Apparently terrorism has fallen a long way from the old days. Today's prime target is the small Christian role-playing audience. Mr. Hickman is entitled to his opinion, but I am insulted by his cheapening of 9-11. The event has nothing to do with Dragon Magazine and gaming. At least Dragon didn't try to sell the issue by striping the cover in red, white, and blue.
Sure, they probably shouldn't have sent the article out to everyone, but he didn't have to read it either. I get vile Chrisitian propaganda hung on my door knob and placed into my mailbox all the time. You know what I do, I cringe and throw it away. I don't read it! He should've thrown the magazine away and asked the publisher for a refund.
Not everything is made to a Mormon's taste because not everyone is a Mormon. If you choose a stringent life-path, you must filter for yourself. Don't expect people from a different path to filter for you. Because you're mature enough to filter for yourself, mature enough to make a decision whether you view content. That's why it's called mature content--not that the writing inside is mature but that mature people can decide what to do with it, can look at it and say, "Well that's really cool," or "Well, that was all sinful." Being a mature person, Mr. Hickman decided he didn't like it and good for him.
Now, I must say, I have a little personal boycott of my own and it started long before this: I won't read books written by Mr. Hickman. I read a couple and having studied myth and literature for years now, I can see his Christian views seeping all through those stories. Now a writer's views always seep through a story, but here I mean seeping in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, like he's trying to convince me of something or tell me how life really is. I'm not a Christian, and I find Christianity offensive. So I do the mature thing and avoid his books.
I'm not surprised by his statement. If you look at his website and his views on role-playing, as a gamer you should be offended. He thinks there's only one way to play games and that's just not true. He can have a good morality play if he and his players want that, but the rest of us don't have to play it that way. Most Christians grow more and more conservative as they age and he seems to be another one. Look at Orson Scott Card for example. He's one of the best writers out there in my opinion but I just can't stomach his books like I used to. And the stuff on his website . . . I just don't go there anymore.
I'm still confused as to how 1 issue out of 300 ruins it all. Wait, I guess it's because you only have to sin once to go to Hell or something like that.
You know, he makes it sound like no one else has ever worked to improve D&D's image. And like someone said before, people who thought it was evil back in the day still think it's evil now. Do you think cleaning it up actually changed the minds of people who showed that it was evil by misunderstanding and (illegally in some circumstances I've seen) misquoting the text?
And sorry, but I've never seen a D&D book with Comics Code Authority stamp on it. I don't think the major comics companies even use that drivel anymore.
