"D&D is evil. I have seen it from the inside."

[wingsandsword]

1. Wicca is very eclectic, with all sorts of traditions and the only required commonalities being a belief in the Rede and reciprocity (Three-fold law), and I've heard of a LOT of traditions, but never an 'Alexandrian' one. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but if it does, when talking to others a practitioner would almost certainly say 'of an Eclectic path' rather than assuming someone else would just know about their path.

Alexandrian Wicca is an actual tradition. The Covenant of The Goddess (a large, overarching intertraditional Wiccan organization for those who don't know) actually discusses it at: http://www.cog.org/wicca/trads/alex.htm and a little googling can find you lots of information on it.

It's a relatively old form of Wicca, in that it dates back to the 1960's (I'm a practicing Wiccan solitary myself, but I have no delusions that the faith is anything ancient, it's a modern reconstruction based on principles and ideas of ancient faiths, not some ancient lineage passed down untouched for centuries or millennia.)

Since it's a Wiccan form dating back to a decade before D&D was even produced, was founded in England (and thus on a different continent than EGG even when he was wargaming in the '60's), and the original post seemed remarkably trollish, I think it's safe to say that there is nobody practicing D&D magic as a religion unless they are seriously reality-deficient.

 

[Quasqueton]

the original post seemed remarkably trollish

Huh? How so?

Quasqueton

 

[wingsandsword]

Huh? How so?

Sorry, I didn't mean your post as "original" post, I meant the post where on the first page, someone talked about Alexandrian Wicca being based on D&D, which was the thing I was responding to a response to, and thus the "original" post in my conversational sense.

My apologies for the miscommunication.

 

[Macbeth]

Ah, but it was on one of those news shows just this week, one million people now worship Satan, four million play D&D, there has to be a relationship, everyone knows D&D equals...

Wait, does that make me 1/4 of a satanist?

And if so, which fourth?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Wait, does that make me 1/4 of a satanist?

And if so, which fourth?

Why that one's easy.

The fourth fourth.

 

[Sejs]

Wait, does that make me 1/4 of a satanist?

And if so, which fourth?

Your left leg, from a bit below the hip and down, as well as some of the buttock. Also, both ears, and one kidney. Not sure which kidney, exactly - it varies from person to person.

 

[Buttercup]

Not sure which part was "silly", but you can bet your bottom dollar that I can get very, very silly around that time of year. Must be the moon.

Oops! My post, that you quoted, was aimed at the starter of this thread, not at you. But I wandered away to let the dog out in the middle of posting, and so my post fell later in the thread than I expected. I should have quoted him to avoid confusion.

 

[Torm]

Moderators, this is simply out of line. I'm not even sure why this explicitly *religious* thread hasn't been shut down yet, but as a Jew I certainly take offense to religious folks being called "sheep" and "lemmings".

One of the moderators recently explained to me (and by this I in NO WAY mean to say that he specifically authorized anything) that the reason for the rules against politics and religion was to allow them to shut down conversations that were losing their civility regarding those topics - not to censor them altogether.

That said, I don't believe chrisnd was trying to besmirch religious folk - on the contrary, it seemed to me that he was expressing disillusionment with folks who claim to be religious, but would rather blindly follow what someone else tells them their religion should be than actually studying the doctrine and scriptures themselves.

He did follow by saying that he, himself, was a "sheep" but of a different sort. He will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe by this he referred to "The Lord is my Shepherd....." He could hardly speak badly of truly religious people, and claim to be one, himself - unless he's some sort of masochist.

I understand your cultural and historical reasons for being especially sensitive (I have the same, on the flip side - I carry the shame of being related to some who carried out atrocities) but I promise you that anyone legitimately trying anything like that would have a whole LOT of other people on these boards to go through before you'd ever have to worry about it - and some of us aren't Christian OR Jewish!

As to why this might be a valid topic here: the whole "D&D gamers are Satanists" thing has been thrown at us for a long time, and when new gamers hear about it, or gamers hear about new aspects of it, it comes up - quite validly, I believe. And its a darned hard topic to talk about without discussing the religious doctrines that mean it is or is not true. And while it is true there are other boards that promote such conversations, sometimes you want to hear what the people you've been talking to think about something.....

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Moderators, this is simply out of line. I'm not even sure why this explicitly *religious* thread hasn't been shut down yet, but as a Jew I certainly take offense to religious folks being called "sheep" and "lemmings".

I feel compelled to politely disagree with your characterization of this thread as "explicitly religious." While I agree that calling folks of a religious bent, or even a particular religious bent is out-of-bounds, I think that this sort of broadly painted derision is problematic regardless of the fact that it is a religious group being maligned.

Furthermore, I think that the rules of decorum, on these or any boards, must be weighed against our individual responsabilities to avoid that which we find offensive. If I were to go looking for thing at which to take offense, it wouldn't take me long. I could even take offense at other poster's reckless use of product identity names for well-known beverage mixes, but I don't.

 

[Mercule]

I am probably one of the few people here who are willing to actually discuss their Christian faith as it applies to the d20 game (mostly because I don't want to break the main rules, so I need to make the connection somehow). I think that most of that has to do with the fact that just not very many Christians play this game.

There are probably more of us around than you know. My whole gaming group is Christian. I'm an elder/deacon/lay minister in my church, and have no issues reconciling my faith and my faith and my hobby -- in fact I attribute a large portion of my faith to some paths D&D set me upon.

I know that there are quite a few devout Christians on this board, too. I could name a half-dozen without too much thought and there are several others that I know of, but can't think of usernames right now. Considering this is a board that discourages religious discussions, I'd imagine there are quite a few people who just don't break the rules or even edge up to it.