A D&D relationship issue

[avin]

And any song about the stomping out of all human diversity and individual thought is frightening and disturbing.

It was a different time in 1971.

 

[billd91]

It was a different time in 1971.

Removing the impulse to use religion or nationality to divide people is also hardly stomping out all diversity and individual thought.

 

[noffham]

There is definitely a Yoko Ono joke in this thread somewhere...

And for even more fun, you then quote Lennon re: the Beatles being more popular than Jesus.

Yeah, this is a slow motion car wreck.

 

[Korgoth]

It was a different time in 1971.

I applaud all forms of Lennonism, tovarisch!

 

[Oryan77]

If a player can ask everyone at a table to not swear because they don't want to hear it, then would it be ok if I were to ask everyone in a new group to always swear because I like to hear it?

I mean, if 1 person thinks players should change a rated R group into a PG group just for him/her, why can't a person change a PG group into a rated R group just for him/her?

 

[avin]

Yeah, this is a slow motion car wreck.

Beatles bashing, OMG, edition wars will pale compared to this

 

[Celebrim]

I'm a DM that is currently running a 3.5/homebrew campaign with four players. I've got a player who is heavily religious(christian). Let's call him Jake.

Cool. I know this heavily religious DM. Let's call him 'Celebrim'.

Maybe he can help you out with your problem. And if it does actually become a problem, and you don't know what to do with her, have her talk to me about it and maybe I can help.

Jane is heavily religious also, you see, and she is the type of person who would NOT keep her religion and the game separate(to the point of asking if God is an available deity).

This is actually established? This is literal?

I think the first thing that I'd want to tell Jane is that this is a fantasy and its a fantasy for a very very good (Christian) reason. First, if 'God' is an available diety, than this puts the DM in the position of playing 'God'. This might actually border on the blasphemous, as no one is really in a position to judge God or speak for him. I certainly don't want to put myself in that position. Secondly, I think that is very important to keep a mental distance from the game. If we try to make the game too real, then we risk elevating what is at best (and worst) a simple vanity amongst friends into something outsized and out of proportion for what should be simply a game. By keeping the distance between the unreal world of D&D, and the real world where there is God and us separate, we give our minds the space to realize that what happens in the game isn't necessarily reflective of some truth about this world.

She might be interested in reading Tolkien's thoughts in this regard.

This being established, she has conditions like "keeping the game PG," essentially meaning that she doesn't want us to curse or mention sex. I don't necessarily run a lewd or vulgar campaign; but am I really supposed to stop the battle-weary NPC dwarf from explaining that "Those damned drow killed my party!"? Should I really try to censor the lecherous half-elf PC from making a comment about a barmaid's cleavage?

I try very much to keep the game PG myself, but on the other hand I'm not about to censor evil or try to make it seem attractive through that censorship. Evil is vile. And while you don't need to be gratuitious when evil is on stage, it's important to communicate its vileness without flinching.

I personally think that if you are giving her a fair shake, your friend Jane sounds more upset about the words than the animating emotions of the words. That said, I tend to dislike obscenity and casual profanity as well and can empathize. May I suggest to you that the particular set of signifiers we have in our culture that offends the ears of grandmothers are arbitrary and fungible. Its the ugly thought behind the words that is important, and there is no reason whatsoever that the words another culture uses to express ugly emotions and ugly sentiments about other people should be the exact same ones ours uses. (In fact, quite arguably the real vulgarities today are already quite different than the real vulgarities of 50 years ago. There are still words that you can't say in polite company, but they aren't the five or six 'bad words' that offend your friend the most).

In my campaign, for example, the word 'blood' is never ever ever used in polite society. It's the four-letter word beginning with 'f' of my campaign world. People go out of their way to avoid saying the word, or saying that someone was bleeding, or anything of the sort. A curse like 'Blood drinker!' or 'By the Mother's blood!' is the sort of thing that provokes instant duels to the death. You say something like, "He was shedding the water of life." or, "I'm afraid he has lost a great quantity of life's essential fluids.", or whatever. You never ever say, 'Blood!', 'Blood and bloody Ashes!', 'By the Blood of the Gods!', etc.

Similarly, people that want to curse tend to swear in the name of some deity - 'By Barmal's Talons, I'll smite you for that!' - just as well, we do when we want to. Or they might say, with mock, casual or even complete sincerity, 'Oh Merciful Builder!' Or as Conan would say, 'Crom!'

This serves several purposes. One, my truly vulgar NPC's don't have to offend anyone's senstive ears. Two, it helps create a distinctive alien culture. And three, it allows my PC's that wouldn't curse to play a character that would. I'd recommend thinking along those lines.

Finally, I would point out to your friend that the document she turns to for advice is not at all unflinching in its portrayal of violence and evil, nor in its use of crude language either and not uncoincidentally most of the words which are used as profanity in recent American culture are found within. As Bart Simpson says, "How can I talk about hell, without saying 'hell', man?"

 

[Celebrim]

I sympathize regarding the issue of religious gamers because I am one. The issue is complicated because a religion will identify certain moral absolutes, but each person who is a believer will also have an individual temperment. For example, the health of a person's prayer life and the amount of time they devote to the study of sacred texts is not necessarily connected to whether they drink alcohol, smoke stogies or habitually speak in a loud and strident manner. You might have a timid backslider or a raucous saint.

Some of the issues might actually be issues of temperment. For example, my EPT group contains those who habitually use invective and those who rarely (or in one case never) do; some who espouse dangerously erroneous religious and political views and others who are right-thinking and just. But we're all of the appropriate temperment to get along... and there have been a few who were of incompatible temperment who sadly ended up departing our company voluntarily. I would have preferred if they stayed (though there's 8 in the group including me, so we're not in any trouble) but that's how it goes sometimes.

A person might have made a prudential judgment to avoid the society of people who do X or Y; that could be a purely rational judgment unrelated to their temperment. So it won't do to be dismissive in any case.

I suppose the bottom line is that if you feel that you or your group engage in disreputable behavior, now is an opportunity to shape up. But if you behave in a reputable fashion, as reasonable adults, then you're not really bound to change much to accomodate this newcomer (regardless of the merits of her theological ideas). If your group behaves reasonably then it's up to this girl to decide if she likes the group enough to deal with your foibles (whatever those happen to be; we all have them). If she is presented with a reasonable environment in which to socialize and decides that it isn't what she's looking for, then that's OK for her.

I must spread more XP around before giving it to Korgoth again.

 

[13garth13]

Beatles bashing, OMG, edition wars will pale compared to this

I'm 37 years old, and I do believe this is the first time I've EVER heard/seen someone bash "Imagine" . I think I should take a gander outside to see if pigs are doing aerial acrobatics in the great blue yonder....

Perhaps everyone should keep their typing fingers cool and sensible, particularly in a thread about a topic (someone else's religious beliefs) which tends to be touchy at the best of times, and which tends to teeter precariously on the brink of EN World's rules....

Cheers,
Colin (going to listen to some George Carlin to get the anti-Lennon vibes out of his system )

 

[Celebrim]

then ask them there opinoin.
then reviel that these lyrics are from a song from John Lennon.
and ask them if this makes him a evil person.

Just for the record, if you ask a Christian if anyone is an evil person regardless of who that person is, they'll say, "Yes." This is because only God alone is good, and all Men are fallen creatures, etc. So yeah, John Lennon is a an evil person (Christians perfer the term 'sinner'), just like me.

As for the song, I find it very evil and disturbing, which frankly isn't surprising considering that it was written by a clearly confused hurting and hurtful adulterous drug-addled violent homophobic drunken self-centered cynical depressed sarcastic misanthrope who abandoned his friends and his wife and spent the latter years of his life wildly flailing around looking for something with meaning. I wish he'd found it before someone murdered him. His is a great human tragedy.

I find the song a strange mixture of niave and nihilistic. Niave because it imagines, as I don't, that the source of evil in the world is something other than human behavior and tries to lay the blame for what we do at someone elses feet.

Nihilistic because it really isn't hard to imagine a world with no countries, no religion, no possessions, and nothing to live for. You just go somewhere like rural Sudan or Somalia and you see exactly what such a world would be like. The greed and hunger of the world is not created by the religions or the nations or anything else. It's us. Take everything else away and the greed and hunger remains.