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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3850580" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, I don't think it is.  The occult influences of D&D are kinda undeniable.  You can refute Mrs. Pulling, you can refute that they make the game Satanic, or that they make people more likely to commit suicide, but you can't refute the bare fact that they are there.Irritatingly to me, Mr. Stackpole's 'Pulling Report' is sometimes guilty of the same boneheaded assumptions that Mrs. Pulling is guilty of, that being, 'My experiences with gaming are representative of the whole.'   It wouldn't be very difficult at all to take particular 'refutations' that Mr. Stackpole makes and get rollicking good arguments over them even amongst gamers.  Nor is Mr. Stackpole's report of much use to preaching to anyone but the choir.  The serious rebuttle of Mrs. Pulling, and one that Mr. Stackpole makes, is that in her writings about alleged criminal cases relating to D&D, she has had only a casual relationship with the truth.  That charge is  to the point, and is I think well established.  On the other hand, it is not well established that "alignments are generally viewed with distaste among players"  I think it would be a mistake to think that D&D's problems get widespread acceptance have anything to do with Mrs. Pulling, Jack Chick, or even Pat Robertson.Speaking as someone who is very religious, no you must certainly not do this.  Vainity is one thing, and in the context of a game rather minor issue since all games are vain to some extent, but blasphemy and sacriledge is a far more serious problem.  The thing about having a pure fantasy is that you don't have to make any direct statements about anything real.  When you explicitly set your game in the real world of a real religion, then everything you do in the game is making a statement about the real world.   I have no real problem acting as a DM in the role of Zeus.  I'd rather hesitate to act as a DM in the role of God, or do anything else in that setting for fear of leading someone astray as a false teacher, etc.</blockquote>

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