I put this together in 2007 for an acquaintance to help convince her parents that role-playing games were OK. I don't think it worked in that case, but I came across the argument just now again in 2014 and thought it worth putting out there. I am indebted to the sources cited here for how they informed my opinion at the time and, having read and seen a great many things since, I still think these cut to the heart of the issue. Thus ...

Reasons why fantasy role-playing games are safe, and even good for a Christian

First, some arguments against role-paying games, saying they are evil:

In ‘Dungeons and Dragons: Concern for the Christian’ (http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=603) by Mr. & Mrs. Mel Gabler, the ultraconservative Texas textbook critics, they warn that young people may be introduced to world mythology, and may devote excessive time and energy to role-playing. Interestingly, there is no talk of the game leading to suicide or murder. This site also has long essays against Judaism, Islam, Michael Jackson, Mormonism, Hinduism, Carl Sagan, and much more. This is the same Mel Gabler who is quoted in "The Stupidest Things Ever Said": "Too many textbooks and discussions leave children free to make up their minds about things."

Chick Publications, (www.chick.com) radical Protestants, once published a comic book called "Dark Dungeons", depicting gamers acquiring supernatural powers and being driven to suicide. The company has also published a collection of young-earth creation-science lies in comic-book form, and an anti-Roman Catholic comic which calls communion "the death cookie". The latter speaks for itself, while young-earth creationism was condemned as dishonest by every U.S. Nobel science laureate in the amicus brief to the Supreme Court in "Edwards". Of course, if you would rather believe a comic book, that is your business.

Demonbuster (www.demonbuster.com) gives only passing reference to Dungeons and Dragons. The same page claims that Cabbage Patch dolls also teach satanism, and that people who are born out of wedlock "have so much trouble with their church relationships; they are cursed." The site also devotes a full page to diabetes (http://www.demonbuster.com/diabetic.html) -- "squid-like demons attacking ten parts of your body."

The links above are listed at www.pathguy.com/lipo.htm#relright. It’s the site of a Christian D&D gamemaster and pathologist. Elsewhere, he gives an inspiring argument for why Christians should play role-playing games (http://www.pathguy.com/whyrpg.htm).

If role-playing games are wrong, why are there so many Christians who enjoy them, and even create role-playing games especially for Christians?

The Christian Gamers Guild: http://www.christian-gamers-guild.org/welcome.html

Holy Lands, the free Christian RPG: http://www.holylands.net/

The Way (http://www.rollspel.com/engelsk/way.htm) is an educational fantasy role-playing game for church youth groups. It is Christian, but non-denominational, and therefore useful in all mainstream churches. It lets the players deal with complex moral problems and serves as a basis for teaching a Christian way of life.

According to the site, The Way was developed at the youth works section of the Västerås Bishopric of the Church of Sweden (the Lutheran church that is the main denomination in Sweden). The project was endorsed of Bishop Ytterberg, financed by the Administrative Board of the Bishopric and managed by Len Howard. Reverend Åke Eldberg has provided theological and pastoral advice during the development.

Is fantasy, stories about magic and monsters, bad?

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, two Christians, wrote the most popular fantasy series of the 20^th century, The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia respectively.

Fantasy actually helped Lewis, a former atheist, to become a Christian. Lewis converted to Christianity because of the influence of Tolkien, his Christian friend, and Christian fantasy writer George MacDonald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis#Conversion_to_Christianity). In Narnia, Lewis actually set out to create a vision of Jesus in a fantasy world. The Jesus figure in The Chronicles of Narnia is Aslan, the talking lion, who sacrifices himself for his friends but returns as king. Lewis also wrote many books defending Christian faith).

Pathguy.com also says D&D fantasy was derived mostly from the Christian fantasy milieus, including Tolkien, and that even Pat Robertson's channel (very conservative Christian) has a medieval cartoon called Prince Valiant. Valiant has been in newspapers since 1937. Prince Valiant once used the guise of a demon, and began his adventures by meeting Merlin in King Arthur’s court. Magic and demons appear in a fantasy that even the most conservative Christians enjoy. Hmmm.

Finally, Tolkien’s lengthy essay on fairy stories (http://www.pathguy.com/ofs.htm) says the following:

"The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatasrophe [unexpected happy ending] …

"But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on."

Just remember to be an effective steward of your time. Heroic fantasy games may be a good way to explore what good is, but the Bible describes what good we ought to be doing: 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 4:11-13, Romans 12:6-8. Shepherding God’s lost sheep is always a better use of your time than just gaming, so look for opportunities to be a shepherd more often. I’m personally hoping I can use fantasy role-playing games themselves as a ministry.

P.S. If you like Harry Potter, be aware that there are a lot of sites which bash it as witchcraft/Satanism. Those claims are argued at the urban legend site Snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/potter.asp). And it seems arguments that children become witches or Satanists after reading Potter all point to a fake news article on www.theonion.com.

"If The Onion's parody has demonstrated anything, it's that we should be worrying about adults not being able to distinguish between fiction and reality. The kids themselves seem to have a pretty good grasp of it." (Snopes)

The House of Elder is begun

Well here's some good news. I have decided I am not an aspiring author anymore and have moved back to "author" status. I have started writing my long planned novel The House of Elder. It's based upon those dreams I have of getting lost in a massive house and/or doors which lead to other worlds. The two girls from The Boneyard published here recently will star in it, and I'll have Nicole with her huge sword - though now saving girls instead of boys. And I'll have King Jack, although probably I am the only one who knows who he is. I may even have that primitive dude, Dun.
The cool new thing is that the House itself is worth capitalizing. It's a character and will play a part in the story, even if it doesn't have any lines to speak.
I'm very happy about all of this as it's the book I've been meaning to write for so long. It works in so many ways.
I'm not driving too hard. I've only set a goal of 350 words per day. As Chuck Wendig says, I can sneeze that. Maybe I'll up the goal or start another project (The Blue Umbrella needs editing for instance). But at this point I've just met my goal for Day 3 and I'm pretty happy about it.

The Boneyard

I often dream about houses I've never lived in and going on adventures into their recesses. This is based upon a dream I had about a place where we played outside the house. We called it The Boneyard and it had white skeletal sculptures in it. Not sure what made them but they reminded me of Eldar wraithbone monuments in Warhammer 40,000. So here's an attempt to make it into a story. After I worked on this a bit yesterday, I had a dream about a lost Pink Floyd album which told the story of amorphous blobby people. Not sure if that will be something of it's own or I will work it into this later.

"No fair!" Jacky stuck her lip out. "You're dead. You can't do that."

"Says who?" Billie was pointing the crooked stick at Jacky's chest. "If I am a black wizard, soon to be a master wizard, you can't kill me with just a sword."

Jacky considered a moment, working her fingers in the grass as she lay on ground. She considered whether to allow Billie this play victory, but she also considered whether she could reach her own "sword" and fight back to her feet. Instead, she compromised. "I forgot we were fighting in the Boneyard. It's the center of your power."

Billie drew her lips up into a sneer. "That's right." They both knew The Boneyard well. They had been playing here for years, around the white sculptures their father collected.

They were natural and unnatural. Nature had not sculpted them alone but neither had a man. The Boneyard was full of twisted white ceramic pieces created when China was testing nuclear weapons in a remote corner of Siberia. The heat fused the sand together, leaving still life glimpses of glass chaos.

Jacky's heart caught as she thought one of them was looking at her. The "head" was nothing more than a roundish end with some bubbles in it. More like a finger than a face.

Billie turned around to look at it too. "Do you think they're radioactive?"

"Not unless you eat it, dad said."

"You mean it's not dangerous unless you eat it. It's still radioactive."

"Yeah, right. Sometimes I think a piece is looking at me."

Billie smiled. "Yeah, isn't it cool! I bet no other kid on the planet has a back yard like this."

"Sure." She thought she saw one of the eye-like bubbles on the tip of the sculpture wink at her. Surely, it was just a trick of the light.

You might be addicted to wargames terrain if …

• You look along the side of every street for debris which might make terrain
• You work in an old building and appreciate the "distressed" quality of the water damaged window frame.
• Your wife has to tell you not to pick up mulch bits when you go out to dinner at a restaurant with landscaping.
• You are more inspired by the sandy texture in the background than the subject itself when you look at a photo of a bird.

All of the above apply to me. How about you? This originally appeared on my Facebook fan page.

A lens

Our reality is not the world. Our reality is how we see the world, through our lens of knowledge, wisdom and faith. Our lens can even be blurred by emotion and chemicals.
When space appears to have shrunk, we assume space has shrunk. We let our beliefs in a rational intelligible universe color our lens. The captain, for example, was full of emotions which would not let him see reality: he was inside a pocket universe which looked much like the real one, only smaller.
As he gazed around, he gathered information and something deep inside his guts, in an unconscious part of him, said the stars were wrong. He could have trusted this instinct, but instead trusted his brain, which led him to terror. "Can you raise Hope? Can you raise the Homeworld?" He feared the answer would be no, and so it happened. Not because his question could change the universe, but because it was the wrong damn question.
The communications officer typed for several seconds, checked boxes on a screen and executed the program. A minute later, she shook her head. "Nothing on any channel, sir."

A beginning

It was quite accidental really how the Timothy found quasi space. They were testing the Graviton Chariot design which might someday allow them faster than light travel. But the circuits overloaded for some reason which scientists at the time could not understand. A surge in power followed and a brilliant flash of light, visible from ultraviolet to infrared.
Luckily, the plasma which expanded ahead of the anti-gravity cone was directed away from living beings and was far away from Timothy 3. This was intentional. Altering the fabric of space-time was very risky, they knew, even though they had never attempted it on such a scale. Therefore they had spent two years taxiing into a vacant orbit between the terrestrial and Jovian planets in their system at very sub-light speeds.
The flash of visible and invisible light wasn't what scared the scientists. When the graviton shield overloaded, just after the flash, all the stars around and behind it took a sickening shift outward as the sudden extreme gravity bent the beams of their light. It appeared, for this was really the effect, that space bulged suddenly. It was as if a fish eye lens the size of Pluto appeared in space. It brought into question what space really was, whether real or illusion.
The scientists were all frozen in horror. It wasn't fear for space-time nor fear for the lives of their relatives at home. It wasn't even simple fear for their own survival, though that was part of it. It was fear that they would live knowing what lay behind the curtain of reality, fear that they would outlive their own sanity.
But that fear was needless. Each of them recovered their wits and momentarily returned to a reality of blinking computer monitors and wailing emergency sirens. They recovered their wits just in time for the next shock. The blackness of space rushed at them, as they accelerated toward infinity.
Surely, thought the captain, we shall be dashed against the proverbial rocks. Surely we can't accelerate to infinity. But he was wrong.
Stars became streams and then disappeared, only to reappear in a tighter sphere.
Had the ship grown infinitely? Had space contracted? "Heavens ... what have we done?!" Tears welled up in the captain's eyes as he thought of a world which would never be the same, of his grandchildren who might never exist even to hate him for captaining a ship that destroyed their world.
He glanced around at stunned bridge officers. He realized he must act. Now was the time for a leader to step forward. Step forward and what? Step forward and at least keep them busy until annihilation. He swallowed hard. "Status report?"

Is there morality without heroes?

I was thinking just after watching The Dark Knight Rises, and relating it to V for Vendetta:

Does the world need heroes? Yes. Not because others cannot fight evil, but because they need symbols, inspiration and, sometimes, that person willing to go beyond normal human limits to save the day or win the battle. In a utopian world of perfection, would we see a hero as such, or would we look for a hero who could shake things up? A hero who until needed is only seen as a villain?

When did government become the villain? Certainly, each form of government villainizes the others. And those who call for revolution each call the current establishment “tyranny.” Is there ever a point where everyone agrees that perfection has been achieved, or is there always someone who thinks it can be improved, much less people who are entirely dissatisfied with its philosophy?

Some heroes have access to wealth and gadgets. Others have superhuman intelligence or superb physical abilities. Some combine these attributes. In a perfect world, would the hero have none of them? Perhaps, in a world where there is no war and discomfort is not allowed, the person who chooses to feel uncomfortable, to risk conflict is the hero. But why is he a hero? Isn't he just seeking a new experience? Isn't he being selfish in trying to leave perfection? Or is he the only one who is aware, in his world, that perfection is not the absence of conflict. What do we fight for?

I don't think a nihilist could be a hero, and probably not a moral relativist. A nihilist hero could do nothing truly good nor truly evil. He would be free from such notions, at the expense of other. He would be a villain.

A hero who sticks to moral relativisim in its simple form, believing that each person has his or her own valid morality, could either choose to act out his or her own morality or try to honor each other person's. Perhaps a relativistic hero would be very interesting. A person with a complete moral code which does not match others' and who has the power to enact his or her will. Does that make him or her a villain? That depends if the victims are relativists, who allow the hero to have independent morality, or not. I guess, by saying it depends, I am allowing relativism.

Or am I. I am acknowledging that people disagree on morality, which is a fact. I am not making any meta-ethical evaluation of whether those members of the public are correct in being relativists or not.

But then again, have I decided what defines a villain? Whether he is or is not a villain based on universal morality, or whether it's up to the world he lives in? I believe there are universal morals, even if people disagree on them. Some are widely attested, but that doesn't make them more true than the morals we haven't even discovered.

A hero is more to me than a person who fits our moral view. A hero is a person who reminds us that we all do agree on some moral truth. A hero crystallizes morality, makes it visible by his or her actions. And even when a hero does something which doesn't seem the best strategically, isn't utilitarian enough in the face of adversity, that in itself is what defines him or her as a hero.

A world without death, or a world without crime, perhaps would seem to be a world without heroes or a world which doesn't need them. But for us to appreciate the story, to hear the moral truth we are listening for to validate it, someone will have to step forward and remind us what a hero is. Someone will have to remind us that morality has truths, even if they are difficult to discern. Or at least, someone will have to make us think of these truths by being the villain, defining the opposite of them.