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 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 #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 #18: Order, for May 2019. A lot of people think that lawful (and specifically lawful good) is The Christian alignment in Dungeons & Dragons™. They think this because they associate it with keeping the rules, and they think that Christianity is about keeping the rules. I would disagree on two … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #6: True Religion, for May 2018. In the earliest versions of Dungeons & Dragons™, the original role playing game from which all others (including those electronic games that call themselves “RPGs”) are descended, there was a rules section known as alignment. Many players did not understand it; many gamers did … [Read more…]
Role playing games have been criticized for many things that are easily explained. Readers of this magazine don’t need to hear why the involvement of magic, false gods, or demons and devils isn’t a real objection to role playing per se. Or hear why it doesn’t matter if we play with non-Christians whose characters may reject God and His morality even more … [Read more…]