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 #40: Harry Potter Series Follow-up, for March 2021. This was originally published as an entry in the Blogless Lepolt web log at Gaming Outpost under the title Opinion Vindicated, and recently recovered thanks to Regis Pannier of the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be. Many of you … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #39: Of Aliens and Elves, for February 2021. Fantasy and science fiction are riddled with races. Star Trek offers Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Bajorans, and a host of others. Dungeons & Dragons gives us multiple varieties of Elves, Dwarfs, Gnomes, and Halflings, just for starters, and keeps going from there. … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #35: Seekers, for October 2020. The “magic” in our role playing games is “make believe.” It’s not real, and no one could by reading any of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks or source books learn how to do any “real magic,” if such a thing exists. Indeed, you can’t learn … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #32: Doing Something, for July 2020. Although this is actually about a gaming referee technique, I’m starting with an example from a book, my novel Verse Three, Chapter One, freely accessible on the web. It also begins with magic items, but moves beyond that to objects in other settings and genres. As … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #12: Fiction and Lies, for November 2018. I once encountered someone who held the view that all of Jesus’ parables were literally true, that they were recountings of real events of which He in His omniscience was aware. There really was a Good Samaritan, a Prodigal Son, a woman who … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #8: Redemption Story, for July 2018. Years ago I wrote Faith and Gaming: Redemption, which was republished last spring. In it I made the distinction between the “Prodigal Stories” that we sometimes call stories of redemption and the real “Redemption Story”, the story of how the price was paid, how … [Read more…]
In The Wind in the Willows the main characters sing a Christmas carol which speaks of the animals as the first to “sing Noel”, to recognize Christ on Earth. It is, of course, a fantasy; and perhaps more than that, it is a children’s fantasy. There is no reason to take it seriously. On the … [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…]
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…]