From: v131p9t3@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Ninstar Cybermage - Back Again from the Mists!)
Newsgroups: rec.music.christian,rec.games.frp,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: From rec.music.christian about Role Playing Games and Christians
Keywords: RPG's, Christians, Debate
Date: 6 Apr 92 05:59:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <oakes.702319112@clear15>, oakes@rtsg.mot.com (Ronald Oakes) writes...
>I would like to add an additional thought:  Annother poster responds that
>Role Playing Games contain things that are real, sighting Deamons and Magic
>as examples.  He then concludes that playing these games is bad.  Monopoly
>also contains real things, Real Estate and Railroad Tycooning.  Do the
>people who believe that playing Role Playing Games will cause us to use
>Magic and become Deamon worshipers, also believe that anyone who plays
>Monopoly will become Greedy Real Estate Tycoons?

I fail to see the relevance of the people who claim this anyway.  First of all
they are assuming that we believe demons and magic to be real(I do but not as
implemented in any game thus far.  So far their ideas have been fun but 
ludicrous, and therefore NOT real).  Next they assume that we'll become
demon worshipers and axe murderers because this game promotes this.  Now, I
haven't played with everyone, but I've run into fairly few examples where people
played evil characters.  Thus, by playing good characters, they would be 
promoting an adversarial relationship with demons at best, and most likely 
a state of war with them.  Also, they would be promoting behaivior that tries
to STOP axe murderers,criminals,marauders(My GOD, if you play this game you 
may become *gasp* COPS! 8-))  Might as well just kill ourselves now.  Oh no,
now I'll be accused of promoting suicide.  Well my games never made me feel that
way, but listening to people trash roleplayers this way did.  After all, if I 
can't expect rational treatment about a GAME, I may as well forget about it
when I take my landlord to court for neglect, or try to get an insurance 
company to pay for my cancer treatments, or any number of less serious things
And then they say that it promotes violence.  Well whimper elsewhere, because
I'm afraid that there are far too many things which promote violence in the 
world to go blaming the role players, and role players are exposed to all of 
them. Just like everybody else.

It works like this. What you promote in a game depends on your personality
going into it.  If you're a nice guy, you tend to play a reasonably nice guy
in the game.  You might play an evil being as a break from reality, but it
will be noted as such, a flight of fancy, and will not influence you.  In 
reality, the only way for such a game to change you is if someone else brings
an alien element into the game, and HE(a satanist, axe murderer, etc.) warps
you.  In this case the game is not at fault, it is one of the players.  In other
words, someone was screwed up already.

Mind you, I don't like some games because they contain a great deal of 
material that I find offensive.  I won't play some games because I find them
to be too combat oriented, or because they slant towards evil characters and
tendencies, but I will still stand by my point above, even for a player
of one of these games.  My guess is that someone who likes these games can enjoy
himself without being influenced.

I have yet to make a moral judgement based on a table of hit probabilities,
and that is essentially what a role playing game is.  The rest is backgrouns
and is no more harmful than a novel.

James Shank           	#		v131p9t3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
AKA: Ninstar Cybermage  #	or	shank@acsu.buffalo.edu
###############################################################################
"Ten thousand years old...He could be trouble." -Vampire Hunter D
"Every night I say a prayer, in the hope that there's a heaven..."-Styx
"How do you make ammends for a god's sins?"-Forgotten Realms
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From: rhm@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Bob Miller)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 23:04:52 GMT
Subject: Re: Word Bonus Points
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA