In the earliest articles of this series, we were looking at what might be considered the issues in role playing, those areas in which Christians might have concerns. We started with some fairly simple ones—the implications of various types of mechanics, the matter of creating settings which were different in any way from the world … [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…]
I was recently re-reading my article Faith and Gaming: Christian Games (I often re-read my old material, and sometimes it gets me thinking afresh about issues previously addressed, so I write new ones like this one, usually posted over at the mark Joseph “young” web log). I think every time I read that article, which … [Read more…]
It happens that as I write this the world again stands on the brink of war, although as you read it that war probably will have been resolved. I’m old enough to know that this happens with alarming frequency, and that whenever it does happen there will be people arguing about whether the pending or … [Read more…]
Eight months ago we began exploring ways of bring our faith to bear on our games. In that time, we looked at quite a variety of ideas. We said that you could play the Good Guys, characters who shared at least part of your faith; but that you could also play the Bad Guys, showing … [Read more…]
I am often confronted in games by what I can only describe as foolishness on the part of the characters. Players often state that their characters are doing things that no sane person would even consider doing; and they, the players, have the nerve to get upset when their foolishness reaps its rewards. Recently someone … [Read more…]
I was looking back at the article Good Guys in this series, as it discussed how we can bring our faith into our games by playing characters who directly express that faith, when it suddenly occurred to me that I could not remember a character playing that sense of awe we sometimes have when we … [Read more…]
Many years ago I was at summer camp; it was a rather unusual summer camp. It was run by the United Presbyterian Church on the Lebanon, New Jersey, campgrounds of the American Baptist Convention, and it was for high school aged students who loved to perform music, giving them the opportunity to work under the … [Read more…]
There are ultimately two views of the universe. It is not quite so simple as the Christian view versus everyone else; that which Christians believe about the universe is shared by many other people. But the prevailing view of the age is not the Christian view; and if we are to bring our faith to … [Read more…]
Often you will get advice from Christians suggesting that if you want to play role playing games as a Christian you need to remove the magic from the games. Don’t play the wizards, whatever you do; and if you have the choice, stick to science fiction games, or espionage or western or other settings in … [Read more…]