Christian Role Playing Games

[subplotkudzu]

 I was reading a review of the new book Rapture Ready by Daniel Radosh that suggested the Christian/Evangelical subculture had its own "Christian" versions of everything in popular entertainment (including, intriguingly enough, Christian Techno, which is somehow more Christian than regular old Techno despite neither having words...). Given the generally understood animus that the Christian subcluture has shown towards RPGs I wondered what the current state of Christian RPGs was - had it expanded beyond the Dragonraid game that was so widely panned in the 80's? 

Apparently so - a quick Google search turned up several extant Christian RPGs, including one, Holy Lands, that I'm considering downloading to see what the mechanics are like. There's nothing inherently wrong with the premise - defending the medieval church from the demons, devils and sorcerers that want to destroy it, a nicely meaty time period and premise for a sword &sorcery game - though it scores some negative points by billing itself as THE Christian Roleplaying Game. I'm still miffed at Champions being THE Superhero RPG, so don't get me started. But the mechanics could stink and the message might be delivered with a sledgehammer, and I really don't have the time right now to read through it in any event.

More interesting was this essay from a long term GM and Evangelical Christian. I find it sad that  in order to discuss gaming with his target audience (other Evangelicals) he has to start with three paragraphs laying out his religious bona fides, and a fourth discussing his education, lest anyone think he's not walking the Walk. Much of the rest of the essay is the standard counter argument against the aforementioned Christian animus towards RPGs, written from someone inside the tent. He then discusses the real "problems" with RPGs: 

1) that they take up time and effort that might be better used to advance Christ's mission in other ways (though this is true of any hobby, and the author thinks he has done significant good through his gaming);

2)  that the Church has ceded the ground to the enemy (the knee jerk anti-gaming attitude of Chrisitan means that most Gamers have never really encountered Christian, which limits their paths to salvation. Cambias, I'm sure, will have some comment on this.); 

3) and, the oddest of all to me, so I have to quote it directly. "like most games--all those which use dice or cards--Dungeons & Dragons(tm) assumes that dice and cards fall in a random pattern along statistically predictable probabilities.  It is extremely difficult for us to deal with this assumption.  The question of whether dice and cards fall at random or are divinely controlled is far beyond the scope of this article, but the answer goes directly to the nature of the sovereignty of God.  Christians who play such games should grapple with the issue and form an opinion about it." 

HUH?  I can accept that the first two concerns are about how someone who is totally committed to Christ's mission on earth has to balance their time and efforts, and has to be willing to reach out to everyone. I might not agree with you, but you are clearly thinking deeply about your faith and I can respect that. But for grappling with questions of dice mechanics, Dude, it's math. It's lines like this that make me question everything else in your article, and fear that accepting your religious worldview will mean that I too will struggle with statistics because it might muddy my view of God. 

Comments

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Okay, I recently looked at this one again. It's the table, the text right before the table, and the text at the beginning doing stating the authors' position in such a manner as to get my hackles up. It looks consistent, you understand, but I'm one of those fashionable modern liberals the authors look down upon. I think they also equate positions like mine (where I don't have problems with a lot of stuff they think is wrong) with considering all religions, behaviors, and moral choices to be equally valid.

Oh, they also use the term "Judeo-Christian" while making it very clear that they support Christian values. It is unfair of me, but this gets my back up, probably because I'm Jewish by birth.

When I used the Central Casting books years ago, I was working with a friend who owned them on the never-materialized Time Commandos game, and the sf book helped us come up with some cool villains, one of whom felt a lot like Servalan from Blake's 7.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Hrm. But they weren't marketed as a "Christian Roleplaying Game" or anything of the sort, right? Just that they contained a lot of the author's personal religious views written into them?

I'm honestly not sure how that falls in what I'm looking at. It's interesting certainly, made moreso by the general statements I've seen that the materials in the book are really quite good. It's good to see the book competing in the broader marketplace rather than aiming for the niche market, even if the items in the niche market might be more interesting as examples of type.

After all, if Holy Land is a high quality game why isn't it more openly available through, say, DriveThruRPG? After all, the PDF is a free download, albeit one protected by a password security.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

None of the Central Casting books were marked at Christian rpgs. Heroes Now was explicitly intended for general use, but with full disclosure of the authors' biases.

If the goal of Holy Lands is to promote Christianity, then I would expect to see some attempt to disseminate it beyond those who are already Christian. OTOH, one of its goals is to fight for those born into Christianity by providing an rpg that promotes Christian values, correct? I'm not saying one can't do both, but it may be hard to do both equally well. Also, I don't know how much the author or authors know about the rpg markets.

And, of course, I don't know if the author(s) or publisher(s) have attempted to market it elsewhere. I wouldn't expect DriveThruRPG to turn it down, but it is a distant possibility.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Well, according to what I've gleaned from Rapture Ready the goals of the Christian subculture are both to advertise Christianity to the unconverted (so the WWJD T-Shirts are the equivalent of the Nike swoosh) and to provide their youth with a suitably Christian alternative to the corrupting influence of consumer culture and mass media. That does mean that they're serving two masters.

I suspect, but can't proove, that the Holy Land game's lack of broader dissemination means that it's aiming more for the latter than the former, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be a good game apart from that. I find it hard to beleive that people interested in RPGs can't have some awareness of the larger RPG market, but I suppose it's entirely possible.

I might arrange to get a copy of the game and review it for an upcoming issue of A&E. As a free download all it would take is some time, which is in short supply at the moment. Unless you want to do it, since you're, well, better at that sort of thing than I am. And I'm lazy.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Also behind in the reviewing (and should widen the job search, of course).

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, be all rational. I'll likely end up doing it msyelf in the next month or two, once I get past this weekends Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw game.