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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 467011" data-attributes="member: 259">Well, okay, vandalism/violence in the name of gaming is pretty doubleplusunhunkydory.  And a couple of ill-advised adventures in my college days leave me convinced that drugs and gaming don't mix (with the exception of moderate caffeine and alcohol, natch).But the attempt to cast real spells?When I was in junior high, my gaming friends and I made up a fantastic world of which we were the rulers, and I was the spellcaster.  I spent many afternoons writing spells for this world, complete with verbal and somatic components based on Latin, movie-spells, and my basic understanding of real-world thaumaturgical practices.  Other junior-high kids thought I was a freaky dork for it, but I didn't come out worse for the wear.And so many folks have become interested in druidism through D&D that Ar nDraiocht Fain, a national druidic-studies society, includes on their membership application a checkbox for "Dungeons and Dragons" under the "How did you become interested in druidism?" question.  (or at least they did when I joined them back in 1989).I don't see this kind of teenage exploration as particularly harmful.I do think RPGs can help folks develop a morality, but I don't know that it's good for teaching morality.  Games are often at their best when players get to experiment with a different morality altogether -- the unswerving certainty of a paladin, the loose property concepts of a thief, the deemphasis on humanity of a druid.  When I ran games as a teenager, I loved playing with this stuff, loved setting up societies around different moral concepts.  It was a way for me to think about issues, to conduct thought experiments, to speculate.  I didn't try to teach my players anything, but I hope that they got a chance to think about these different issues even as I did.Daniel</blockquote>

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