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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mxyzplk" data-source="post: 5575990" data-attributes="member: 16450">Hey, no problem man, I knew it was contentious when I posted it in the first place. And easily misunderstood.  I know people are sensitive about this, and any discussion of possible down sides of RPGs and specific elements of gaming makes everyone figure the Pat Pulling/Tipper Gore/Jack Thompson brigade must be after them.  That's not me; I've played more RPGs that most other people and am not a communist hippie or Fundamentalist fascist whatever else people suspect whenever anyone has any reservations about ethics.Clearly my point is not as simplistic as "violence in RPGs causes violence." There's many other factors, and people respond differently, and blah blah blah. But cognitive training works.  We all accept it happily when it's good things.  I've read many a biography where someone gratefully attributes their character traits to, in part, their participation in team sports, etc. Similarly I think we all happily reflect on the teamwork, inventiveness, ability to game rules systems, etc. we get out of our RPG hobby.  Sure, moral development becomes more self-actualizing when you're an adult, but it still works.  We were all pleased by the X-Files episode where a guy said “I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons without learning anything about courage.” It's completely illogical to take the good and not the bad.So my only point on this, and it's a side point in my original article, but is that the things we train ourselves in as part of our gaming do become part of us. And if you are inculcating a simplistic morality where it's OK to kill or marginalize other races or belief systems, then you just might be a little more likely to buy into some of the unfortunate things that work that way in the real world.  It's not like the news media hasn't degenerated into this, that we're not seeing things related to our own current events, where clearly this has become a dominant mode of thinking.  Not caused by RPGs and video games and TV, certainly, but is that what we should be echo-chambering ourselves with? At a bare minimum we need to be cognizant of it, and if we are knowingly practicing in-game unethical behavior, to keep an extra guard against it seeping into our real-world thinking.</blockquote>

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