on an engrossing hobby, and I hope she had the sense to try to
find a more basic cause for her son's problems than the immediate worry that
the game was warping his mind (was she jealous or something?); Would she
feel a similar concern if they spent a lot of time working on their car
that the car was a thing of the devil?  (Shades of Christine)

>I got as much material, both pro and con, that I could get my hands on.
>It ranged from Christian articles to D&D newsletters.  After all the
>looking and reading I started talking to people and visiting stores that
>sold the games.  Seems the more detailed versions of the D&D games
>tell you that you have a patron god that you play the game with, whether
>you believe it or not.

First off, the game rules for AD&D, or D&D, both trademarks of TSR Games,
go to such extremes to avoid the sticky issue of religion that they use
a completely contrived system substituting the concepts of Law and Chaos,
and a very clumsily drawn Good and Evil, to represent the philosophies
of the characters.  Specific myths, very sloppily adapted, are provided
for the use of referees who are too ignorant or lazy to deal with the
problem of religions, and the majority of games as run at the highschool
level have such very oversimplified, sophomoric understanding of religion
as to be laughable.

The game is a role-playing game.  This means you PRETEND to be your character
in the same way you PRETEND to be a character in a play; you identify with
the character no more, and no less, than you would with the protagonist
in a very engrossing novel.  Since people have religious feeling and belief,
this is reflected in the model in the game, SUBJECT TO THE REFEREE'S
guidance and regulation.  Most good referees insist that a character has
to have a patron deity, but most good referees also insist that the player
does NOT worship that deity; I solved the problem in the campaign I run
by having Christianity one of the possible religions; if a Christian player
in my campaign is bothered, then that player will have only Christian
characters.  IT ALL COMES DOWN TO WHAT THE REFEREE SETS AS POLICY.

Games other than the TSR games have set down other rules, and there have
been cases where a local gamester will get carried away and try to make
the players use actual grimoires, etc.  The only reply anyone can make to
this is, if a Christian is faced by this, how is it any different from 
any of the other hundreds of temptations faced in daily life?  If some
non-Christian is faced by it, how can it be worse than the hundreds of
other things in daily life that bind to sinfulness?

>You are also required
>to verbally call out spells.  One of the characters of the game is shown in
>a publication giving the `goats head sign.' This is a symbol used in satan
>worship to signify `satan is lord.'

Depending on the game, players are required to indicate when their
character, assuming the character can cast spells, is casting a spell.
What is wrong with that?  In some games the referee and players, to enhance
the roleplay aspect, have fabricated spells, which have no power in the
real world.  Fantasy magic is not usually anything like the ritual magic
based on invocation of demons, which Christians have traditionally opposed.
It may be, and often is, based on a set of "rules of physics" different
from those which hold in this world.

The "goats head sign" is a very very old sign, which was stolen by
Anton LaVey and the Satanist Church, with a meaning which varies based
on the culture it was found in.  In Europe during the Plagues, it was
used as an avert-evil spell gesture, not that it seemed to work.
In America, in the heavy-metal subculture with its "cute little bad boy"
pseudo-rebellious pretense, the affectation of satanism includes the
affectation of this sign.  In every rule set I've ever read, and I have
read most of them, it has no meaning.  The artwork may include illustrations
of someone using it in a spell, but I personally ignore the artwork in
these things as it seldom relates to the rules.

>My neighbor who teaches in the local
>Bellevue school district told me that the kids there are encouraged to play
>the game at school because of the belief that it helps their imagination.

It certainly does train the imagination, although I am not sure it has
a greater effect in that direction than any other kind of theatrics.

>He also said they greet eachother in the halls giving the goats head sign
>as a signal that they play the game.  They don't even know what it really
>signifies.

If that is what they mean it to say then that is all that it signifies.
In the real world the symbol is not the thing.  That is one of those
rules of physics in magical worlds, which don't apply to this world, or
have you got evidence that says that the Lord has changed the rules?

>Have you read any of the D&D magazines and newsletters?  I don't have the
>exact quotes handy but you'd be amazed.

Oh good grief.  I have a stack of D&D magazines as tall as you and in none
of them is there any trace whatsoever of anything advocating satanism or
occult practices, exactly the contrary; the editors and publishers go to
extremes in their opposition to the foolish practice of taking game roles
out into the real world.  Yes, I WOULD be amazed.  Show me.

>Remember many years ago when a
>young boy who was gifted enough to let him into college early, somewhere
>back in the mid-West I believe, was found in Texas (?) after having been
>missing for some time.  He got there living out a D&D game.  He later committed
>suicide.  One D&D newsletter referred to it briefly; then went on to mention
>how their sales went up.  One dungeon master referred to himself as a god.

If this is an example of how you researched the issue, then I demand in
Christ's name, that you be silent on this issue until you have done more
research.  You bring shame and mockery on the Church by your spreading of
lies in the name of truth.  Further, by your example you make those who
do know about the game and the issue of James Egbert less likely to believe
any truth you may hold.

James Dallas Egbert III was a 15 year old boy who was in a computer science
track.  He was found in Texas after having been, essentially, kidnapped
under questionable circumstances; James was gay, and an active member of
the Gay Student Alliance.  The kidnapping was totally unrelated to D&D,
and in fact the whole truth was never released to the public, but the
(sketchy) report was that James fell in with some less than wholesome types,
accustomed as he was to the more reliable Gay men he knew from school.
James' later suicide was also unrelated to D&D.

>A lot of Christian terminology gets used (misused) in the games.  Good and
>bad are confused, murder and death are common place (the more advanced games
>get pretty gory), and our God is not glorified.  Yes, I've played the game.
>The version I played was fun - until I began to think about what it
>taught me.

So, now "good and bad" are exclusively Christian terminology?  Mike, as one
Christian to another, I must point out to you two things.  First, there are
other formulations of morality that deal with good and evil, than the
Christian view.  Yes, murder and death can be pretty commonplace, especially
in a simplistic game or in a game where there is essentially a war between
the player characters and some enemy group.  In a "gilded hole" mileau the
justifications can be pretty flimsy.  So, did you attempt to discuss this
problem with your referee, and did you attempt to change the way you played?

Second, God is not glorified in any explicit way by most things short of
worship.  Is God glorified by a golf game?  By attending a movie?  A (horrors)
football game?  Then what is the excuse for these things?  Especially the
latter?

As a matter of fact, when I first started playing the game I had some real
crises of conscience about the game.  I felt that the time spent in the
game might be better spent, which was true at the time; I was extremely
disorganized and wasted much time with the game because it was a controllable
escape from the stresses of a very obnoxious senior year.  At no time was
it demonic although at one point my obsession with it bordered on idolatry,
and at that point I stopped playing for several weeks until I got my
priorities straightened out.

>Please - in my view the game isn't Christian.  And its fruits are for you
>to judge.

The game is not Christian inherently in the same way that NO inanimate
or abstract thing is Christian.  It is ludicrous to say "this is Christian"
about any thing which is not directly intended for or derived from
Christian religious usage.

And you'll have to show what its "fruits" are before you start judging.

Hutch