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 #57: Heroes, for August 2022. I have a list of topic suggestions from readers to which I occasionally refer. Among the suggestions are lists of archetypes for that miniseries, many of which I don’t understand myself–but the word “hero” appears on several different lists, including Joseph Campbell’s and Carl Jung’s, … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #52: Pirates, for March 2022. We have yet another archetype character this month. I picked pirates for the category name because there is something romantic about them in the modern mind, but this broadly covers brigands, bandits, and similar scoundrels. When I put the question to my panel of experts, … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #51: Protectors, for February 2022. Last month we looked at another archetype character, exploring the positives and negatives of Mercenaries. In the discussion stimulated when I asked about the type, a confusion arose, bringing up a different type of fighter, exemplified by the legendary lone ronin of Japanese folklore, the … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #50: Mercenaries, for January 2022. Recently my attention was called to our article Faith and Gaming: Warriors, written about two decades ago, the first entry in our miniseries on Archetypes, looking at types of characters and how they reflect and challenge our faith. I remembered that I followed it with … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #29: Victims, for April 2020. One of the early superhero role playing games gave us the concept of the “DNPC”, the “Dependent Non-Player Character”, the person who is in the story because the hero needs to save someone. Superman has Lois Lane (pictured) and Jimmy Olsen; Spiderman has Mary Jane … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #9: Clowns, for August 2018. When I thought I was reaching the end of the Faith and Gaming series, Christian Gamers Guild member Lynette Cowper (who wrote GURPS Rogues) suggested that I address Archetypes. It was a challenging suggestion for me—I had never thought about characters in terms of archetypes. … [Read more…]
For the last few months we’ve been considering character Archetypes, what we can learn from these as Christians, and how we can use them to express our faith in our games. There are quite a few more we could cover, based solely on what someone has dubbed the professional archetypes, and it has been mentioned … [Read more…]
When the dwarfs said that they had come to hire a burglar, Bilbo Baggins was insulted. He was a respectable hobbit, a bit reclusive but generally admired in the community. He certainly was no thief. The dwarfs indicated that they meant no offense. You can call it expert treasure finder if you like. It’s all … [Read more…]
Two months ago we began considering character Archetypes and how they reflected our values, for better or for worse. Last month we considered Warriors in that connection, and this month we are going to expand on that notion by looking at the knight. To grasp this as an archetype, it is important that we agree … [Read more…]