Thoughts Concerning Tabletop Role-Playing Games

It’s not really jarring. Demon possession is the only major change I can think of. Regardless, whenever that first happens, it’s a major change, and you don’t see it in the OT, so what difference does it existing or being recorded in the intertestamental period make? You’re still left with the question of what (if anything) changed and why.

Regarding the church tossing out the Apocrypha, that’s assuming that God is not acting sovereignly in giving us His word and protecting it. In other words, the church doesn’t choose. The church is led, just like the men who were inspired to write in the first place.

And yes, we’re a bit off topic at this point. lol

2 Likes

People have raised some important issues. Here is my perspective.

There’s a multitude of role playing games out there in every genre you could imagine. And if you would like girls to have the opportunity to play the role of a strong pioneer woman, then I am sure somewhere out there is an Oregon Trail themed role playing game.

The way I see it, the role playing game is like Narnia – a place that kids travel to where they possess almost adult capabilities and engage in adult-like adventures. But it’s not a place where one actually becomes a regular adult and settles down to regular life. And so Lucy in Narnia, even when grown to adulthood in the book, never marries, bears children, or maintains a household because that would be beside the point of the story. But Lucy does act femininely in the adventures, and I expect female player characters in my adventures to do likewise.

Interestingly, my oldest daughter developed the expectation that her player character would eventually marry and have children in the game world simply because that is the expectation my oldest daughter has for herself in the real world. She had a discussion about that with my wife, who pointed out that her player character could no longer go on adventures when she had a baby to care for, so essentially her character would need to retire from adventuring, as would be natural in the context of the game world. My daughter understood that.

When it comes to magic in role-playing games, I have no fear that it will lead my children astray. Magic in my world simply happens, like in a video game, and has no involvement with the occult, and it does not arouse any interest or expectation among my children in magic in the real world. Nevertheless, there is not much magic in my world simply because I find it difficult to maintain consistency and reduce plot holes when magic is widespread (a shortcoming that I think the Harry Potter books suffered from). And in my game world, magic is not a very reputable activity, and wizards and magical devices are few and far between. Common people are suspicious of wizards because most are bad guys, and while the aristocracy finds it useful to have a good guy wizard nearby for the services he can provide, such a wizard would be never welcomed into polite society.

5 Likes

I always like a nice mead before I go a-questing. Now where can a body find rations in this town?

1 Like

If you keep your eyes peeled at garage sales and used bookstores (like Half Price Books) or search around Ebay, you can find the old Basic rules for pretty cheap too. Over the years I’ve hodgepodge collected the Moldvey and Mentzer basic sets. (sorry for the inside baseball)

1 Like

Magic isn’t very common in my games either, but not for in-game reasons, but because I’ve seen it’s a bit tedious for my kids to utilize the spell list. My son plays a cleric character in a healer role, and is almost always forgetting what spells he has access to and fails to keep track of them. He’d rather swing a mace.

That’s the one thing that bogs down our games, the D&D magic system is a bit less intuitive than ‘I swing my sword’, so sometimes (especially for things like healing) I don’t even care if there’s some ‘component’ or concentration or whatever that needs to occur.

1 Like

Back in the day, I liked the magic system of Rolemaster (published by Iron Crown Enterprises) better than the D&D style magic system. The combat system was also more realistic (and therefore deadly) – a high-level character would take as much damage from a well-placed sword-stroke as would a low-level character (unlike in D&D).

1 Like

@Joel I’ve never played Rolemaster, but I’ve heard it’s gritty. I’m sure you can tell that I come to these games from a story-gamer mindset. While I’ve played 5th edition, and it was fun, I’ve never been a fan of the way magic works in the D&D way. How does Rolemaster approach magic?

@deepermagic The question of “Is magic appropriate?” set aside, my honest opinion is that the use it and lose it approach to magic is such a cheat.

I also despise the Glass Cannon magic user.

Phenomenal Cosmic Power!

Itty-Bitty Hit Points.

As I mentioned above, I try to make magic more of a misunderstood technology, based on some artifact, which reinforces the “Treasure!” approach to questing. This also makes an artifact reskinnable to different genres. A wand that dispenses fireballs can easily become a cannon for low-tech or some firearm for future-tech, even a remote device.

So how do you keep such a thing from being abused? Why not just mash the magic button for every situation, appropriate or not? Unintended Consequences!

Nothing like a few spectacular or catastrophic failures to act as a chilling effect on the use of unexplained or exotic weaponry.

  • Do you know which end of the artifact is the business-end? (“There’s a loud noise behind you.”)
  • What happens if it over-heats? (Cook off all the charges?)
  • Is there an alternate trigger for an alternate effect? (Did you know that when you pressed it?)
  • Is there a built in safety or other security feature? (A beacon to the rightful owner?)
  • Did the designers ever intend for this device to be utilized underwater or in an atmosphere?
  • Maybe there was a reason this device was discarded or guarded…

Make a save or a check, depending on the device, to ascertain success or failure. Remove the tedious bits from the magic system altogether. You have the item, you have the ability, if you dare.

Just trying to simplify it for kids, without making it boring with automatic success or a magic user that asks if the party can rest after he spends his two bullets.

Why pick the magic dude that can’t wear armor then? Because he still gets a bonus to Intelligence, and that is what most artifact checks should target. (And give the poor guy some kind of armor, what adventurer runs around in his bathrobe?!)

Another consequence of handing out devices with specific abilities rather than “pick from a spell-list” is that I don’t have my kids combing through lists of spells that I don’t want them to read.

I don’t get too much into the weeds with magic, trying to change things, etc, but I do steer things in a certain way. One thing that I’m not a big fan of is when magic becomes the only solution, whether it is in defeating a bad guy or solving a problem. Maybe that’s where a magic artifact comes more into play. I’d rather a magic sword defeat an enemy rather than wizard vs wizard, (due mostly to the fact that our table rarely has a player who is a full blown magic user, but also because MAGIC ONLY seems more like a bad guy thing).

The old Conan stories touch on this a lot. Swords vs Magic is kind of the cornerstone of Swords and Sorcery genre. If Conan ever defeats the evil wizard it’s because of his might or because, via accident/providence, the magic backfires and Conan is the cause of it. Even Gandalf looks for Sauron to overplay his hand, to depend too much on his power, and seeks to use it against him.

That said, while I assume it can be a bit touchy for some, I do allow the Cleric class to be played. Which obviously opens up the issue of God/gods. How I’ve handled it–without implicitly inserting the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and our Lord Jesus Christ into the game as that could usher in some odd things–is that we use the Cleric as one who is the minister of the Light and Life. Our Cleric is a healer and is a terror to evil and the undead. There are no other ‘gods’ so much as evil forces. There is one Light. Again, this isn’t so much explicitly spelled out to my kids, so much as innately received, ala “The Emperor over the Sea”. I’m not sure how others would handle it with their children.

It’s been a couple decades since I’ve looked at the books, but I recall that Rolemaster had many more spells and these were organized in a thematic system such that magic users specialized in one of the themes. E.g., a magic user who could shoot fireballs would not also be able to cause someone to fall asleep or be able to perceive something happening out of sight. Compared to that, D&D has an incoherent grab-bag of spells. Also, Rolemaster used a magic point system such that any spell could be cast so long as enough magic points were available that day, which seems more natural than D&D’s requirement that the specific spells to be cast that day be decided in the morning. But since I am playing under a D&D framework I am using the D&D system without much modification since even small changes in the magic system can result in large game imbalances.

I am sympathetic to this approach, but some of my kids really love the idea of being able to cast spells like Gandalf, so I let them play a magic-user character.

My initial solution was to replace “gods” with “fairies” in how clerical/druidical magic was received since my kids know from fairy tales that fairies are not divine but have powers beyond the ordinary and will sometimes aid humans. Looking at it now, I think it doesn’t matter – kids will accept that a character can cast healing spells and have power against evil without asking how or why.

But in the game I lead there are no “undead” if you mean corpses animated by necromancy – the concept would be very creepy and distressing to my children. A human transitioning to a twilight life by means of evil magic, such as the Ringwraiths in LOTR, would be okay.

2 Likes

The ‘fairy’ replacement is a good idea! And you are right, kids will accept that a character can cast spells w/o asking how or why. That’s my experience too, and the biggest reason I haven’t really had to address it much.

And by undead, yeah, I mean zombies. Again, each household is going to have different ways of handling things. My kids are fine with it. There are some things in pre-written adventures that I veer from. We’re currently going through The Tomb of Annihilation and one of the main issues in the overarching plot is that there is a Death Curse and when people die their soul gets trapped by a sorcerer and this prevents ‘resurrection’. All of that is avoided with my group. I’d even avoid that with my adult gaming group. I don’t do ‘resurrection’ in the games. We might do a bit of ‘mostly dead’ ala Princess Bride if a healer is at hand, but I don’t want to trivialize something as astounding as resurrection. I’m sure it can be done well, but I don’t trust myself. So you die, you die. :wink: Also, the soul trapping aspect I just nix. I also heard in another popular pre-written adventure the characters have to self-mutilate themselves to gain some sort of advantage or something weird like that, or they’re put to some moral quandary where both choices are horrible. Those are the kinds of things I just flat out avoid or overhaul.

1 Like

Sorry to resurrect an old topic, but had to jump in here as a frequent player and occasional DM.

I see tabletop RPGs as essentially story co-creation, with dice added for randomness and probability mechanics.

I think like anything enjoyable, it can be idolized. The human heart is a factory for idols, as someone said once.

I did have a difficult case where I was able to share the Gospel with more than one person in a former gaming group at one point. My wife and I were the only Christians in this group. We enjoyed everyone’s company and were just building those genuine friendships. Then, our DM shot himself. He shot himself in the early morning hours of Mother’s Day with a Ruger. We all sat down hard. He was a former Army intelligence officer who was a company commander. He delivered the briefings about suicide. He was the most patient and kind person you’d ever meet and had a photographic memory. He was also a hardcore, committed atheist, which sounds weird to say. Basically, he was not particularly depressed, he only wanted to end his life on his terms, because he did not like the idea that some deity or other external control factor would determine his demise.

I know, hardcore stuff. The group took it pretty hard. We all did. We went to his funeral. It was presided over by some weird new-age priestess who said his energy went back to the stars or something weird like that. It was the most profoundly sobering and heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen. As an aside, strangely enough God used that experience to increase my zeal in the pulpit.

Anyway, the group sort of dissipated for a while, and then started getting back together for potlucks. Eventually we gamed again, and I ran things for a few sessions before people left (it’s a military community). In the in-between I was able to have some tough discussions with more than one of the participants about issues of First Importance, and I hope by God’s grace, “deliver my soul of their blood.”

Today I game (D&D5e) with another group. One of the members is a “lapsed Baptist” who professes paganism. Because of this shared interest in RPGs, I have been able to exchange materials with him and offer some pointed spiritual critiques as a friend. It is possible that he would never hear the Gospel from another, who can tell?

All I know is that storytelling is part of what it means to be human. I enjoy D&D, Pathfinder and other RPGs. They have led to some dear friendships, some heartbreaking devastation, and amazing, unscripted openings to share the Gospel.

3 Likes

A neighbor teenage girl is a good friend of our daughters, and her dad recently got a D&D set. My wife and I will invite them to play with us in a game I lead. These days I think people simply aren’t open to the gospel except in deeper personal relationships.

1 Like