This is RPG-ology #53: In the Spirit of Radio, for April 2022. Our thanks to Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition. This was originally published in the Winter 2004 edition of the Daedalus e-zine, and was forgotten when that publication vanished. However, having seen the French … [Read more…]
I will confess that I specifically saved this one of the Archetypes for this month. It has been something of a tradition to cover subjects related to game magic in October, begun inadvertently when I addressed the objections to Magic that first year and then returned to it a year later when I recommended Fantasy … [Read more…]
I must credit James V. West for inspiring this column. On a game-related forum elsewhere on the world wide web, he raised a question, and then he answered it. Between when I read the question and when I read his answer, I had provided my own answer, which proved to be somewhat distinct from his, … [Read more…]
Some time back, someone asked me whether particular kinds of stories were inherently Christian stories, and I didn’t have an answer at that moment. I have since suggested, notably in considering Faust, Sorcerer, and Deals with the devil, that some stories might indeed be at least strongly if not inherently Christian. However, the questioner was … [Read more…]
Three months ago, in Deals, I suggested something that flies in the face of much of the common wisdom about what is acceptable in gaming: I suggested that a game that focused on making deals with the devil was a very Christian game, which taught a very important Christian lesson to its players. Some have … [Read more…]
Thanks to Goethe, there is a very compelling story of a man named Faust, a man who made a deal with the devil. The story has become something of a cultural idea, such that the word “Faustian” is used to describe any effort to achieve something at too great a cost. Faust, according to the … [Read more…]
First, let me address the matter of the question. When talking about a designing a role-playing game and the role that magic in the role-playing game will take, we must first decide on what questions we are asking ourselves. Several questions come to my mind. First, what is magic? What is it, not only in fantasy and reality, but also … [Read more…]