mjyoung.net/dungeon/confess.html
Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons(TM) Addict by M Joseph Young I am a Christian--born again, spirit-filled, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb--who for years played Dungeons & Dragons(tm) and other role-playing games. I write this so that other Christians will understand how it is possible for a Christian to become involved in such games. It is important that you accept the fact that I am a Christian. To this end, and recognizing that I am saved by grace, not by works I have done, I would recount just a part of my Christian experience so that you may know me by my works. I was as a youth raised in Baptist Sunday Schools until the age of twelve, when a business relocation landed me in a Presbyterian congregation. By then I had learned the scriptures well enough that the Presbyterians chose me as one of two youths to represent them on WNBC (New York) radio's Bible quiz. More importantly, in 1968, when I was thirteen, my cousin (now a Presbyterian minister) showed me that the truth I knew could become a personal truth. Using a Campus Crusade "Four Spiritual Laws" leaflet, he led me into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. To trace in detail the fellowships and ministries through which I grew would take too much space. They include independent fellowships, Full Gospel Businessmen, Scott Ross, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Assembly of God churches, and many others. Before I finished high school I took the opportunity to carry Bibles into Romania with a high school choral group, and started an evangelistic music ministry in New Jersey. Over the next decade, my music, evangelism, and teaching were heard from Maine to Maryland. Seeking to better serve God with my music, I went to college to study the Bible. In five years of study I earned an Associate of Arts from Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts in Teaneck, New Jersey, and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Biblical Studies from Gordon College. I took all this accrued study, and wound up on a small Christian radio station where for five years I struggled to fight management pressures to convert to a more financially profitable format while preaching and teaching the gospel on the air and in local churches. some of my songs are still sung as choruses in fellowships in the area. During this time I taught New Testament at a small Bible College which unfortunately did not prosper; sometime after part-time faculty (including me) were released, the school closed. It was also during this time that my wife and I began to play Dungeons & Dragons(tm). On the contrary, my wife is a registered nurse who graduated from her program with a perfect 40 average. I eventually went on to complete my Juris Doctore, receiving an American Jurisprudence Award in Jurisprudence, and being listed in "Who's Who Among American Law Students" 8th and 9th editions. We played many kinds of games with many kinds of people. Apart from the fact that it was a relaxing and stimulating recreational activity, it enabled us to maintain relationships with people who were not Christians and, by sharing our lives with them, to move them slowly toward the gospel and into growth. We constantly kept our eyes open for new games, even subscribing to magazines which provided information about them. Then one day in about 1980, my wife brought home an article in Psychology Today(tm) praising the new game Dungeons & Dragons(tm), which the author had used as a group therapy technique for teenagers. From the sound of it, this was a game that would enable us to create adventures like those in some of our favorite Christian fiction--CS Lewis, JRR Tolkein, George MacDonald. We immediately sought it out, and purchased a basic set. The game lends itself extremely well to creating mortal battles with spiritual ramifications. I became the referee--the "dungeon master"--and created worlds for my friends to explore. After a time, I mentioned the game on the air as part of an illustration in a teaching. I was abruptly made aware of something I could not then understand: that there were Christians who believed the game was itself evil, demonic, and dangerous. They showed their concern for me (I was, fortunately, established and well loved by the Christians in the audience) by showering me with tracts by various and sometimes highly respected writers explaining why this game was so horrible. Perhaps the volume of material and the respectability of the authors should have caused me to abandon the game. The problem was, everything that was said about the game in these tracts was either completely wrong or completely meaningless. For example, it was pointed out that the Monster Manual--one of the rulebooks for the game--contained the words "devil" and "demon" many times--the authors had counted how many--between certain page numbers. However, the book in question is a sourcebook, essentially an encyclopedia of good and evil creatures, some very weak, others very powerful, which may be used at the referee's discretion to create encounters in his campaign. The words appear far more frequently in similar sections of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which to my knowledge nobody advocates burning. Furthermore, if these monsters were exactly the same but for the names--if they were called "orthnips" and "ognogs"--no one would complain. However, the swords and sorcery milieu (and the fictional and inspirational writings of many Christian authors) include many encounters with such creatures. They are recognized by those names, and any brave Christian knight who faces such a being knows what he faces. The game would be stripped of much of its Christian potential without them. It should also be noted that on the grand scale good is greater than evil. Solars, planetars, and devas--the ranks of angels--are greater in power than the demons, daemons, and devils who might be arrayed against them, even without recognizing (as the game does) that the evil creatures cannot cooperate in mutual trust. Furthermore, many of the character types (called "classes") which are the most powerful--paladin, ranger, cavalier--must be good without blemish or face severe consequences including the loss of all their spiritually-derived powers. And a high-level paladin--a knight of holy orders trained for many years in defending his lawful good faith--although a mere mortal is more than the equal of a devil, as he can bring to bear not merely his physical prowess but also the powers of good. Another attack is made upon the book Deities & Demigods(tm), replaced eventually by Legends & Lore(tm). These books contain a great deal of information about false gods from many lands. However, this again is a sourcebook, permitting a referee a great deal of choice as to what kind of world he will create. The question of the religious background of the campaign is specifically left in the hands of the referee who creates the world. I--and most of the referees I have met--always maintained that there was one God of gods, but that there were many so-called gods vying for worship who were some more and some less aligned with the truth, all of whom would eventually kneel to the God of gods. Following CS Lewis, I accepted the possibility that many of the pagan gods may have been spiritual beings, and some in ancient times may actually have not yet been forced to chose between God and Lucifer. In fact, the game gave us the opportunity to talk about moral, ethical, and spiritual questions with nonbelievers in a way we had never done before. It is a strong point of Dungeons & Dragons(tm) that it contains "alignment": every player must decide whether his character is good or evil, lawful or chaotic. The character must then abide by that decision, and face the consequences of his actions whether he chooses something required by his beliefs, or turns against those beliefs to act otherwise. The player is also bound by that decision, but in a different way. The player controls his character in exactly the same way as the author of a book. Alignment is a major decision about a character, and the player must follow the alignment decision in other decisions he makes for the chara...
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