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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 477085" data-attributes="member: 6533">Good lawd, I'm being pointed at !!  Through text!  ...for the first time in my life.  I will head over to Celebrim and ask him what he's saying since I heard Thomas Aquinas mentioned and am not certain in what context or tone, the thread is loud and there appear to be a lot of conversations going on.  I will also comment on how much I will miss the Thomas Jefferson quote.  One less quoter of Thomases in the world is a sad loss, particularly one who quotes Jefferson on economy.  Pursuit of Happiness being a phrase of both thinkers, I see the the passing of an era of happy justification passing away into the mist of histories that have never been.Any, I'm a grad student in a specialty of English Studies in the United States who did undergrad in a great books program, so please recognize and forgive my bias, but......I think that one of the important aspects of gaining moral lessons from DnD is that it is a game, and obviously so.  In my experience on both sides of a classroom and gaming table, kids who play FRPGs, and particularly DND, have a much finer sense of the differences between the dynamics of morality in a fictional universe and in a non-fictional context.  Very few people are aware of both as individually and distinctly valuable.  Players and DMs are also both very cognizant of the idea of narrative necessity and suspicious of how necessary obvious narrative neatness is.The very fact that many children and young adults have 'played' with good and evil seems to make more them more aware of the complications of applying those two categories to actual behaviour.  Though I do wonder how willing RPGers are willing to abandon the idea of Good and Evil as categories all together.I certainly don' t think it is the only didactic benefit of playing RPGs, but I do find it an interesting benefit.  As much because of how general it is, as how important it may or may not be.I do believe, however, that the didactic benefits of playing DnD as written largely stem from the didactic benefits of playing out these issues as a game and a particular narrative genre.  In line with that I found D20 Modern really disturbing in how it kept much of the play of the game despite how changed the context was.  Alignment is almost the least of the things that needs adjusting when bringing the genre to the modern world.  I liked the effort in the end, but it really disturbed me for a while and I can't say I'm entirely comfortable yet.That's all I got for now.  Fun thread.  Important to revisit and rejustify what's good and evil about your hobby.  Not to mention your own character's behaviour.</blockquote>

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