Religious Family

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No one in my household has ever been religious in any way at all, but my aunt and gran are fairly devout Christians. Recently, my mum was talking to my gran on the phone and happened to mention that my brother and I are very into D&D and explained a bit about it and, whilst she didn't exactly "complain", she apparently hinted that it was a bad thing to get into and could "start things".

A similar thing happened a little bit before that, where my great aunt in America, who is a Jehovah's Witness, seemed to go right off my brother and I because we're into a GAME that involves demons and such creatures.

To be honest, and I'm sure many will agree, I find it completely ridiculous and kinda offensive that my own family would feel differently about me because of a game I play. If I watched Big Brother then fair enough if people thought badly of me, but D&D to me is a chance to get together with my closest friends and enjoy a harmless game which may indeed involve demons.

I was wondering if anyone else had ever experienced something like this from family or friends? Or does anyone here agree that it could be bad?

 

Lord Domino, you're describing a very common attitude among fundamentalist Christian groups. These are the same folks who want Harry Potter books banned from public school library shelves.

I think they believe that imagination is a dangerous thing, based on a verse in one of Paul's letters, in the King James version, that condemns "vain imaginings." There is also a fear of demons based on certain teachings in some fundamentalist churches - they believe demons are real and an immediate threat to human beings.

As for encountering the attitude - where I live, lots of people share it. I don't advertise my interest in D&D based computer games. Just don't want to engage in the fruitless argument that will follow.

I'm sorry you have family members who condemn your choice of recreation. In my experience, those who play D&D games are brighter and more imaginative than most and often more inquisitive and better educated. They are mindful, not mindless, games.

You have my sympathy and support, both. Don't quit playing games you enjoy because of them.

 

God no, I'd never quit just because someone who' never given it a go says it's "bad".

Yeah, there are a lot of people out there who don't seem to understand what fiction is and condemn people who enjoy things like, as you say, Harry Potter, D&D, etc. Still, if they could recognize fiction I suppose they wouldn't be following the Bible anyway ...

[/controversy]

 

If there are problems, you can explain roleplaying by compairing it with theatre, albeit on a smaller scale. That should help.

 

Just to make things clear - not all Christians feel that way. There are many Christians who enjoy D&D or other RPGs, myself included. In fact, there are many Christians who frequent this board.

 

Indeed.

But I've experienced both sides of Christians when it comes to D&D. First it's myself and my peers, we all know it's fun and games. My first group was 75%, 15/20, Christians, and this group is me and two guys studying to become ministers.

But, there's also the other side, the fundies. I've been accused of corrupting the youth, being told to burn my RP books lest I will burn in the eternal fire yaddah yaddah yaddah. As soon as they started with that **** I just shut the sound that they call speech out of my head and pretended it was raining.

 

Great post, Acrux. Christians don't have a monopoly on intolerance and rigid thinking. In fact, I've seen many humanists who are equally intolerant and rigid, if not more so.

Lord Domino, I say just do your thing. You're not hurting anyone by playing and exercising your imagination. They should get over it, especially if they've never been extremely religious in the past. As long as you stay on an even keel and show good sense they will hopefully see that nothing bad will come of it and the whole situation will just blow over.

 

This explains everything

 

Maybe this will get them off your back?

Tell them you play a Paladin, fighting for his beliefs and the wellbeing of his fellow man without imposing his own irrational fears upon others.

 

No, it won't. I know christians who find the idea of Christian Hero Roleplaying even more tasteless.

I don't mind playing rpgs, really, as long as you don't mix up reality with fiction. Just like watching telly, I guess. Some movies are not very good to watch, depending on how devout you are.

 

It's sad and it's foolish, but people have no idea how to separate reality from fiction.

I'm spiritual. I was a devout Christian until I started banging my head against the thicker skulls of what have been termed "fundies" in this thread.

I believe in God, Jesus, salvation and most core beliefs of Christian thought, but I also believe that once you're saved you're saved. Period.

I've gotten into very ugly debates with people over this stuff. Hell, I've been thrown out of two different churches for having "too worldly views" on matters such as drinking and pre-marital sex.

Wow, that woke me up to the idea of following a human created list of rules that oddly enough don't often include either God or Jesus.

Recently, I had a very lengthy talk with my future mother in law over the games I play and run. She was concerned not because of possible misgivings (her family is Catholic) but because her son, one of my players, never told her what he was going off to do on game nights. I'm still not sure what she thinks of it when my player and I talk about the game, but I truly hope its nothing bad.

I feel for you, too, Lord Domino. But know that you are in no wrong for anything you do for fun. Everyone has something (I hope!) that they find entertaining in their lives. Ours just happens to be fantasies.

 

Way to ruin my joke with a serious reply, MoN

When dealing with faith, 'reality' becomes a very relative term. What a 'believer' might consider reality, a 'non-believer' might consider fiction.


Now, let's try this again: "Jesus saves... and takes half damage."

 

Oh yeah, just to clarify, there's no way I was gonna stop playing Dungeons and Dragons because they've decided it's "frowned upon". It was more that I think it's completely ridiculous and wondered if it was just my slightly insane relatives or if it was a much broader thing. I could probably have guessed the answer to that one though

VM, I'm amazed you were thrown out of two churches! I say well done for standing up for what you believe in; there's never anything wrong in doing that.

Thanks for all the replies, y'all, at least I'm not the only one who's experienced this!

 

I love to do that. I can't stand it when people are funnier then me, which happens quite a lot, btw, so I strike them as a very serious man.

No, let's not
Let's say that Jesus 'rolled' an intentional 1 (after checking with the DM) and took full damage.

I can understand why religious people frown upon rpg's. And the fact that it's fiction sometimes isn't a good enough excuse. There's still murder, killing, cheating etc involved and usually people don't like that.
When there's a young baby gang-raped and murdered and fed to pigs in a movie, I don't want to see that movie or hear people say "It's just a movie, it's not real, it's fiction!"
Exagerated example, yes, I know. But I think you get the point. They are concerned, let them. Thank them for their concern, roll your dice again and have a nice rpg-session.

 

"Thrown out" is an exaggerated way of putting it. I was asked politely to leave both times, but I was not told to never come back. Granted, I wasn't exactly welcomed by the door greeters after that.

I have a problem of being too sharp on occasion for my own good. The first time, I used scripture to show an assistant paster that his strong belief that anyone who has even tasted alcoholic is damned. I used the example of King Solomon (sp?) from the Old Testament to show that his stance was way to extreme.

At the time, I swore I would never drink nor smoke. Now I can kick back a bottle of wine before I feel drunk and smoke a pack a day.

The second time I got into an argument with a church member when he told me that only true Christians go on missionary trips to third world countries to save the heathens. I pointed out that what he called a missions trip was a tax free vacation to a resort where they preached for 2 days and suntanned for 4 more. I also pointed out that their are thousands of people they see each day in their own communities that haven't heard God's name preached and therefore, I saw no need to travel the world when we could save people next door.

Two of maybe a dozen times in my life I've out foxed the fox.

 

I've been thrown out of three, so it's not as rare as you'd think.

EDIT: As with VM here, it wasn't really a literal throw-out. First one were after my mother and father divorced and my mother moved in together with my to-be stepfather. The church threw her out for that, but because we, her five sons, weren't directly involved we weren't thrown out on paper. We were, however, unwelcome to enter again.

My second one were a church I wasn't really a member of. When me and my current fiance got together, people thought that she was a good old conservative right-winger, even though back then she was(and still is, four years later) an Anarcho-Green. However, as I were a punker back then, she started to change her clothes more because she didn't care about fitting in with the rest as much. As a result, the Council of Elders of the church took me aside after a sunday morning meeting and told me that they never wished to see me again.

Then, the third one, it was the youth group that threw me out because I'm a Christian that is a pro Gay rights, pro drinking, pro smoking, pro pre-martial sex(not really, but that is how they saw it), pro-RPGs, anti-Leviticus, and anti-Paul Anarcho-Syndicalist. All in all, I don't really call myself a protestant nor a catholic, but I thought they wouldn't be too much against me going there to, you know, commune with God?

But, the leaders of the youth groups apparently did, and as a result they "threw" me out by constant lies and social exclusion.

After that, I still played football with a group of them during the summers, but I still haven't returned to the church there, or any other church really. I've been in one church that I kinda like, but I fear the same will happen again.

In short; Christians can be the best of humanity, but they are not far from the worst either.

 

MoN, I know you've read the bible. I've read it too (though admittedly a long time ago) and I'm very certain that there's murder, killing and cheating in it.

What makes it okay to have that in the bible yet not somewhere else?

 

(the people we are talking about might see it this way)
The Bible was written by God or people driven by His Spirit; real happened stories of regret, punishment and love to teach us how to deal with the stuff that will happen in our lives.

D&D sessions are written by a human DM; fantasies of fame and fortune that we would WISH would happen in our lives.

 

But... the DM = God

Or, God is the DM of this particular setting. I don't know. Guess that makes me a lvl 2 commoner?

 

There are no NPC's in this setting. I guess that would make you a monster.