The Christian Gamers Guild has many facets to its ministry, as we seek to reclaim the imagination to be conformed to the image of Christ through the use of gaming as a creative art form.
One of those aspects is support for Christians involved in gaming. Much of that support is realized through our interactive e-mail group, as Christians from around the world who are gamers share their thoughts and experiences with each other. But the mission goes beyond that. This section of the web site contains articles and links geared to edify and challenge Christians as they live their faith in their games.
Questions about any of this can be directed to the Christian Gamers Guild Board of Directors; some of the authors of individual articles have also included e-mail addresses in their biographical materials, linked from their articles individually.
This is Faith in Play #36: Thanks, for November 2020. Later this month Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving, a secular holiday established for religious people to give thanks to God. Canadians did the same in the middle of last month. Most cultures and nations historically have had a harvest festival celebration to express gratitude for … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #35: Believable Nonsense, for October 2020. This article is named for the lost Game Ideas Unlimited: Believable Nonsense, whose original ideas are recalled here. Years ago I assisted two of my sons in burying a beloved cat, somewhere along the outside of the fence around our yard. That event inspired the original … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #35: Seekers, for October 2020. The “magic” in our role playing games is “make believe.” It’s not real, and no one could by reading any of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks or source books learn how to do any “real magic,” if such a thing exists. Indeed, you can’t learn … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #34: Invisible Coins, for September 2020. This was originally published as Game Ideas Unlimited: Invisible Coins on July 27, 2001. It is only slightly edited for republication here. You’ve probably heard the line about our strange and beautiful relationship—in which I’m beautiful, and you’re… well, I’ll assume you’ve heard it. My relationship … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #34: Guidance and The Machine, for September 2020. Some people I know are terrified of the vision of the world in Person of Interest, the television series currently available on Netflix. In it, a man going by the name of Harold Finch has created a hardware/software combination that monitors and … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #33: Flirting, for August 2020. There was a Game Ideas Unlimited article of this title that addressed these ideas (not, it should be noted, romance). That article appears to have been lost, and this is an attempt to address the ideas afresh. We roleplay for many different reasons. Ron Edwards has identified … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #33: Psionics, for August 2020. About eighteen years ago, in July 2002, I published Faith and Gaming: Mind Powers, and thought I had said everything that needed to be said on the subject of psionic powers in fiction and games. It was republished fourteen years later on our refurbished reformatted … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #32: Doing Something, for July 2020. Although this is actually about a gaming referee technique, I’m starting with an example from a book, my novel Verse Three, Chapter One, freely accessible on the web. It also begins with magic items, but moves beyond that to objects in other settings and genres. As … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #32: Zealots, for July 2020. Some years back in one of my games an important local military official was murdered, and under the authority of their cavalier the party took over investigating the crime. They had out-of-character reason to believe that a certain local cleric and his two acolytes were … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #31: Screen Wrap, for June 2020. This was originally published on June 29, 2001, at Gaming Outpost, as Game Ideas Unlimited: Screen Wrap. I usually call it “recursive occlusion”; but that’s because that’s what Peter Davison’s Doctor called it in Castrovalva, and now that I get around to thinking about what that … [Read more…]