Christian Role-Playing Games

I found a kind of interesting article/selection of links by a Christian pastor talking about how much he enjoys role-playing. I’ve never actually read anything by Christians which was pro-RPG games, so it struck my fancy.

The classic example of how much really serious Fundamentalist Christians despise RPG’s is probably Jack Chick’s classic 1984 Bible comic, Dark Dungeons. In this, a girl starts playing RPG’s and this becomes her entry-point into a dangerous bloodthirsty coven operating covertly among teens in her neighborhood, channeling demons and nonsense like that. When one of the teens’ RPG character dies, the girl decides she can’t go on with life, and we find out that she hanged herself in the bedroom. It’s actually even more incredible than it sounds, and is one of my favorite Jack Chick tracts (along with the one about Sodom & Gamorrha where the townspeople try to “rape” the angels god sends to them).

Anyway, so yeah, seeing this guy’s article was a change of pace, to say the least. The best part is where he talks about how he thinks that the way God relates to us must be sort of similar to the way that a Dungeon Master relates to his fellow gamers.

    Laugh if you will, but I think that in some ways my experience with roleplaying has deepened my understanding of God. About two weeks before I left parish ministry, I preached a sermon that I (privately) refer to as my “God As Dungeon Master” sermon. The readings for that Sunday included Abraham’s call to leave home and head to Canaan. It occurred to me while preparing the sermon that God faces the difficult task of trying to reconcile God’s dreams and plans for us with our free will. This seems rather like the task of the game master in a roleplaying game, who has to plan an adventure while remembering that the players may choose to go in a completely different direction than intended. In the sermon, I described God as an unusual type of novelist (one whose protagonists have free will), but the guiding image in my mind was God as game master.

    My favorite aspect of the game is creating worlds, an activity that I consider an exercise of the image of God that is in me. As God is creator, so God made us creative, and there is perhaps no more godlike creative activity than inventing worlds of our own.

Oh, and he also talks about a Christian RPG that he admits is really preachy and shitty. It’s called DragonRaid. From the DragonRaid website:

    DragonRaid is an exciting experience in adventure simulation. More than just a game, it offers hours of enjoyment while teaching participants to resist sin, counter deceptive arguments, memorize Scripture, and build moral and spiritual character. The DragonRaid system encompasses many different adventures. On the mythical world of EdenAgain, players meet challenges that parallel real life. The imagined dangers compel them to grapple with conflicting values, discover how faith in Christ can shape behavior, and reflect on what is really worth living and dying for.

Wow! Countering deceptive arguments and memorizing scripture? This sounds like the funnest game of all-time! Everyone should buy a copy and play with their fellowship groups! The description of “The DragonRaid Allegory” and “How it works” sounds much closer to a cult than anything I’ve personally ever heard of in D&D (although I’ve never actually played a real D&D game - only ones on the computer).

Just found another review of DragonRaid, by Jonathan Tweet. I guess it came out in the 1980’s and was criticized by Christians for exactly the reasons described. This is a good segment from that:

    DragonRaid forbade gamemasters from creating adventures or even ad libbing events within a prepared adventure. Since the goal of the game was pedagogy and orthodoxy, it was contrary to the game’s purpose to let gamemasters have control. Likewise, players were essentially not allowed to diverge from the plot defined for them.

Same old tricks, no matter the format…


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This entry was written by Tim Boucher, posted on November 18, 2004 at 1:52 am.

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