by Fr. Chris
Role Playing Games, or, Let’s Get This Over With
2:16 pm in Gaming, RPGs by Fr. Chris
So listen.
At the end of the day, when all’s said and done, in this day and age and at this point in time, basically:
We love games.
All games. We may not personally like every one, but we love them all. We will never grow out of it, get over it, or be too old for it. We will always be playing, or thinking about playing, some game or other. That’s kind of the reason this site exists.
Whatever you’re playing, awesome. [ed. incorrect]
However long you’ve been playing, awesome.
However long you play per day! Awesome! [ed. Chris is flat wrong about this; Chris? I'm gonna wanna talk to you later.]
All that stuff I said above goes double for RPGs (Role Playing Games), and I’m almost certain Garth feels the same way, although he’s certainly more responsible than I am, so maybe not.
Let’s get some stuff out of the way, to start. This post is intended primarily to address what I see as a very specific type of problem that exists within Christianity at large. I will get to describing this problem momentarily. First I want to say that when I speak of “D&D” here, or “RPGs”, I am including in that group any game or work of art, book or piece of music that might find itself caught up in the storm of this uniquely Christian problem. This includes, but is not limited to:
Magic: the Gathering (a card game)
Harry Potter (in any form)
Right now Harry Potter seems to be drawing most of the flack, but Magic has endured it in its day, and of course D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) sort of started it all.
And now to The Problem: There’s this whole big contingent of nominal Christians from all denominations and traditions, and they have one thing in common; they hate D&D, and all its cousins. With like a wide-eyed fearful hatred. If this was Romania they’d be warding off the evil eye.
The reason always given is that the game is in some way a gateway drug to the occult. A more preposterous notion would be difficult for me to summon up; maybe trying to come up with some way Revenge of the Sith wasn’t terrible.
I’m just gonna talk about this for a minute. Maybe something will come out of it. The truth is, this subject gets me so incensed that it’s difficult to think straight.
I’ve lived my life around gamers and geeks of all shapes and sizes. It’s true that I’ve also known some practicing pagans, and some of those pagans are also RPGers. Is there a connection? Probably.
Gamers, geeks, and goths, atheists, pantheists, and pagans, materialists, agnostics, neo-stoics and cynics, and heathens of all sorts; these people are looking for something, or trying not to look. Something which they are NOT able to find in this country, in the West, or indeed anywhere in the World of fallen man.
But they keep looking. What are they looking for? I don’t know. Maybe they don’t know. Let’s just call it “Truth” for the sake of brevity.
Readers, Garth, do you have any ideas on what they might be looking for?
Listen, either the Light of Truth that is Christ Himself shining through the gospel has all power in heaven and on earth or He doesn’t. If He doesn’t, He’s not God and therefore not worth worshiping. If He does, His light shines on all things and makes them new. Even D&D.
I found this awesome thing here, which might help some of our readers interested in going in depth on the issue of Orthodoxy and D&D.
It’s a blog called “Blood of Prokopius“. Check it out.
P.S.
I want to say more on the subject, but my thoughts get so out of control when I think on it for too long on my own. Anyone care to offer any questions or ideas for us to focus on?
Thank you! Very interesting reading
Any ideas or questions? I feel like there’s much more to say on the subject, and we welcome all comers.
I’ve got the urge to poke you with a stick, so I’m going to turn the question back on you.
Back when we used to play these sorts of games together, there was a time when I wanted to run an In Nomine game. In Nomine is a game where the players play angels and/or demons in a modern day setting, trying to influence humanity without them ever realizing it.
It seems to me that people who think RPGs in general are ‘gateway drugs to the occult’ may feel differently about the game In Nomine because it is built from their own faith. It is a game with arbitrary rules, but it has none of the occult trapings that cause so much scandal that the other games tend to have.
I guess the question I’m trying to ask (poke, poke) is can you reconcile your own vehement reaction against playing this particular game without giving the alarmists fodder to use against any other?
(poke, poke)
First of all, thank you, please keep the comments coming, and tell your friends.
The short half-answer is that the very existence of a game in which you can play a demon as a player character is all the ammo the alarmists would ever need.
The slightly longer answer is this:
My objection to In Nomine is not that there are demons, but that the cosmology it purports to represent is almost completely wrong according to all I’ve ever known. Since it’s a game that takes place in the world in which I reside, and names various characters I believe to exist in reality, I wouldn’t be able to play it without exploding into an inimitable Chris-rant.
It would be like playing an RPG in which your family members and ancestors are characters, written by people who had clearly never met them or even talked to anyone who had.
The longest, fullest answer I will attempt to fold into my next post.
Don’t you think, in the end, that stick-poking might be the very basis of our friendship?
I don’t know about the quality of the game, but it sounds like it is inspired by Catholic notions of angels and demons – it may be worse for a Christian to get his head filled with false notions about true things than false and true notions about things entirely make-believe.
I’ll write my response later.
No, it’s more inspired by “The Prophecy” or “Constantine”. Angels can be bad, demons can be good, so what does it all mean in the end, etc. Maybe Lucifer got a raw deal, it’s all in how you look at it. Oh, and guns and swords and stuff.
Oh lawls that’s horrible. I love the whole making Gabriel a lady who is bent on evil. Not.
Dogma was a better treatment of angels and demons than that.
I’m not saying its a good game. The rules system has a lot about ‘Names having power’ and ‘songs as magic’ which I liked but I will admit it the rest was pretty clunky. I was a younger fella at the time. My point, though, is this: your depiction of the alarmist view of DnD as a ‘gateway drug to the occult’ is all about RPGs purporting ‘wrong cosmologies.’ However, it seems to me that the existence of a game whose cosmology is so wrong that you won’t play it lends strength to their argument. If this game over here is ok but that game over there isn’t, where do you draw that line, and by what criteria? How do you draw that line and avoid the logical slippery slope? How do you get everyone agree to go by the line that YOU just drew?
I’ll leave it at that for now, but I could probably write more myself. And yes, I believe if we removed stick-poking from our friendship all that would be left is a whole slew of similar interests, and who ever based a friendship on something like that?
(poke, poke)
First off, I’m not saying people shouldn’t play In Nomine. I’m just explaining why I can’t play it; it takes place in our world, and uses named characters that I hold a strong set of beliefs about. I would not be able to set aside those beliefs long enough to play the game as it was meant to be played. So my objection is based not on people playing angels or demons; it’s people playing angels or demons as they relate to the one God, or to satan, who are very real beings to me, and therefore I’d not be suspending my disbelief to play the game, I’d be suspending my belief.
Second, I don’t agree that my depiction of the alarmist view is all about RPGs purporting wrong cosmologies. The alarmist view is actually based on the exact opposite idea; these games feature REAL MAGIC!!! BEWARE!!! BE AFRAID!!!
A cosmology cannot be wrong if it is a different universe entirely (such as D&D). When you play a game like that, you’re agreeing to believe the things that are offered, or you wasted your money and your time.
And before you get to Mage or Shadowrun; yes, they take place in our world. Yes I play them, yes I love them.
What makes them different from In Nomine is that both games can easily be folded into my belief system without breaking the premise of the game, or my beliefs.
Chris, you really think there’s a lot more to be said about why a bunch of ignorant people fear and hate D&D?
It seems to me that they simply don’t understand either D&D or their own religion. (By the way, that bit about Christ shining on all things was rather well put.) And that they aren’t even conscious enough to notice this lack of understanding.
This might lead to the harder question of why the world seems to be full of ignorance (among other vices), but at that point we wouldn’t really be talking about games any more.
@ Chris – I find it interesting that the reasons you gave for why you refuse to play Nomine are pretty much identical to the reasons that I don’t play Mage. There is just no way I can do it while staying consistent with my faith and still playing the game as it was meant to be played. Personally I just don’t see them as reconcilable. I also know another christian friend who played it without having this problem of being unable to suspend his beliefs. However, he still came to the same conclusion I did about how it doesn’t reconcile with his beliefs.
Now I’m not gonna get up in anyone’s business or try to break up sessions of Mage going on, but if asked whether or not I’d recommend the system to any of my christian friends I’d probably say no. I see no harm in doing that because it is the truth, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Just like how those you mention need to open up and realize this isn’t truly practicing magic or an Ouiji board type thing, we need to realize the flipsides of role playing and each individual system as well. We shouldn’t just go to the opposite extreme and accept every system and aspect of role play without thinking should we (especially since neither of us have
)?
Now this is where the question of who decides the criteria comes back into play. We can’t hammer this out all by ourselves of course, so where do we go from here?
The above post that was meant to have “In Nomine” instead of “Nomine”.
sorry bout that.
I think playing Mage has to do with your metaphysics, Brand. It is a question of the interaction of your philosophy and your faith.
Also, I argue (in my post) that Ouija board has the problem that the whole premise is that the ‘magic’ is real. Some will believe that it is just someone or other moving the thing around (what probably happens most of the time) but the fact that such is the premise makes the ‘game’ problematic (if it can even be considered a game.)
That being said I think Ouija can be played as a game, but you basically need to be an atheistic materialist (more or less.)
Well, I agree with what you said about the Ouija board thing. It more or less is marketed as something to make you go “ooh, is there REALLY something else moving it?”. At least that’s how it was when I had tried it once as a kid.
Now as far as your take on Mage goes, to a certain extent I think I see what you are trying to say. It’s true that how we play/think of Mage (and any table-top RPG really) depends on our own take on things and our own (limited) understandings of the metaphysics of the system and of our own faith.
However I don’t think that alone answers the question that was posted earlier. How does one decide what to do with any given system. Is this decided case by case? Is it just every man decides for themselves according to their own thoughts, feelings and/or beliefs on this? Is there an absolute answer that covers all cases?
Though one thing I have learned from recent experience is to start with the question of how much do I really understand the faith in the first place?
For me, over the past year or so the answer in my life has almost always been “nowhere near as much as I thought I did,” if I am being honest with myself. I’ve found I need to focus on understanding my faith first and not worry about trying to reason on with my current (limited) understandings. Hence why you and I trust in things outside ourselves that were given to us. Holy Tradition, Church Fathers, etc. I’ve found finding and receiving good guidance from those who have gone before us (particularly finding a spiritual father if possible) to be the key element for how to interpret and apply these things as well.
So coming back after taking the time to do some of this and mature in faith has worked best during the times when I have actually done it.
The absolute answer (for me!
) is that if you can’t shake a weird or bad feeling while playing the game, you probably shouldn’t play it.
My main point here is that there are very few good reasons to inflict that weird/bad feeling on others. The only responsibility we have as Christians is to teach people the Truth as it has been revealed to us; not to distract them with periphery that may or may not be based on the Truth.
The Truth is One, the Truth is indivisible, and the Truth takes care of itself, and loves His own.