This is Faith in Play #61: Christian D&D, for December 2022. Someone I have known online probably since I first became Chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild recently read my recently republished book Do You Trust Me? (and made some positive comments about it), but then messaged me thus: …in your book Do You Trust … [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…]
Monotheism seems to be fairly uncommon in most campaign settings, but it is far more playable than one might think. I once thought that such a system would equate to boredom because it seemed to eliminate a few fantasy staples, such as friction between the gods, religious wars, and even non-violent religious rivalry—all of which … [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…]
This is Faith in Play #27: Believing Balance, for February 2020. Over a year ago we began a series on the notion that in the Original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons® game system alignment was the True Religion, what characters actually believed. We have since examined those beliefs in Goodness, Wickedness, Order, and Individualism, the four … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #22: Individualism, for September 2019. Quite a few years ago now I was playing a character in an experimental Attorney class in a game largely based on original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons™. I had just successfully defended a player character (an Antipaladin) on a murder and robbery charge, and the … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #21: Villainy, for August 2019. It was a year ago, but I had a stack of articles in the queue when it happened, and decided not to disrupt the plan by answering what appeared to be a question from a Troll posted to our Facebook page (I managed to lose the … [Read more…]
Last month as we explored ways to express our faith in our gaming, we suggested that it could be done by playing the Good Guys. But we also insisted that this was not the only way it could be done. In fact, quite unexpectedly, we can often bring our faith to bear on a game … [Read more…]
Last month as we concluded our consideration of Magic, we raised a bigger issue: is it appropriate for characters in a fictional world to call upon any deity? It is not a simple question. At every turn God has commanded that we have no regard for other gods; it is top of the list in … [Read more…]