dungeons and dragons immoral

[vz71]

This thread is a hoax.

Actually, I’m beginning to believe the original poster is a hoax as well.

 

[Mersenne]

that’s rather irresponsible, given that there are people who have already come to this thread, taken it seriously, and probably won’t come back just to check and see if it is a hoax.

 

[shirleytowers]

I think it’s a hoax too, but

for the record, I used to play D&D but stopped because I was concerned about its possibly being out of line, spiritually. Better safe than sorry. So somebody should make up a fantasy role playing game that doesn’t have this problem. whoever does it will sure make money.

 

[Mersenne]

I think it’s a hoax too, but

for the record, I used to play D&D but stopped because I was concerned about its possibly being out of line, spiritually. Better safe than sorry. So somebody should make up a fantasy role playing game that doesn’t have this problem. whoever does it will sure make money.

I’m sure there is one out there, but roleplaying games are not particularly popular, so it’s hard for many to get enough revenue to become widespread, especially if the idea is going to appeal to an even smaller audience.

Lots of different people have lots of different objections too, and it’d be hard to design a game that accounts for all of them and yet still has some sort of value as a game left. Parts are obvious and easy enough: eliminate the polytheistic aspects and spellcasting; but then if you would probably also have to eliminate most of the dark ages fantasy motief, and the violent conflict, and then you’re pretty well left with “turnip farm simulator, 1382!” I can’t think of too many fairy tails or the like where there isn’t something that could be considered “satanic imagary” or violence. You could try going modern day, but then you’re looking at something like whitewolf or Chulhulu which is much much worse.

Maybe some kind of detective story would work well.

 

[Mirdath]

Mersenne, Call of Cthulhu is pretty obviously fictitious

There are plenty of roleplaying games out there that don’t have pagan gods and so forth; it’s just that D&D has name recognition like no other. Even White Wolf’s games don’t come close to being as recognizable as D&D.

There are a lot of indie games out there too; if you want one example of a game without any of the elements you’re worried about, I’d suggest looking at Vincent Baker’s (aka lumpley) Dogs in the Vineyard. Don’t judge him right off for having written kill puppies for satan – while that game is profane, obscene, and vile, in its own way it’s quite a Christian experience as one has to forgive one’s own character.

 

[dubious]

Greetings fellows

Just to start, I am a long time Dungeons and Dragons player and I have never once considered satanic nor demonic nor infernal acts of any kind. Dungeons and Dragons is, in fact, a game played by millions of people from the very Christian to the very non-Christian, it has no MORAL or IMMORAL correlation to reality in any way, shape or form.
Dungeons and Dragons was invented as a way to bond with people who aren’t interested in sports or physical activity, created by nerds that means. WE are not amoral. In fact Dungeons and Dragons, at least in our group, tends to be a very moral act, we fight against evil and bring good and hope to a world in need. This action, at least in my own opinion which is all that really matters, in a very Christian thing to do, in theory at least, as that bring hope is one of the primary activities of all major churches.
I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since my junior high school days and have never committed a crime, never worshipped an idol, nor willfully broken the 10 commandments. I was raised in a Catholic home and regarded it with respect and love. Dungeons and Dragons has been, to me, a form of release from the daily routines of school (and/or work), homework (and/or job related bring home tasks) and the general boring daily tasks all around me.
I have two children, a boy age 17 and a girl age 14, they have never be accosted by demons that some people believe my pastime invites, and furthermore they both actively play Dungeons and Dragons, OH NOOOOOSSSSSS!!! Oh wait, yeah my son is an honor student with a 3.7 grade average carried since elementary school, he is on the debate team and does remarkably well. My daughter is second chair violin in her school orchestra and likewise an honor student. Neither of them has ever been in trouble with the law, nor have their committed any known crimes and likely no unknown crimes either.
My children play in their own group for Dungeons and Dragons, not mine, my group is made up of adults that I have known for over 10 years, we get together like some folks do but instead of barbeques or superbowls we play Dungeons and Dragons. We are no rapists or fiends of any kind, none of us has any desire to commit acts of immortality, at least not that I know of, and the game hasn’t changed any of us into terrible monstrous people. Also, none of us BELIEVE that what happens in the game is happening in real life, to us it is just a game, like Uno or ping-pong. Is Ping-Pong immoral? Are there inherent moral dangers for Uno, those prideful colored cards might be dangerous and lead to gambling?!
There are many dangers to ones mortality in this world, drugs, casual sex, and fear are chief among those and Dungeons and Dragons has never lead me down a path to any of these. I just want to stress the fact that D&D is only a game, a GAME, and as a game it has no more evil intentions than hockey, football or baseball. When the Church declares any of these things amoral then we can talk seriously about the dangers of Dungeons and Dragons and I’ll be willing to listen to all arguments then and even change my opinion! But until then I will enjoy the weekly bonding with my friends and hope you won’t condemn our souls.
Thank you for your time in read this, your truly Joshua.

 

[Transformer]

After the new Harry Potter thread, I’m not sure I can handle another discussion of this kind. But let me at least make a few comments.

I feel immature at my my age playing a kid’s game

D&D was never meant for kids. Rules-heavy paper and pencil roleplaying games (that’s the type of game that D&D is; there are other games of the same type) are more complex than most games.

Every player has a god they worship in their game and the player has to make sacrifices to their chosen god.

This is false. Players never worship D&D gods; that would be ridiculous. However, players sometimes have their characters worship the fictional in-game gods, but they aren’t required to, and even if they do, the characters don’t have to make any sacrifices of any kind to the gods.

For the record, gods in D&D are extremely one-dimensional vaguely-inspired-by-ancient-polytheism figures. No one believes in them or actually worships them; they’re mostly in the game to make it seem more mythology-ish and to make the game world more internally consistent.

Every player has a god they worship in their game and the player has to make sacrifices to their chosen god. A 14-year old boy in the game worships his god by killing innocent people, eating their flesh and then giving an offering to his god. These parents, who have been playing the game for as long as 25 years, are encourging their kids to engage in theft, murder, rape, and dishonnesty. The graphic and brutely savage language these kids use to commit these acts in the game are so appalling.

Graphically describing disgusting and brutal actions has never been encouraged by any edition of D&D. In the current edition playing evil characters at all is heavily discouraged.

Everything the church has been saying about satanic symbols in the game is true.

The Church has never said anything about satanic symbols in D&D; the Church has never made any comment of any kind on the game D&D.

The parents and kids wear many satanic symbols such as pentagrams, inverted crosses, dragons, devils, demons, and many sarcastic anti-god shirts. One girl who plays in the game frequently wears a t-shirt with an inverted pentagram encised in a circle, inverted cross earings, and wears an opal ring.

A small minority of people who play D&D are into real, dangerous occult phenomenon and New Age religion. The vast majority aren’t; they just enjoy playing a stimulating fantasy game. The game itself doesn’t encourage anything relating to real occult practices.

The dice in the game symbolize witchcraft in my opinion. One day I decided to research the origons of role-playing dice. They originated in mystic practices! Plato has an intresting theory about what he called platonic solids. He theorized a 20-sided platonic solid represented water, a 10 sided shape represent fire, a 4-sided dice represented earth, and a 100 sides shape represented air. These are all the shapes of dice used in Dungeons and Dragons. If you put these all together fire, earth, air, water, and the player has a human spirit. That makes up all the components to cast spells!

Actually, those aren’t all the dice used in D&D. The game uses 6, 8, and 12 sided dice too, and the current edition doesn’t used 100 sided dice (are you sure you’ve actually even played this game?). What’s more, those are also the four classical elements. You know, the four that all the pre-Socratic philosophers based all their stuff on? Surely you can tell that you’re really, really stretching things to find any mention of the occult in D&D?

Recent version of the games have tried to eliminate some of these satanic symbols in the game, however the origional 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and dragons game has many satanic symbols in it. I looked through both the players manual and the dungeon masters guide and found many disturbing pictures. The dragon’s head can symbolize the 5 points of the inverted pentagram. Although some may percieve the dragon to be an inocent symbol, it is not in this game. I have looked at occult symbols, in particular the dragon. A frequent symbol is two dragons embracing an inverted sword. The dragon tails make a fiqure 8. This exact same symbol can be found in both books. The dragons in these books are drawn standing ontop of human skulls.

The books have gruesome pictures of zombies, skeletons, and dragons commiting vile acts. This isn’t kids stuff some of these pictures look very satanic to me in my opinion. Later editions of Dungeons and Dragons did not have the pictures that were in the first edition.

I’ve never, ever seen solid evidence that anything in any edition of D&D encouraged real occult practices. Of course the books depict violent acts and scary images; there are violent villains and scary situations in the game. And on what grounds do you say dragons in 1st edition D&D encourage the occult while dragons in anything else (Tolkien, anyone?) don’t?

Bottom line is, D&D and the occult have no relationship except maybe an extremely forced one on the part of real occult groups looking to pick up members, or perhaps jokesters trying to make Christians hysterical and fearful.

 

[Transformer]

Yesterday I posted a thread about Dungeons and Dragons, I was suprised many Catholics on here play the game and think the game has gotten negative press. I actually think the same thing, but I purposely wrote the thread slanted against DnD just to see what the reaction would be. I admit the game is really harmless, but I decided to pretend I was a Fundamentalist Christian and make up a lot of false information about my DnD experiences just to see if any Catholics would bite the bait. I like to see another perspective to an argument, and that requires switching my point of view.

Since most Catholics on here think DnD has recieved bad press, don’t you think the same thing is true for the masons?

Well, that clears that up then. I admit I was fooled –definitely shouldn’t have been. I’ll leave my post because I spent some time on it, and just in case any Catholics here are actually a bit suspicions of D&D.

 

[vz71]

Wow.
Zombie thread.

Some threads just refuse to die.

You all do realize that this conversation ended in January 2007…right?

 

[Melissa]

Old threads never die, they just sit around waiting for someone to drop a 5k gp diamond for the cause.