This is Faith in Play #83: Spirits, for October 2024. In my book Why I Believe I note that if there is a supernatural realm in which God exists, it is at least likely that there are other spirits existing in that realm. Further, those spirits might be at least as varied as living organisms … [Read more…]
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 #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 #21: Villainy, for August 2019. It was a year ago, but I had a stack of articles in the queue when it happened, and decided not to disrupt the plan by answering what appeared to be a question from a Troll posted to our Facebook page (I managed to lose the … [Read more…]
This is Faith in Play #14: Wickedness, for January 2019. In discussing Dungeons & Dragons® alignment, as we began last May with True Religion and continued looking at that which the game calls “good” in Goodness, it is important to remember that each alignment is something in which people actually believe. That becomes a problem … [Read more…]