Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aristotle" data-source="post: 1848480" data-attributes="member: 5885">Not much to add over what’s already been said here. When I was growing up this situation was much more prominent. The religious networks (at least in my area) would dedicate hours of television on the evils of role playing or interviews with former role players who were on death row for killing loved ones and blamed satanic games for their situation, or ex-cultists claiming D&D was the gateway game that led them to evil. *sigh* At 17 years old my parents found a stash of role playing books in the ceiling above my closet (where any of my friends might have stashed some playboys). Since that day I've found myself constantly debating the value of gaming and how a game in and of itself can not be evil (but like any tool it could be used for less than good purposes). The game does not instruct you on the proper procedures of real world ritual, who and what to pray to if you want "real power", or any other real world occult practices. It does depict demons, evil spirits, and various "vile" beings. Of course rules for these unsavory things need to exist in order for the heroes to be able to overcome them. If simply having evil an antagonist makes something satanic, then a great deal of non-game literature and media out there needs to be destroyed. The game is a tool for storytelling. Sure, someone could tell some very dark (even satanic) stories with this tool... but only because that person chose to use the tool for that purpose. Not because the tool forced them to, or because that is the only function it has. I can't say role playing has brought me into religion (I question my faith just as much now as I did as a kid, before I got into gaming) but it has inspired me to ask more questions and to be more interested in the history of real world faiths. Role playing has certainly not made me less religious or given me a dim view of faith (although I do get exasperated defending my hobby to uninformed members of the religious community). I can say role playing saved my life. While the kids I grew up with escalated from simple vandalism to full scale criminal behavior; I was reading fantasy novels. While those kids were on the street fighting, doing drugs, or performing criminal acts; I was chowing down on pizza and Coke, and making plans to storm the keep. And while those kids were overdosing, getting killed, or getting sent to prison; I was mastering the art of storytelling and world design. I can honestly say that I would have been out there, with those guys, if I had not found gaming. As it stands 8 of the 10 of us kids from my neighborhood are dead or in prison. I wonder if I'd still be on the same side of that statistic without role playing games.</blockquote>

Verification