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From: brengle@hplabsc.UUCP (Tim Brengle)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: One Ex-Referree's Reason for quitting D&D (MED-LONG)
Message-ID: <2768@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 16:29:30 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2768
Posted: Wed Oct 23 16:29:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 01:19:30 EST
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Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA
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To put things in perspective, I have been a Christian for 10+ years, and
played D&D (and a couple of other FRPGs) for 5+ years -- AFTER becoming
a Christian.

There is no doubt that the game is appealing -- as an escape from the real
world pressures and hassles.  That is the primary reason that I started playing.
Add that I have always been fascinated by magic (I have EXTENSIVE knowledge
of both ritual and stage magic, but that is another story...) and you can
probably see how inviting AD&D was to me.  I started a group where I worked
that played on Friday afternoons while everyone else was getting smashed at
the company's beer busts.  I referreed there for most of the 5+ years that
I played with the group.

Hence (I never could get over being a mathematician :-), I know a great deal
about FRPGs in general and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in particular.

Everything was fine and I had a wonderful time for a long time.  Friday
afternoons were the highlight of my week.  And I had no religious problems with
the game at all.  Then a discussion came up amongst the 11 people in the group
about making the magic system more "consistent".  I decided to research and
try to infer some basic "physical" laws that would account for all of the
various types of magic in the game.  My training as a mathematician forced me
to try to find a set of postulates that would do the job.  I worked on the
project for more than a month, off and on, and finally came up with the only
set of assumptions that fit:  all of the magic in AD&D is based on demonic
or angelic intervention.  It was the only assumption that fitted all the data.

In and of itself, that was no real problem to me.  After all, this was just
fantasy.  Then my wife, pastor, and a counsellor that I was seeing all came
up with the same statement within a week of each other:  having anything to
do with the spiritual world (even in your mind's eye) opens one up to that
world in reality.  What I mean is, even fantasizing about having magical
powers lowers ones defenses against the spiritual warfare that is going on
around and within us all the time.  As a Christian, that still posed no problem
to me -- I am covered by the Blood of Christ.  The problem became: what about
non-Christians?

I found that I was inadvertantly opening total innocents up into a world
of powers that they could not cope with -- and they did not have the protection
of God's grace to keep them safe.  As I realized this, and thought about the
changes that I had seen in the players around me, I knew that I could no
longer support AD&D as a totally harmless game.  I left the group, but not
without a lot of agonizing.

This is not to say that I am giving up on FRPGs altogether.  In fact, I am
still looking for one that does not have the same (or similar) problems.

					Tim Brengle