This is Faith in Play #83: Spirits, for October 2024. In my book Why I Believe I note that if there is a supernatural realm in which God exists, it is at least likely that there are other spirits existing in that realm. Further, those spirits might be at least as varied as living organisms … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #79: Mind, for June 2024. I often receive questions from readers in comments or by e-mail, on a wide range of subjects. Recently a girl (woman?) wrote about a concern she has related to role playing games: should we be filling our minds with these thoughts and images? Or, as … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #71: Good Witch, for October 2023. The word “witch”, according to the dictionary, has connotations of evil magic, ugly appearance, and a nasty disposition. Yet in our usage we have lost this aspect of witches being evil and ugly. Indeed, if you attend enough game conventions you will meet girls … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #58: Supers, for September 2022. Last month I added Heroes to the list of archetypes from which we can learn something, and in conclusion I distinguished those ordinary people who rise to the need from the more potent archetype which I called the superhero. I said maybe we would come … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #44: An Alignment Grid, for July 2021. I thought I had finished discussing alignment, as it appears in Original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons™. I had explained why it was the True Religion of characters in the game world, and described Goodness as beneficence, Wickedness or Evil as selfishness, Law as … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #43: Slavery, for June 2021. On September 16, 2019, then five-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez was apparently kidnapped from a playground in Bridgeton, New Jersey. Ongoing investigations have revealed nothing but a sketch of one unidentified person in the area. A seventy-five thousand dollar reward has been offered for her return. … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #37: Balancing on the Corner, for December 2020. When “balance” is mentioned in connection with Dungeons & Dragons™ alignment, thoughts immediately leap to neutrality, and of course neutrality is frequently about balance—but not always. As we noted in connection with the side alignments neutrality can often mean simply ignoring one … [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 #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 Faith in Play #30: Conflict, for May 2020. A few years back my band Collision left its equipment set up in a church in which we had been practicing. The drummer had gotten our logo made as a drum head cover, so there was this picture of the earth crashing into a giant … [Read more…]