Board Games for Catholics to Avoid

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I’m not really into fantasy stuff and if I want to watch a medieval show I’m more likely to watch one of the 1,000 BBC documentaries on English history, or one of the 1,000 lavish movies about historic monarchs even though most of them contain glaring historical inaccuracies that make me wince. Who needs Game of Thrones when I can just watch “The Lion in Winter” or some Shakespeare adaptation?

Aside from that, I just don’t find much sexual content to be sexy as nowadays they don’t leave enough to the imagination for my brain to get excited by it, and when a program is just sex and violence for a full hour, I go on overload very fast.
 
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There needs to be a version of Godwins Law for CatholicAnswers where every moral question becomes about game of thrones. Wasn’t this thread about demonic board games? I’m still wondering what board games are considered demonic.
 
The modernization of the artwork of the Chutes and Ladders I had as a child is definitely the Devil’s work. I honestly don’t know how kids put up with having to look at such garbage graphics of flat, disproportioned “humanoids” all day on TV cartoons and everyplace else. I always liked my illustrations and cartoons to look like actual people.
The game board of the modern version has also been simplified in a boring and ugly way.

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BoomBoomMancini said:
GOT is porn
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I have to agree. There is a lot of sex and violence on that show that could be an occasion of sin for many, (for example, me as a teenager) but it does have artistic merit. I never got into it, but I do know many people who have really enjoyed the program, and not just for the naked parts. A lot of these people are into other sci-fi/fantasy stuff too/ or are straight women with no interest in porn and/or would watch GOT even without all the gratuitous nudity, torture and beheadings.
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I’ve really only played DnD through the computer games (e.g. Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, etc.). As blasphemous as it may seem, they didn’t give me the greatest impression of the game. It all felt less genuinely imaginative and more mechanical, and it was hard to tell where that came from DnD and where that came from the game developers. Even Torment: Tides of Numenera had that problem, though by that point I think they cared less about DnD and more about the CPRGs it inspired.
 
I want to thank one poster, Wampa, for messaging me a list of board games with dark themes/witchcraft that I would not be interested in.

If you have a list of board games that you personally find a little unsettling to play, please feel free to message me privately.

I would love to hear your thoughts about which games bother you and why. I also would love to hear what some of your favorite board games are.

We could have that discussion here but the waves in this sea of posts are thrashing every which way.

Whoever mentioned Cards Against Humanity also, great post. That was what I was looking for at the start of the thread.

Can Catholics honestly play CAH in good conscience? I would argue that the blasphemy and vulgarity present far outweigh the laughs you could have playing the game. And this is a personal choice. And an issue of wisdom, not necessarily of sin. To act is if a game is just a game, is to deny the truth that art/music/media can impact you in ways both positive and negative. The negative side being desensitization toward grave sin and true evil, and a movement away from God toward low and earthly things.

The spiritual maturity of the person does matter, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The personal perception of spiritual maturity shouldn’t be a pass for us to do whatever we want to do. Could the spiritually mature person honestly play something like, ‘Abortion the Card Game’ and tell others it’s okay because I’m still pro-life at the end of the day? Is it wise to play such a game? And remove the whole is it sinful question from the equation because that hasn’t entered my mind yet. It wouldn’t be wise to play such a game, period. This is why I would argue that we should avoid certain board games because of the themes they expose us to.

Thanks a bunch to everyone who has contributed! This is my first post on this forum in almost five years and it’s been quite a whirlwind 🙂

May God bless all of us!
 
Driven777 said:
I would love to hear your thoughts about which games bother you and why. I also would love to hear what some of your favorite board games are.

We could have that discussion here but the waves in this sea of posts are thrashing every which way.

Whoever mentioned Cards Against Humanity also, great post. That was what I was looking for at the start of the thread.
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I think the issue people are having is with the way you’ve framed the discussion. By simply asking which games Catholics in general should avoid, it sounds like you’re advocating a universal standard and anyone who has a different standard isn’t being a good Catholic. That’s what people are objecting to.

If you had said, “here are some games I find troubling and have decided to avoid” I don’t think you’d be getting as much pushback. I’m sure you didn’t intend this, but it came off as though your personal limits were somehow magisterial and binding on all.
 
I’ve always felt the game of “go fish” easily leads to the sin of “rash judgment” myself.
 
I agree with what you are saying and I did not anticipate that my words would be interpreted in such a way.

One poster mentioned that it seemed clear what I was asking in my original post but to others, like yourself, it was not clear.

I also was under the assumption that most people here were like me, practicing Catholics, who would avoid games with pentagrams and deep sorcery themes (something beyond Harry Potter).

The whole magisterial and binding thing was never my intention. The first response also, which looks like it has since been deleted, asked if my question was serious and proceeded with the assumption that playing a game is just a game, no matter the content. I feel that that response and my counter response, set the path for the following discussion to unfold.

If the first response was here are a list of games I find troubling to play:
xyz, abc, etc

I don’t think the idea that I was being binding for all or magisterial would have entered the equation, or at least not to the same degree.
 
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What would you recommend to medical students who have to study the anatomy of the human body or doctors who look at the naked human body as part of their job?

It’s not like they can avert their eyes.
 
They should do the task given to them. It’s not wrong to look at nude art or to study the human body for example… If you read further you will see my perspective unfold.
 
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Driven777 said:
I also was under the assumption that most people here were like me, practicing Catholics, who would avoid games with pentagrams and deep sorcery themes (something beyond Harry Potter).
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Meh. Doesn’t bother me, really, provided we’re not talking about people who are particularly suggestible/immature. But of course, people should listen to their own conscience.
 
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To be fair, they cut back on the gratuitous sex scenes significantly in later seasons.
 
Driven777 said:
most people here were like me, practicing Catholics, who would avoid games with pentagrams and deep sorcery themes (something beyond Harry Potter).
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I’m def a “practicing Catholic”. I go to Mass almost every day and I pray every day, read the Catholic Bible a few times a week, confession twice a month, try to say daily Rosaries, read about saints, go to shrines, do devotions, etc.

Being a “practicing Catholic” doesn’t have anything to do with what games we avoid when the game isn’t pornographic and isn’t divination. I have faith in Jesus to protect me from evil. A pentagram isn’t anything more to me than just a design.
 
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Can we play Harry Potter Board games? OK, point taken from Wampa (below)…no more joking.

(I’m not talking directly to you Bear, but to everyone. )

If a person thinks that a piece of media whether it be a book or a game might be harmful to one’s faith, then toss it away. One can usually size an activity like a game up by taking note of if it’s pricking your conscience a bit or making you spiritually uncomfortable in some way.

This is an area of personal discernment / prudential judgment on the individual Catholic’s part.
 
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BoomBoomMancini said:
I think the issue people are having is with the way you’ve framed the discussion. By simply asking which games Catholics in general should avoid, it sounds like you’re advocating a universal standard and anyone who has a different standard isn’t being a good Catholic. That’s what people are objecting to.
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That might have been true initially, but the OP eventually successfully (IMO) re-framed the discussion and started to do so in post #3. But many posters have refused to let him re-frame by continuing to harp on the initial take. For example, the Joke Brigade is still posting jokes 100+ posts later based on the admittedly poorly-framed initial post. The thread is completely derailed (or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it never got on track). That’s why I’ve taken serious discussion of the topic to PMs.

To be fair, one of the main thread derailers (the guy who had post #2, now removed) seems to have been suspended over his contributions to this thread, so a decent amount of the blame probably falls on him.
 
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