DragonRaid: moral teaching through roleplaying games?

In the mid-90's a friend and I became fascinated by the "Christian adventure game" (similar to a roleplaying game) called DragonRaid, published by Adventures in Christ. (Details can be found at the DragonRaid website.) We never managed to actually play it, largely because we were living in different countries, but we made characters, read through the initial adventure, and discussed it at length by email.

Briefly, DragonRaid is a game in which one participant--the gamemaster--sets up a fantasy scenario and the other participants--the players--take the roles of characters within that scenario. The players choose their characters' actions; the gamemaster adjucates the results of those actions, as well as playing the parts of all other characters in the scenario. In DragonRaid, most adjucation is based on the player's ability to remember and recite Scripture: where a character in a secular game might cast a spell, a DragonRaid character uses specific Scripture quotes.

The adventures of DragonRaid take place in a fantasy realm with echoes of C.S. Lewis. The players' characters are "TwiceBorn" (saved) individuals who are sent out into the unsaved world to accomplish quests and fight for good. DragonRaid characters fight monsters such as trolls and dragons, which allegorically represent spiritual forces, but they are forbidden to harm ordinary "OnceBorn" people. God, under the title "Overlord of Many Names," is an active character in the story.

The expectation for DragonRaid is that the players will be young people and the gamemaster will be an adult. I'm not clear on the intended age group: perhaps tweens to teens. The lengthy scenarios do not suggest younger children.

I have been thinking about DragonRaid lately in the context of the Slacktivist and Slacktiverse discussions on proselytization. DragonRaid is not billed as a proselytization tool, but it is meant to educate young Christians in their faith and morality, a similar motive. Its differences from secular roleplaying games are striking, and can illuminate fundamentalist Christian attitudes toward fiction, roleplaying, and moral learning.

The defining characteristic of roleplaying games is that the player takes the part of one or more characters who exist and act in the fictional game-world. My D&D group has spent the last year playing out the takeover of a city by a Borgia-like noble house, with five distinct character roles played by a single player. While games in which the players play versions of themselves do exist, it is much more common for a player to control a character who is distinct from the player, with his or her own name, history, and personality. (From now on, the player will be "she" and the character and gamemaster will be "he," simply for convenience.)

Secular roleplaying groups vary a great deal in how strong a dividing wall they raise between player and character. Almost all groups hold that the character should not use knowledge which only the player has. Many also hold that the character's morality is not necessarily the player's: the character can hold a different religion or moral code. (This allows Christian players to depict characters of other faiths, for example, and many do.)

Having a strong distinction between player and character allows a wider range of characters, takes some of the sting out of bad in-game events--it is your character who is eaten alive by army ants, not you--and helps reduce conflict within the group. Some groups actively discourage characters who are too similar to the player--I don't play Wiccan characters, for example--for fear of blurring the player/character distinction. A character named after her player will be scorned by many groups.

This disconnect is not absolute. Most gaming groups put limits on how depraved the character can be, and will censure a player who oversteps; very few place no restrictions at all on characters' actions. (As an example, the Borgias game above allows fairly vile behavior, in keeping with its premise, but draws the line at rape.) In most groups, two characters may dislike one another without damaging the players' friendship; but groups vary as to whether the dislike can be expressed with actively harmful in-game actions, as this may be bad for group cohesion.

If I had to make a generalization about a very diverse hobby, I would say "The character is not the player; his actions must be kept within limits to preserve group cohesion and enjoyment, but his decisions should not be taken as a proxy for hers." Some games enforce this in the rules: a Call of Cthulhu character who sees a horror may snap and do something demented quite against the player's will.

Fundamentalist Christian critics of secular roleplaying games tend to deny the player/character distinction, holding that players are always morally culpable for their characters' actions. DragonRaid, intended as a tool of moral education, blurs or even erases the player/character line. This makes sense in terms of DragonRaid's goals, but it has strange and, in my eyes, somewhat self-defeating implications for actual gameplay.

I first encountered this issue when trying to make a DragonRaid character. Characters are described by nine attributes, "gifts of the spirit" including Joy, Hope, Faith, Love, and Peace. (A secular game might have Strength, Intelligence and so forth here.) I was puzzled when the random die rolls gave me a character with high Faith and Love, but low Joy and Peace. My spouse eventually suggested that the character was devout but sufffered from guilt and self-judgement, and I developed a characterization around this. I assumed that that was what I was supposed to do.

The sample adventure, however, immediately punctured this idea. At the beginning of the adventure the character is confronted with a troll tempting him with "gawking at bodies on the beach, buying all the clothes they could ever desire, and going to a music concert where there will be plenty of 'pleasure potions' (drugs)." [1]

As a secular roleplayer I am used to thinking "How would my character react to this?" Well, my character is a TwiceBorn crusader, someone chosen by his god to fight for righteousness, on a holy mission into Dragon country. Would he be tempted? His high Faith suggests that he might not. --Never mind that, would he accept drugs from a troll in a potential combat situation? Isn't this a trap? And incidentally, does my character care about clothes or music concerts? Are those part of his backstory at all?....

It rapidly became apparent that I'm not supposed to be asking those questions. I'm supposed to be asking if I want to gawk, shop, or do drugs. Despite having a named character with randomly determined attributes, I am actually supposed to be playing myself.

(I'm not sure what the attributes are for, frankly, as they do not guide character actions. Maybe they are best thought of as victory conditions: if you get all nine attributes to their maximum, you win.)

But there's a twist. If my character succumbs to the offer, the other characters will have to delay their mission in order to rescue him--he'll be "sin enchanted." Furthermore, my character's moral failing is meant to be seen as mine, and the gamemaster should "provide me with counseling and prayer." In order to lift the "sin enchantment" so that the adventure can proceed, the other players must disenchant my character by quoting Scripture to me until I understand my error.

The impression is that I am not really meant to roleplay myself: I am meant to roleplay a "best self" who always tries to do the right thing.

The adventure synopsis on the web site mentions that the moral challenges can become "much harder." The players are given a bible verse telling them that God is their hope. Their characters are then infected with a fatal disease. They are supposed to show unwavering hope. If they don't, the gamemaster stops the game so that they can think about it; the game can't go on until the players agree that hope is the correct response.[2]

There are two difficulties with DragonRaid's approach. The first is that a temptation isn't very tempting if we know that it's not actually available. A pile of money on the table will tempt a dishonest person. A picture of money generally won't. In DragonRaid, if my character succumbs the gamemaster is not supposed to provide a juicy description of bodies, clothes, or drugs. He just states that the character is "sin enchanted" and I have to sit quietly while the other players practice their Scripture quotes on me. After a few iterations of this, it's not clear why I would feel tempted anymore, as there is no payoff. This is quite different from a real-world temptation. It's also different from the temptations possible in a secular roleplaying game: "If I lie to the guards, we can get into the castle without using up our invisibility potions" represents a temptation with a real in-game payoff.

This is less true for the negative temptation of despair in the poisoning scenario. Despair tempts us because struggling on seems harder than giving up, and this remains true in-game. (I wonder how often DragonRaid groups give up at this point.)

But the more severe difficulty with DragonRaid as a moral learning tool is that the gaming dynamic provides its own temptation, one far more pressing than bodies, clothes, or drugs: the temptation to answer tactically rather than morally, to deduce the "right" answer and tell the gamemaster what he wants to hear. Not only are the players tempted to do this, in some cases they are actually forced to, as with the fatal disease--the game cannot continue until the players say that their characters are hopeful, so eventually they will say it. At worst this may become inducement to lying.

Secular roleplaying, at least in some of its forms, asks the player to build a mental model of her character and then answer truthfully about that model ("would he really do that?"). Some games demand fidelity to the model even if the result is disastrous for the character or the whole group. The player's reward must then be her own satisfaction in a good portrayal, and perhaps the group's admiration for her sportsmanship.

DragonRaid seems actively hostile to the concept of being true to your character model. A DragonRaid character is a puppet, not a person. I'm not sure why they have names, except to lessen the scariness of scenes like the fatal disease by giving a bit more distance. I think the authors and audience of DragonRaid would be very uncomfortable rewarding their young players for depicting a character doing the morally wrong thing, even if that would be a truthful characterization. [3]

You might, I suppose, build a useful moral habit by constantly deducing the right response and then giving it. You will certainly learn to guess what the adult wants to hear. In the sample scenarios it is generally obvious: I don't think even my atheist thirteen-year-old would be in doubt. (He wouldn't play along, though. His tolerance for "tell them what they want to hear" is zilch.)

There are a few reasons, other than not knowing the "right" answer, why a player might give the "wrong" answer. She might feel rebellious toward God, the gamemaster, or the play group.[4] She might enjoy the attention of having her character rescued. She might want to be seen as daringly bad by her peers. Whether the resulting game would encourage the player to be less rebellious or attention-getting is not clear to me; the situation moves away from rules and into group dynamics at that point. It seems unlikely to me, however, that anyone over the age of about eight would say "My character accepts the troll's shopping spree" simply because she wanted a shopping spree--at least, not more than once or twice, given the unpleasant consequences.

The authors of DragonRaid hope that roleplaying through the troll's temptation will reduce the player's desire for shopping sprees, or at least her propensity to go in for shopping sprees. That is a major point of the game. (Its other major point is the memorization of Scripture. From all accounts it is effective at that goal.)

How well will this kind of moral instruction work?

The players are unlikely (unless, again, they are very young) to think that the in-game consequences are any kind of literal representation of real-world consequences. The game outcomes are not "what will happen", they are "what authority wants you to think will happen."[5] A major discovery made by most kids in their teens, if not earlier, is that authorities often want you to think things that are not actually true. It's especially problematic that the game never depicts the positive rewards of bad behavior. In reality, doing bad things often does bring short-term rewards. A scenario that denies this will not stand up to experience for long.

I question, therefore, whether DragonRaid will accomplish its goals of moral education. Is this because roleplaying is simply not a good tool for learning about morality?

That hasn't been my experience. I've been playing (secular) roleplaying games for about 33 years and I've been struck by their power as learning experiences. As one example, in my own games I have explored the dichotomy "An effective leader must admit his doubts or he cuts himself off from essential reality checks" and "An effective leader must conceal his doubts or his troops lose heart." I started out believing the first one, but gaming experiences have convinced me, somewhat painfully, that it's not as simple as that and the second position is sometimes correct.

The key difference from DragonRaid is that I learned this, but the gamemaster did not teach it to me. Instead, he tried to present difficult situations as accurately as possible, depicting realistic human (and alien and monster) reactions to the best of his abilities, as did the other players: and I had the chance to explore the consequences of hiding, or not hiding, my doubts about leadership. I saw followers holding back because they sensed the leader's uncertainty, and this cost us a couple of key battles. I also saw followers' loyalty collapse completely when they learned that a leader was deceiving them, and this cost us as well. I started out with a simplistic view ("always tell the truth") and ended up with a more complex one ("weigh the costs"). My current belief is that in emergencies it is often best to show no doubt, but the longer-term the situation and the more strategic your decisions, the more important it is to acknowledge uncertainty.

I don't know that the gamemaster or other players would agree with my conclusions, but they don't have to. They provided the push-back, the background of realistic reactions against which I could try out different moral theories. I have since had occasion to try some of those theories in real life, and they have stood up pretty well.

The great danger of this approach is that the player may not learn the "right" lesson. My character Markus committed a gross sexual impropriety, by both his society's standards and mine. Markus argued that, due to circumstances, he was justified. The in-game situation was complex and ambiguous: it offered no clear-cut answers. During the game I found myself swayed by Markus' self-justifications to the point that I became personally angry when observers told me Markus was in the wrong. Looking back many years later, I think Markus was wrong. I had a ringside seat in his forays into self-deception, which was a learning experience in itself; but along the way I ended up defending a position on sexual morality that, in retrospect, was more about my own seduction (Markus was a favorite character) than about my core values. I'm still uncomfortable about that game.

This is the risk that DragonRaid won't take. By making the gamemaster the arbiter of moral authority, the game insulates itself against the possibility of players reaching unapproved moral conclusions. But in the process it destroys practically all of its potential for moral improvement. Once you stack the deck, it's not a real game anymore. There's no quasi-real gameworld pushing back; there's only the gamemaster, a fallible mortal just like the rest of us, with his own agenda and his own blind spots. By their teens if not sooner, the players are likely to realize this.

My credo as a gamer and writer is that if you want truth to come from fiction, you must be true to your fiction--never subordinating it to your message, no matter how virtuous. My spouse sometimes comes out of combat-heavy roleplaying scenarios with a moral attitude of "Get them before they get you." I find this deplorable, and we've had nasty real-world quarrels over it. But if I manipulate the gaming scenarios so that "Get them before they get you" is never the right choice, I'm no longer true to my fiction, and its ability to test or explore any moral question will immediately vanish. In a falsified world it's just my word against his, whereas if we both play as truthfully as we can, we may actually learn something neither of us knew before.

I have seen an example of this which truly amazed me. We played a game in which my character Jayhawk was captured by the enemy and held hostage. For various reasons we chose to play out the captivity in day-by-day detail. In the end, Jayhawk ended up siding with her captors against her former friends at the final confrontation. Her motives were complex and not altogether wicked, but it was still a horrifying betrayal.

I was shocked by the way my character behaved. I felt no doubt that I had depicted her accurately, but why had she done it? I did some reading, and encountered descriptions of Stockholm Syndrome that closely matched what we had seen in the game. Apparently we had found this out on our own, simply by following the situation in emotional and psychological detail. I don't think I would have understood those descriptions if I hadn't lived the situation "firsthand."

This is, in my view, one of the things roleplaying is good for. (It is also a lot of fun, intellectually challenging, a good social opportunity--like all forms of art, it has multiple uses.) DragonRaid attempts to use roleplaying as a teaching tool, but by heavy-handedly demanding control over what the student learns, it paradoxically guarantees that, except for the very young and very naive, its lessons aren't likely to be learned at all. In fact, the most likely lesson, the one the game really supports, is "No matter what you think, say what Authority wants to hear."

I sincerely hope that that's not the message the authors intend. But they aren't true to their fictional reality, and in my view there is no substitute.

--MaryKaye
__________

[1] All quotes from the DragonRaid web page. ↩

[2] Peaceful acceptance of death is not an option. Perhaps this is because the DragonRaid world is allegorical, and it would represent spiritual death, damnation. The disease is caused by falling into dirty water, which could symbolize some kind of contamination by worldly wickedness. On the other hand, perhaps death just represents death. I'm not at all clear which parts of the DragonRaid world are meant to be taken allegorically. As young children tend to be literal-minded, the intended audience is probably likely to take it literally even if that wasn't the intent.

I hope that no kids come away from this with the idea that if you are a good person God won't allow you to die. It is terrible to face a loved one's death from that perspective, because now you must choose between your faith in God and your belief in the loved one's goodness.↩

[3] The DragonRaid gamemaster is allowed to depict evil actions, however. This distinction also appears in secular roleplaying: some groups require that all of the players' characters be good guys, but no one puts this restriction on the gamemaster.↩

[4] I remember a secular roleplaying game where the gamemaster's apparent purpose was to have the players admire and emulate his super-powerful character. What he actually got was a group of adult players bending all their efforts to get a burr under the saddle of Mr. Perfect. Kids can certainly react this way too.↩

[5] Since the consequences come from the gamemaster, he must be willing to claim moral superiority to the players--otherwise speaking for God and rebuking the players' sins will not be viable. It would be difficult for adults to play DragonRaid unless one of them was recognized as the group's authority figure. I certainly couldn't get away with it with any of my gaming groups! I have played gods, though with great trepidation, but only the characters' gods, not the players'. Even then I try to avoid delivering moral pronouncements in character as a god, lest I show all too clearly that I am only human.↩

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Comments

[Josh (Enigma32)]

I think part of the reason DragonRaid doesn't make the player/character (or the "meta" distinction, from "metagaming," as my group calls it) distinction is because fundies and the individuals that game is geared towards have a poor understanding of fantasy and would never be able to make the distinction in real life. In a lot of ways, it's the moral substitute for D&D designed by the same crowd who would avidly read Left Behind and believe that it's the truth of what's to come. The ability of your typical fundie to distinguish fantasy from reality is slim to none. At the same time, however, most will never be faced with the temptations that they encounter in that game because they live such secluded lives; which means those paper temptations can carry every bit the weight as the real world temptations do. Now, that's not always true - I've know some christian fundamentalists who are gamers. I was introduced to a very fun science fiction RPG named "Alternity" (which, sadly, is no longer published) by a more moderate fundamentalist.

My characters, I find, almost never mirror my own morality. Even though it'd watering it down, I talk in terms of alignment - my person alignment would be "Chaotic Good" in terms of 3.Xe, according to my friends. This is an individual who is "good above all else", i.e., the law is useful only when the law is useful and not actively hurting people. Robin Hood is often cited as an example of a chaotic good character, and given my desire to redistribute wealth and the fact I'm a socialist, I think it fits very well. My characters alignments whiplash between chaotic good to the far more common chaotic neutral, which is no regard for law or regard for good or evil - I do what I want, when I want to, but I'm not actively trying to hurt or help you. While that's not antithetical to my personality, I pretty much know my morality and my outlook on life, and the ability to play different moralities (I almost never play evil characters. This should probably be telling. I have done evil ACTIONS, however. But I never play paladins or clerics, so I don't have to worry about that).

[Philboyd]

Interesting post! It seems like DragonRaid doesn't teach good behaviour but instead teaches the performance of good behaviour. I wonder how much this attitude is reflected in the wider evangelical community? In my experience, when talking to a pastor or very religious person there's always the temptation to give the obvious 'right' answer rather than what you believe to be the truth. (The same, of course, holds true of many non-religious people, although I'd argue to a lesser extent.)

[histrogeek]

It is a problem with the RTC subculture that they have difficulty with ambiguity and imagination. They really don't like metaphorical fiction unless it's crashingly obvious. I suspect that had C.S. Lewis only written the Narnia Chronicles, they would be suspicious of them especially the Caspian-era books. Since Lewis wrote Mere Christianity (and has really obvious sexist attitudes), they know he's on their side. But Tolkien and Rowling are as likely to be attacked as witchcraft writers in the RTC community as they are to be acknowledged for Christian metaphor and moral teaching.
And it is long known that cross-over between the "Chrisitan music" world and the popular music world is impossible. Amy Grant was practically excommunicated from that scene when she dared to make a secular album. U2 is lumped with the general horde.

I do have a small amount of sympathy for the DragonRaid designers. When I was a history teacher, I created a few role-playing/simulation games to teach about specific eras and concepts. It's a delicate balance between game play (simple instructions), truth to the scenario (letting students act as they see fit), and the educational objectives (mainly in U.S. education, getting the right answer on the test). However, I tended to fall in the truth to the scenario camp. Any deviation from the actual events or the accepted concept (mainly in economics) would be covered in post-game lessons. The DragonRaid designers come from, or are marketing to, a culture that abhors dialogue on religious or moral principles. So they get way more ham-fisted than I would.

[Jenny Islander]

DragonRaid illustrates something I have repeatedly told acquaintances who think that my D&D hobby is going to make me "do things": You get out what you put in. Put a bunch of stoners around the table and you'll get a game that is only fun when you're so high that everything is funny. (Been there, done that, never went back.) Game with a bunch of uptight people who think that D&D makes you "do things" and you'll get, well, DragonRaid. I will not discuss the type of person who would come up with FATAL. Anyway, our usual group is made up of people who want to tell a story about heroes solving mysteries, rescuing captives, defeating monsters, and exploring mysterious ruins, while incidentally getting a lot of gold. Plus we like to know the details of the game world our characters inhabit, such as what their parents do for a living. So we do a kind of episodic comedy-drama with character and plot arcs. The DM likes to shake things up occasionally by introducing a natural disaster or a civil war, to which we can react in character.

A good game is one that everybody at the table enjoys, however. (Situational ethics! Oh noooo!) I personally don't like the kind of game where the characters get to rampage through the game world like a bunch of bikers in Mayberry and my usual DM doesn't either, so when we get a player who wants to do that, his character gets to know the city guard really well and the player usually doesn't come back. But if the whole group ever wants to play bikers in Mayberry, more power to 'em. I just won't be there.

[Kit Whitfield]

The ability of your typical fundie to distinguish fantasy from reality is slim to none.

Bit sweeping and rude there! What's a 'typical fundie'? What are you basing this on? I find it hard to believe that your average hard-line religious person is that incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality. Let's be fair here.

If we're going to make generalisations about persons not present to defend themselves, I for one would like to see them backed up with citations.

[Ross]

Hrm. This dragon raid sounds like a shit game. But the moral instruction seems pretty straightforwardly aristotelian: morality is a habit. Therefore, the "game" is really about making approved behaviors habitual. The troll's offers of gawking and shopping and drugs aren't tempting to the player and they aren't tempting to the character, because you're *never* supposed to yeidl to them. You're supposed to *mechanically* reject them, without any thought, so that when you are offered temptation, you have a knee-jerk response (Admittedly, my response is to want to knee the jerk who suggested we play this shit game) to reject it, on the assumption that by the time some *actual* temptation comes along, you'll reject it reflexively before you even think to be tempted.

Also, when the GM rings his bell, you're supposed to salivate.

But this:

Most gaming groups put limits on how depraved the character can be, and will censure a player who oversteps; very few place no restrictions at all on characters' actions

Was a pleasant surprise to me. My roleplaying friends in high school only ever put minimums on how depraved the player charachters had to be. I mean this literally. Every character was required to have an "insanity" (their word). "Psychopath" was the most popular one, but "Womanizer" came up a few times. There were more mundane ones like "Drug addict" and "prone to fits of berzerker rage".

I didn't much like to play with them, now that I think about it.

[Tonio]

In fact, the most likely lesson, the one the game really supports, is "No matter what you think, say what Authority wants to hear."

I have zero experience with RPG, so with that caveat, I could see where MaryKaye was going about halfway through her article. From her description, the game's idea of "morality" is following rules for their own sake, which is really the opposite of morality. Before MaryKaye mentioned it, I hadn't realized that such a game could lead to players telling the game-authority what it wanted to hear as an evasion tactic. I would have expected players, if they played long enough, to learn not to question the game-authority or form their own judgments about it.

'pleasure potions' (drugs).

That phrase confounded me. I've never found alcohol to be pleasurable for anything other than the taste. I've never tried illegal drugs, and my sole experience with Valium for minor surgery was a little scary since I could barely walk straight.

[Thomas Daulton]

This was a fascinating read, thanks! I've been a role-playing gamer off-and-on (mostly on) since around 1978. But I'd never heard of this game. I've often wondered if the Fundamentalist types would or had ever introduced some kind of Christian substitute.

The bit about quoting Scripture instead of using spells is actually kinda clever (I have often tinkered with the idea of requiring spellcasters to sing a snatch of a song which had something vaguely to do with their spells; e.g., the Doors' "Light My Fire" when you want to throw a Fireball).

But it seems to me -- this may be just a blatant restatement of what's obvious from your description -- the big problem with this game (from the viewpoint of this more 'traditional' RPG-er, myself) is that it seems to be structured to assume there is exactly one and only one solution to every problem. I always thought what separated RPGs from other types of games, e.g. board games, was the way they encourage improvisation. Theoretically, the characters can do anything they want. Much as this aspect can be a pain-in-the-@$$ to referee, when some clever or smart-alecky character blows your carefully crafted scenario wide open by doing sometehing unexpected, it always seemed worth the pain to me. It seemed to me like improvising and encouraging invention and creativity were useful skills which RPGs promoted. But with this game -- presumably reflecting the morality of the people who wrote the game -- as the saying goes, "there's MY way, and then there's the WRONG way."

My players do sometimes complain that my plots are heavy-handed, but even _I_ can't imagine getting a lot of enjoyment out of an RPG where there is exactly one answer to every situation. It's more like a True-or-False test than actually playing a "role" or a "character". Your character doesn't really matter for squat. I often present heavy-handed moral choices in RPG's, but I allow the players to choose the "wrong" choice and sometimes they make it all work out right anyway. I also present them Kobayashi-Maru "no-win scenarios" sometimes, just to see how the characters react to defeat or despair -- and the majority of the time, the characters manage to snatch some sort of unforseen victory from my jaws! That's the sort of thing that makes role-playing appealing to me.

[Cat Meadors]

Thanks for posting this - I'd seen mentions of this game before but never such a fascinating analysis.

I wouldn't ascribe the failure here to the fact that's it's fundagelical as much as to the fact that it's meant to be morally educational, and people in general aren't good at figuring out what's actually successful there. My husband took a really interesting class in childhood moral development, and it went through the stages - first the kids behave out of fear of punishment/desire for reward, then out of... I forget the term, but something like blind acceptance of the rules, and eventually because of an internalized and larger feeling of the "rightness/wrongness" of their action. (I think there's another level past that, I don't remember.) Anyway, point being, authority figures don't generally care if you the individual get past stage 2; they just want well-behaved kids, so once they figure out how to get that they don't do the extra work of getting them to stage 3 - the one where kids will actually behave even if nobody's watching/telling them what to do. So if that's all you want - or all you can imagine - then of course a list of rules with helpful examples is going to produce the morality you want.

And of course there's the Johnny With The Beans Up His Nose problem to navigate. (You tell little Johnny, "don't put beans up your nose!" and that's the first thing he does as soon as your back is turned, even though he'd never think to do it in the first place.) This is actually a big problem in a lot of kids' "educational" tv - they show 20 minutes of a character behaving badly, and 2 minutes of resolution - the kids watching remember the 20 and not the 2. (Much like my friend who became terrified of haircuts when he saw Grover being scared of one, totally missing the part where Grover finally gets his hair cut and it doesn't hurt. Poor guy refused to get his hair cut until kindergarten.) So I can understand the thinking of, "well, we don't want to be too tempting in our temptations, because then kids might think this thing they hadn't thought of before is actually something they want to do!"

Personally, I've learned a lot by playing my recent evil character. Her backstory is that she started out bursting with desire to make the world a better place, but got irritated when people were just too stupid to follow the gameplan. So now her goal is to become a goddess of mind-control and make everyone behave. It provides a lot of opportunity to navigate some fine lines that, well, don't generally come up in my everyday life, but are still pretty rich for thinking about. I really doubt this character would be encouraged in a "moral teaching" RPG.

[Ross]

Personally, I've learned a lot by playing my recent evil character. Her backstory is that she started out bursting with desire to make the world a better place, but got irritated when people were just too stupid to follow the gameplan. So now her goal is to become a goddess of mind-control and make everyone behave. It provides a lot of opportunity to navigate some fine lines that, well, don't generally come up in my everyday life, but are still pretty rich for thinking about. I really doubt this character would be encouraged in a "moral teaching" RPG.

You kidding? That character sounds pretty in-line with, say, the Left Behind God.

[Mmy]

@Josh (Enigma32): The ability of your typical fundie to distinguish fantasy from reality is slim to none.

A rather sweeping statement that is actually meaningless unless you can offer proof that "fundies" (and I wish people would avoid using clearly derogatory names for groups they disagree with) are any more or less capable of distinguising fantasy from reality than any other group of people.

I agree that many of the people who enjoy games such as DragonRaid seem rather cutoff from much of modern culture but then so do many other people. Indeed I have met game devotees who seem to have a rather unclear sense of the line between the world of gaming and the "real" world.

[Literata]

Thank you for the comparison, Mary Kaye. I would have taken one look at this game, deduced that it's a way for church authorities to tell the youth group that they're going to get to plan an RPG but actually force them to memorize Bible verses and practice repeating them to people (regardless of whether or not the person wants to hear them), which is actually pretty good training for later life, from the authorities' point of view.

I think the interesting part isn't that RTCs are unable to distinguish reality from fantasy, it's that a lot of them and their authorities are resistant to the idea of that distinction. Which is a shame, for the reasons Mary Kaye illustrates so brilliantly. Brava!

I have to wonder if that resistance is due to fear that the idea of fantasy will sow seeds of doubt, or due in part to an idea that there really isn't any such distinction in a spiritual sense - that everything inside your head is real, and something that can lead to damnation, or that is going to attract evil spirits or give them entry or some such.

[Rodeobob]

Beware: wall-o-text below!

So I watched the Zero Punctuation review of "Infamous 2" last night, and there's a nice bit of crossover between that review and this one, actually.

First point of crossover: Yahtzee says that one of the appeals of the sandbox game is getting to do whatever you want, relatively consequence free. And certainly, part of the fun of an RPG is getting to solve problems with excessive amounts of unbridled violence without the risk of death, legal persecution, injury, or PTSD afterwards. The escapist aspect of the game is basically a safe environment to explore situations that in reality you'd never touch with a 10-foot-pole. So having an RPG where doing the "wrong" thing causes the game to abruptly stop while everyone chants around you seems to be a clear-cut case of missing the point! RPGs are a safe environment to experiment with "bad" choices. (in the same way that BDSM is a safe environment to experience failure, humilitation, and punishment; you'd be surprised how many doctors, lawers, and business executives seek out a safe place to fail)

The second interesting point Yahtzee makes is late in the review, talking about the morality system of "Infamous". If you're going to have a game mechanic of choosing "Good" versus choosing "Evil", there has to be some level of rationality built into the choices, rather than just choosing evil to be a jerk. If the good choice is difficult but rewarding, then the evil really needs to be just as balanced and appealing, like being easier but riskier. (and still evil) Otherwise, you get the problem of "Evil wins, because Good is Stupid". (or vice-versa)

If a character in DragonRaid is "Sin Enhanced", well, that ought to be good for something now, and much worse for something later. ("enhanced" connotates some improvement...) A good game system balances these things in such a way that 'bad' choices are appealing in the short term, unpleasant in the medium term, and absolveable in the long term. So the troll gives you "pleasure potions" that make your social interaction challenges easier, but the Storyteller can decide when the potion ends and the withdrawl kicks in. (like, say, during a difficult encounter) A character who uses a "pleasure potion" and stops suffers withdrawl for a while, and is less effective than other characters, but after a while, just becomes normal again.

Done well, systems like these work as intended without feeling horribly heavy-handed, mostly because players can make "wrong" choices and play through it. (you know... like adults that make wrong choices and work through them...) Anyone who's ever played "Axis and Allies" knows that the game favors Germany in the beginning, and the U.S. in the end, and most games end "correctly" in history.

The DragonRaid gamemaster is allowed to depict evil actions, however. This distinction also appears in secular roleplaying: some groups require that all of the players' characters be good guys, but no one puts this restriction on the gamemaster.

Well, that raises another inherent flaw in DragonRaid. Good storytelling (which is what role-playing games are: collective storytelling) involves confict with an uncertain outcome. The game master is responsible for establishing the foundations for these conflicts, for creating the tension between the heroic and the villanous. If you want to win, you have to be able to fail. Otherwise, what's the point? A lot of game masters sidestep this by having the player-characters be relatively insulated against failure but not non-player characters. If the heroes are on a quest to rescue the kidnapped villagers from the evil cult, the game master may be reluctant to have the heroes die or the cult completely escape with all the villagers, but they will allow for scenarios where not every kidnapped villager lives to come home. This is less satisfying than the risker outcomes (heroes die/are captured/join the cult) but it still keeps some dramatic tension, even as it reduces non-players to "Others" that become increasingly disposable over time. DragonRaid doesn't even do this: the game simply stops until they find the "right" choice, which means there's no tension or drama.

Game theory and game design are a hobby-horse of mine, as some of you know. I don't think the idea of a Christian RPG is inherently a bad one, but I think trying to teach morality through a rules-based game-system is a more complex process than the designers were aware of, at least if you want the end game to be fun and engaging.

[Andrea]

I just want to say I love the links down to the footnotes and, even more so, the links back up to where the reader left off!

[Rowen]

I'm rather surprised that this was even a "thing."

I've read way too many blogs and heard way too many people complain about the satanic nature of Narnia and DnD to imagine that there haven't been DragonRaid book burnings or something similar (I'm suddenly thinking of Arrested Development's music burning party. . .)

I also remember having to watch a video called "Satanism, Witchcraft and the Occult." Their representative for the occult was a woman rambling on and on about Dungeons and Dragons and how games like this talk about a battle between good and evil but how can that be because Jesus has triumphed over death and evil. There was also something about having to maintain a balance between good and evil (see above rant about Jesus). Of course, this was from the same video that presented "Witchcraft" as a teenaged girl talking about tarot cards while standing in front of a Stairway to Heaven subway poster. . .

I can't remember if it was in the same video, or a 700 club piece that talked about two boys who would go into the woods and play DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, SATAN'S GAME! until they committed suicide. SEE I TOLD YOU! these games are evil, and these boys deaths had nothing to do with their clinical depression or their cocaine habit, which we have to mention, but we're going to do it as fast and as quiet as possible so you don't get the wrong idea that SATAN might not have had something to do with this.

[Samantha C]

Fascinating article. I've definitely found roleplaying games to be wonderful tools for working out my own anxieties and questions and morals, and the best games are the ones where I have to come in conflict with my character, and allow her to do what she needs.

MaryKaye, this might be a little off-topic, but I'm curious. You talk a lot about the sorts of rituals that you do as a pagan, and not knowing all that much about them, they do sound something like roleplaying in themselves. To put a ritual together, to assign roles and to plot out what you're going to do, what dangers or rewards you'll encounter...do you think it's a similar effect? You learn more about the world by engaging in scenerios that (while I don't at all intend to say they're not real) are unlikely to be encountered in day-to-day life without the ritual set-up?

[Mmy]

@Andrea: I just want to say I love the links down to the footnotes and, even more so, the links back up to where the reader left off!

MaryKaye suggested that while we were at the format check stage. In fact many of the improvements/changes in the site have been suggested by members of our community.

[dismayor]

A rather sweeping statement that is actually meaningless unless you can offer proof that "fundies" (and I wish people would avoid using clearly derogatory names for groups they disagree with) are any more or less capable of distinguising fantasy from reality than any other group of people.

Part of the reason why some people who play DragonRaid might have trouble distinguishing between themselves and fantasy role-playing characters is because they are only encouraged (or sometimes only permitted) to play games like DragonRaid -- where there is no meaningful separation between the in-game character's identity and the player.

It's not really about being able to distinguish fantasy from reality. I'm sure that most of these same people can watch, say, "Transformers 3" and understand that it's not a documentary on modern aerospace engineering. But if your only frame of reference on something like roleplaying games is a game like DragonRaid, when you're having a conversation about something similar, like Dungeons and Dragons, you naturally have a tendency to rely on those old assumptions. It's not really about stupidity, or religious fundamentalism -- that's just how people work.

[Laiima]

I haven't played D&D in 30 yrs (high school), but I have remained fascinated with role-playing games ever since. This post was fascinating because it revealed all sorts of complexities I didn't realize were part of the experience. Thank you, MaryKaye!

[dismayor]

If a character in DragonRaid is "Sin Enhanced", well, that ought to be good for something now, and much worse for something later. ("enhanced" connotates some improvement...)

I think it's actually "Sin Enchanted", as in, "Your character is now enchanted or seduced by evil".

[Mike Timonin]

@Andrea: I just want to say I love the links down to the footnotes and, even more so, the links back up to where the reader left off!

MaryKaye suggested that while we were at the format check stage. In fact many of the improvements/changes in the site have been suggested by members of our community.

Thanks, MaryKaye! And thanks TBAT, for including the feature.

[Thomas Daulton]

...as regards the comments that the "fundies" cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality...

In all honesty I must disclose that I enjoy capping on the so-called "fundies" and their fantasies from time to time. However, reading Kit's and Mmy's criticism of the blanket generalization, it occurs to me that I'm hard pressed to name any of my several hundred American compatriots who are not living in some fantasy or other. Economic fantasies -- especially free-market fantasies -- are probably the most common. Followed by Imperialist fantasies, and [domestic] political fantasies. Apocalyptic fantasies are a smaller contingent but they're noticeably growing. For the record, I don't exempt myself from having any of those delusions, from time to time.

So I guess if we're going to make sweeping generalizations, we should just admit that Americans in general aren't good at distinguishing fantasy from reality; it's not something we can pin only on the "fundies"...

[histrogeek]

We tend to say the RTC subculture has a problem with reality. True in some cases, but here I think the issue is imagination. Imagination seems to be viewed with a good deal of suspicion. Too much allows SATAN to take control I suppose is the logic. The idea of deliberately creating an entirely new world, with its own rules and expectations, is to many in that subculture effectively lying. Or else it's sinning in your heart.
Kurt Cameron is sort of a poster child for this. Once he converted, he wouldn't kiss on camera or do anything "immoral" even in the cause of his art. It was all lying or encouraging immorality. I think there was even a case where he objected to a script to because his character did something naughty, but it was in a dream sequence. Presumably he knew he wasn't his character and that in this case his character wasn't even really his character, but even entertaining naughty thoughts is tantamount to doing them. Needless to say, it's put a crimp in his career as an actor, at least for mainstream entertainment.

[Rowen]

This is what I think of when I hear "Sin Enhanced."

[Froborr]

Great, now you've made me think about Final Fantasy X, temporarily shattering my pretense that Square inexplicably jumped from VI to IX and then never made another FF game ever again.

Thanks.

*grumble mutter razzem frazzem*

[Rowen]

I've attempted to play it twice. I was confused and MASSIVELY bored, so I googled the plot line. Big mistake. I haven't touched it since.

On a better note, I was cat sitting for a friend, and my ps2 is on the fritz, and she had a ps3, so I started playing FFIX again. I forgot how well done that one was. It's not perfect, but I like the characters, and the storyline and so much about it.

[Izzy]

Oooh, RPG theory!

Excellent post, MaryKaye.

I tend not to play "evil" characters myself--mostly because I'm a giant wuss and don't do it well, insofar as I get inordinately attached to NPCs*--but I've found that I always need to play characters with some kind of flaws in order to compensate for the excessive genre-savviness that an external perspective can give me. Yes, a good GM will provide a sensible reason to go into the dungeon, open the Necronomicon, and so forth, but this is a cooperative hobby, and it helps if my character's willing to get the ball rolling by tripping over it on occasion.

(Also, I admit to starting a habit of playing impulsive or unwisely knowledge-hungry characters in LARPs after one too many sessions when "Hey, want to go on this module?" was followed by thirty damn minutes of standing around discussing the same three points. I hate kender with the fire of a thousand suns, but there's a valid point buried somewhere in the WHEEE I'M A SIX YEAR OLD ON A SUGAR HIGH crap.)

As Mary Kaye mentions, the difficult or unclear choices are generally the most significant. It's easy for most people to have their characters throw the Rod of Orcus into the void...until the Rod is maybe the only thing that can heal their dying friend, fight off the Far Realm invasion, or counter the plague. Don't get me wrong, getting to do the Clearly Heroic Thing is a lot of fun sometimes, and I need those points of bright light in an otherwise shades-of-gray campaign, but...virtue untested is innocence, as someone said.

From a different angle, playing a character whose inclination is to evil and exploring the things that can make them do good is really interesting: my post-apocalyptic necromancer chick was *totally* willing to torture people and would have cheerfully eaten someone's soul if they were evil enough, but she's recently joined an order that doesn't let her do that, because the order's goals are things that matter way more to her. Maybe she'll eventually come to dislike the prohibited things on her own, maybe not, but the way in which good can restrain evil that way is cool to play out.

@Thomas Daulton: Ooh, yes. One of the things I like most about LARPing is that the spells all require an incant of some variety, which leads to neat atmospheric things: in the post-apocalyptic game I mentioned, for example, someone recited a modified version of the Green Lantern Creed to mass-heal the town. That's an aspect I think I actually would like to bring into tabletops, now that you mention it...

*Not even particularly awesome NPCs. I had to replay significant portions of Dragon Age because I wanted to avoid getting my faceless elf armies killed.

[Froborr]

Man, this thread is making me really, really want to RP again. I have a concept and most of the first session for a D&D Fourth Ed campaign where the players begin as soldiers, stranded alone in an enemy country the day after their (fully justified according to their leaders) invasion failed. Their pockets are full of currency the use of which will immediately mark them as enemies, they have no food, and the equipment on their backs and nothing else.

I'm assuming, as this is a group that's not gamed with me before and therefore does not know my style, they'll initially treat the NPCs as resources to consume and try to slaughter and pillage their way home. I wonder how long it will take for them to realize this is a Bad Idea.

I'm fine with characters being evil, but callousness and carelessness? Treating the world as less than real? Those'll get you punished. Not killed, because breaking my toys means I don't get to play with them anymore, but I play every NPC as a *person*, and that means they will respond to your treatment as a person naturally would.

Case in point: One campaign, one of the characters was *disgustingly* good at negotiating and lying. He used a combination of haggling and conning to get the party an average 25% discount on everything they bought, and then skimmed 10% for himself off the top. The result was a party *ridiculously* well-equipped for their level, and his character becoming obscenely rich enough to endanger the game balance... and a hit taken out on him by the Merchant's Guild. *evil grin*

[Mink]

A fascinating read, MaryKay! Thank you!

I read this part: "[...]they are forbidden to harm ordinary "OnceBorn" people." and I actually thought that was Not Too Bad. A dramatic contrast to the Left Behind video game. The quoting scripture mechanic seemed awkward* but an interesting way to encourage people to remember relevant scripture.** But then I read what it was that the troll was luring people to... a shopping spree, a music concert, and imbibing in 'pleasure potions?' I'm sorry, but as we say in the RPG.net forums, man what. I think 'troll' and I think either "big bad who sits under a bridge and noms travellers" or "fantasy version of a Foglio jaegermonster." ("Hwy hallo dere, laydeez...") (That or a variety of Lesser Yowling Internet F***wad.) Huh. Clearly a definition of 'troll' I am not familiar with!

I think DragonRaid is not a horrible concept but it falls into a variety of traps. For starters, the attributes are generated randomly, but the gameplay requires the player to be an active participant vice the character. That seems to make the attributes rather pants if not useless.

I am not quite so unhappy about the GM being the Voice of Authority. This is true in any game. The GM has to be; it has to be their decision as to what is good and evil in the game world. If a paladin stomping kobold hatchlings is considered a 'good act' then the GM has to interpret that correctly. Likewise, if a paladin is... I don't know, given Paladin Demerits for that same act of kicking kobold hatchlings, then again, the GM has to be the arbiter of that. Especially in games where there IS an *objective* alignment system, where there is a universal definition of 'good' and 'evil.' Granted, in this context, it does turn DragonRaid from a tool for self-exploration into potentially one for indoctrination.

I do wonder if DragonRaid gives that definition for the GM, if there is a direct statement that 'THESE ACTIONS ARE GOOD' and 'THESE ACTIONS ARE EEEEEEEEEEVIL!' from the developers; or if such morality is left up to the GM.

There are interesting questions regarding RPing 'evil' characters. I occasionally play with the idea of a game world where, essentially, LeHaye's TurboJesus is the One True God and morality is as defined by that branch of Christianity. I see it descending -- or rather, ascending? -- into a post-apocalyptic passion play where 'All right, then, I'll GO to hell!' is not merely a statement of morality but a declaration of destination. I don't see it happening, though, for much the same reason that I have trouble seeing a proper Call of Cthulhu campaign being run: At some point, the PCs die, they get sent to Hell, TurboJesus rules with fire and lightning, Hell gets crowded, and the remainder are brainwashed and chant 'holy, holy, holy!' ad aeterniam.*** A game where TurboJesus wins always, all the time, every time, would be no fun for players.

* - And I have known many awkward mechanics in my day!
** - I would dearly love to get LeHaye into one of these games where the correct answer is Timothy's "works not faith alone" verse.
*** - I suspect I just butchered the Latin tongue there. Apologies to any Latin scholars out there!

[Rodeobob]

I think it's actually "Sin Enchanted", as in, "Your character is now enchanted or seduced by evil".

I've been playing D&D long enough, and with enough game designers, that I automatically parse "enchanted" to Enhanced because "Enchanted sword" actually doesn't make much sense.

We tend to say the RTC subculture has a problem with reality. True in some cases, but here I think the issue is imagination. Imagination seems to be viewed with a good deal of suspicion. Too much allows SATAN to take control I suppose is the logic. The idea of deliberately creating an entirely new world, with its own rules and expectations, is to many in that subculture effectively lying. Or else it's sinning in your heart.

I have to disagree. I mean, I agree that if you asked folks in the RTC subculture why they feel the way they do, they'd give that answer, but that doesn't mean that's really what's going on. They might internalize that rationalization, but that's not why imagination is discouraged.

The real issue is that a lot of RTC-dom already is an imaginary world, where Satan is an active, real force manipulating events on a massive scale by influencing corporations and governments, while simultaneously waging a deeply personal war after each individual soul! If you look at the Satanic Panic of the 90's, the underlying beliefs included massive shadow conspiracies that co-opted local law enforcement, health officials, and government.

If you asked RTCs why imagination is bad, they'd say it's a tool of Satan, but the real reason fantasy escapism is bad is that it offers up an alternative to the already-constructed fantasy world that RTCs are encouraged to subscribe to. If you only ever watched "Two And A Half Men", you might think it's witty, clever comedy, but watch "Arrested Development" and then compare...

RTC fantasy looks painfully silly from the outside, with comparisons, but if you're never allowed to explore any alternatives, and are discouraged from making comparisons to other allegories, then the horrific inhumanity of Rayford Steele and Cameron Williams isn't as evident. "Bible as literal truth" seems nutty if you compare it to "Bible as allegory", so the safest route (from a command-and-control perspective) is to prevent any such comparisons.

[Literata]

Rodeobob, that's pretty dismissive, and thinking about it "from a command-and-control perspective" implies that the RTCs who do think that way are automatically split into the duped and the puppetmasters. Fred's nuanced discussions of how some people really do drink the Kool-Aid and what that means for personal responsibility give us lots more ways to think about the possibilities, so I wouldn't be so quick to put your money down on the "keep control" perspective.

[Rodeobob]

Literata - sorry, I tend to approach issues from a game-theory perspective. I don't believe RTC preachers and youth leaders are peering over steepled fingers, plotting how to control the 'flock' and cackling maniacally. The Venn diagram of "duped" and "puppetmasters" has a surprisingly large overlap; remember, the first person we learn to lie to and manipulate is ourselves, and those of us who are good at lying to and manipulating others have a lot of practice on ourselves.

When people say "RTCs have a problem with reality", it's a perspective issue. We can note that human beings enjoy the vicarious excitement of being in an existential struggle against eternal evil. We can also observe that the feeling of vicarious excitement can be derived from movies, books, games, and imagination with the same emotional satisfaction as from sermons about Harry Potter being a recruiting tool of a global coven of witches.

We might not make these observations directly. A church leader might notice that young people, eager to be "spiritual warriors" and ready to "go forth to do battle with Satan" would suddenly be much less involved with the church as they start reading Tolkien or Harry Potter, or start watching movies or playing certain games.

It doesn't require duping or being a puppmaster to observe these things. It doesn't require malice to argue that one approach is healther or better or purer than another. And if you perceieve that for whatever reason these various forms of escapism are in competition with your religious teachings, then it's only reasonable to oppose them.

The youth pastor or evangelist who does oppose these things may not know the underlying cause (substituting one vicarious fantasy for another, or being able to compare fantasies) but the clearly can see the correlation between active imagination and disinterest in RTC mythologies of omnipresent Satanic influence, spiritual warfare and eschatonology.

[hapax]

We tend to say the RTC subculture has a problem with reality. True in some cases, but here I think the issue is imagination. Imagination seems to be viewed with a good deal of suspicion.

I don't think that has anything to do with a particular religious viewpoint. I see a LOT of that in the library, from people of many different or no (as far as I can tell) faith perspective.

There are plenty of intelligent, well-educated, culturally aware people who dismiss ALL fiction as "lying." If it isn't factual -- more, if it isn't immediately practically USEFUL -- it is a waste of time, "fit for children -- and women -- and dull, ordinary people."

We do, of course, have many Evangelical Christian patrons who stick strictly within the books published by Tyndale, and Bethany House, and the like. I don't think that so much as refusing to deal with imagination OR reality, as the fact that they are reading these materials for relaxation and pleasure. It's not challenging concepts they object to, so much as, well, what they consider "gratuitous" profanity, sexuality, violence, etc.

And I don't have any problem with that. If I found four-letter words distressing, for example, and had to listen to them all day everywhere I went, I think I might enjoy entertainment that I could be sure was free from that.

Of course, there are plenty of people who, hrhm, DO go over the edge a bit. I just had a complaint today about an AMAZING display a staff member set up to celebrate the Harry Potter movie (hundreds of bottles in all sorts of colors and bizarre shapes, from the size of my pinky to a gallon, filled with sparkles and glowsticks and rubber eyeballs and cobwebs and I-don't-know-all-what, beautifully labelled with creative potion names).

In the course of fretting that we were promoting "Witchcraft", the patron said, "You *do* know what the Lord God does to those who call up and consult the dead, don't you?"

I heroically resisted the temptation to say, "Anoint them King of Israel?" and just said I'd pass the complaint on.

[Literata]

Rodeobob, thanks for that restatement - and your point about deceiving ourselves is a very, very apt observation.

As for a global coven, Pratchett had it right (as usual): The true collective noun for a group of Witches isn't "coven," it's "argument."

hapax, your stifled reply is the most awesome comeback ever. If you don't mind, I will shamelessly steal it and put it on my list right ahead of telling smart-alecks who ask if I'm going to turn them into a newt or toad that I generally find I can't improve on Nature's handiwork.

[Tonio]

A church leader might notice that young people, eager to be "spiritual warriors" and ready to "go forth to do battle with Satan" would suddenly be much less involved with the church as they start reading Tolkien or Harry Potter, or start watching movies or playing certain games.

I suspect that in many cases, it may not even be that explicit, but more of an instinctive reaction. Assuming that RodeoBob is correct about RTC-dom already being an imaginary world, perhaps living that way would be like living as an RPG character all the time. That would likely involve a large amount of denial and self-deception, which I expect would be psychologically draining. If my supposition is correct, then it may be difficult for anyone in that situation to have the willing suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy fantasy, because all their emotional resources may be invested in maintaining belief in the RTC imaginary world.

[Lila]

hapax: you rule. Knowing more about scripture than intolerant fundamentalists FTW. (Actually, I have run across quite a few intolerant fundamentalists whose knowledge of scripture was very limited. Possibly a result of prooftexting vs. actually reading any individual book straight through; or possibly a result of being encouraged to take someone else's word for what it says rather than reading it themselves, which, y'know, could be dangerous. Cf. De heretico comburendo.)

[Mark Temporis]

My most successful character began as evil; in ICE there are classes that even have "Evil" in the name which I thought kind of silly, and he was an evil mage. Really, what made me play him less and less evil over the years is that I couldn't play cocky and overconfident.

The system has a mechanic where you fail around 4% of your spells if you're average. (Roll d100, 01-04 always fails). I failed more around 25% of my spells, and EVERY SINGLE TIME I attempted to overcast or speed-cast.

This seriously cramps your BWAHHAHIHAVEYOUNOW tendencies.

[mercredigirl]

@Cat Meadors: That would be Kohlberg's stages of moral development, I think. /triviageek

[Josh (Enigma32)]

@ Kit and mmy - The whole belief that "witchcraft is real! Halloween is the time of the Devil! Both White and Black Magic is the stuff of the Devil! Playing D&D will give you REAL spells!" isn't what seals the deal for me but it certainly helps. Add to it the fact that the Rapturites (Rapturists? Rapturians? I sound like I'm describing a dinosaur breed), as Fred has repeatedly pointed out, believe that the Left Behind books are going to happen, if not exactly as detailed with minor things changed, furthers that. Finally, the sheer number of fundies who believe that they were formally satanists and tell the most fantastic stories - we're talking stuff more fantastic than Children's Fantasy Literature - with a straight face, honestly believing every word and expecting everyone else to believe them, is another thing I point too. These are the same people whose twisted 1984ish world means that if they can't get all the power, they're being persecuted. They're going out and they're saving unborn babies, they're fighting this grand crusade over in Iraq and Iran. They're these great heroes, fighting this mighty battle against progress for the hearts and souls of all of America, and they firmly believe it. If that's not being deluded, and displaying a distinctive inability to tell fantasy from reality, I'm not sure what is. In retrospect, though (and having read Thomas Daulton's comment), I'll expand that generalization to include most Americans as well; the inability to tell reality from fantasy does seem to be a very American thing (I would say "just like fundies," but alas - they've found themselves poisoning Africa rather nicely with their witch hunts, their brutal murder of children and gays, and their toxic interpretation of their book.)

[Pyat]

Not to self-promote (since I don't make any money from it), but I once did a video review of this game:

http://youtu.be/vNeVuTzHwC8

You can have a look at the components and listen to the instructional audio tape included with the game.

[Asha]

I have ranted on my aunt who believed I was going to be lead to the devil via D&D before, because I was a teenager at the time and I had genuinely loved that particular aunt. Her solution to my deviance was for me to read "This Present Darkness," and "Piercing the Darkness." Two more fiction books which were even less grounded in reality than most D&D games. Or they would have made great urban fantasy games, I don't know. I just remember thinking they were creepy as heck. Yet that she would honestly believe they would change my mind continues to baffle me.

I have genuinely enjoyed RPG video games, and table-topping has never been an option (none I can find or get to easily.) Mary Kaye, your conclusions remind me of why stories like "The Water Babies," which are obviously meant to be didactic, are remembered less and gain less fame than stories like, say, "Alice in Wonderland." Both are meant for kids, but in the former children rarely act like children and there is no nuance to be mined from it. DragonRaid will lose it's appeal almost instantly, but D&D or other RPGs can usually find new ways to be parsed.

[Josh (Enigma32)]

@Kit
Oh, to answer that second question I missed (sorry):
[Trigger warning: Just about everything - abortion, rape, homophobia, and others]
[Warning: Wall 'O Text]

A "typical fundie" is any individual who is willing to stand on the street corner with a sign announcing the end of the world. They're the type of individual who is convinced that God is coming back for them while fantasizing that everyone who is different from them will be burned in Hell for imagined sins. They're the individuals who believe that the world is 6,000 years old based off of a "literal" interpretation of the Bible, while ignoring the fact that the very same book promotes a Flat Earth. They're the person who's willing to stand out in front of an abortion clinic holding signs with miscarried children, believing that somehow looks like an aborted collection of cells. They're the kind of people who believe, firmly that gays choose to be gay and that it's somehow a "harmful" lifestyle to themselves (the fundie) first. They believe that playing with a Ouiji board will allow you to be possessed, and that morality needs to be legislated through the Congress. They believe that the United States is somehow a Christian nation, despite there being no proof. They're the ones willing to stand up and shout down rape victims because they were "dressed improperly" and say that forcing women to wear a specific dress code would somehow prevent that, based on their own book. They're the people who believe that, somehow, atheists worship Satan. I can name more than a few typical fundies; I'll start with J.S. Rushdoony and work from there, to the Westboro Baptist Committee, to the kind of people like Scott Roeder (not all fundies are violent; but most of them certainly have those fantasies) to the folks over on the Free Republic (some of them) and the Rapture Ready crowd (again, there are a few that don't fit the definition exactly, but it's a scant few over there), to Jack Chick (assuming he's even real and not some massive poe), and others: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Tammy Fey Bakker and her husband, Phyllis Schafly and her even more deranged son, Andrew, the LeHayes (with xenophobia and John Bircherism throw in FTW!), Jenkins, Boehner, Bachmann, Palin, and a whole bunch of others that either hit the definition square on or are very much shaded by it. I'm not crafting a strawman to beat here (not that you accused me of doing that). My "typical fundie" is very much a real group of people, who are very much a real danger to western society.

I use the term "fundie" to describe them because it's accurate in my mind. They aren't even adhering to the fundamentals of their own religion. They're something all together different from what they actually claim to be, but they're claiming to be "fundamentalists", so I oblige them to an extent - the same extent to which they're actually practicing their "Bible/other holy book-based beliefs".

[Josh (Enigma32)]

"not all fundies are violent; but most of them certainly have those fantasies"

That shouldn't be there. "Not all fundies are violent" can stay, because they're not; the vast majority are normal people who avoid violence if at all possible. But the sites that I go on to cite are where most of the inspiration for the rest of that comment came from (especially the Free Republic; it's a rare day when someone doesn't fantasize about killing liberals and atheists over there.) When I started typing that comment, I didn't think I'd end up adding the Free Republic as an example, but I did, and I forgot I had that in there. Mea Culpa (which is Latin for "My bad").

[P J Evans]

I seem to recall that Fred postulated that fundamentalists (and other authoritarians) have trouble with metaphor and other non-literal ways of expressing ideas. This might apply to Dragon Raid's lack of separation between players and characters.

[albanaeon]

A RPG where the players are expected to win by reciting the most passages of the rule book? Oh Gods, spare me right now. Perhaps they got the inspiration from watching some of the more painful game sessions I've been in.

In any case, I have a hard time seeing the point of this game if the right outcomes are so prescribed. Myself and my friends who roleplay rather like to be able to explore other aspects of ourselves. Be maniacally evil. Be the virtuous defender of the realm. Be the shady thief but have a heart of gold (stolen from the paladin of course...). Slaughter the rampage horde of orcs. Defend the aggrieved orcs from the bloodthirsty peasants. Find there is no one right choice. Find their is NO right choice. Spend a campaign in penance. Cast off your former dogmas and step into a more nuanced view of the world. In a nutshell, to be "different." And a game that doesn't allow that, that doesn't allow a distinction between you and your imaginary counterpart, sounds just wrong on so many levels.

[Jenny Islander]

Michael Stackpole relates that he once ran a demo for some concerned parents. As DM, he rolled the dice and announced that a parent's character had been damaged or affected by a spell (can't remember which). He then asked the parent why she, personally, wasn't hurt. The parent said, "Because the Holy Spirit protects me!"

Believing that the elaborate list of rules of fundamentalism will produce perfection requires a lot of magical thinking, or, put another way, deliberately not understanding the difference between your imagination and the evidence of your senses. No wonder they are frightened by RPGs.

[JamesP]

For a genuinely interesting roleplaying game with a religious (specifically "fantasy Mormon" a la Alvin Maker) background, designed ot highlight moral issues, I heavily recommend checking out Vincent Baker's DOGS IN THE VINEYARD.

[Kit Whitfield]

@Josh: the thing is, you're calling 'typical' the people who are the most visible; generally, the most visible members of any group are not typical of it. You're also assuming that the most visible members are either the same people as designed and/or play this game, or else they're just the same. There's no reason to believe that; it seems more probable that it's played by ordinary members of the church. Associating the two seems unfounded and unfair. If I don't point that out, I've got no right to call out a right-winger if they say unfair things about 'typical liberals.'

--

@hapax: do you know 'In Guilty Night'? I've always loved it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-i2S8ImFj4

[Firedrake]

Here at last is a subject I feel qualified to pontificate about. :-)

The anti-RPG fundamentalists I've met don't so much deny the player/character distinction exists - as claim that the players are unable to make that distinction, and that this inability is in itself dangerous. A fairly fine point, perhaps, but it's the usual censor's argument ("this won't harm me but it will damage other people") - even when, as we've seen elsewhere (thanks FC), the same people are reacting to loud noises with "maybe it's the Rapture, wa-hey".

I wonder whether perhaps the author(s) were conflating role-playing games with therapeutic role-playing - the "temptation" example you give sounds much more like the sort of approach a psychotherapist might use to talk through hypothetical situations with a patient than like anything I've met in a game. It may be that the author(s) hoped to use this brainwashing-like technique deliberately: if the player learns to parrot "no" every time he perceives a Temptation, maybe she'll find herself doing it in real life too. (Similar to the way that repeating something often enough seems to incline people to believe it, even if they knew up front it was a lie.)

What MaryKaye describes in terms of lessons learned from real RPGs is just the sort of emergent behaviour - something really interesting, but not explicitly planned by any participant - that in my mindscape is one of the major benefits of the games.

Philboyd, on the "performance" question: an interesting aspect of this to me is that the game doesn't have any original or unique correctives to offer, just the usual "you've disappointed your friends" and "we can't go on until you agree". So in terms of putting right people who've gone wrong it's no better than anything else...

Rowen, I assume that this game escaped the burnings by saying "Christian!" all over its cover, just like Angel Boards (which aren't Ouija Boards at all, no no honest guv).

[Philboyd]

Firedrake, I agree, but I'd add that the old correctives - peer pressure, enforced habit-forming - work just fine when you're trying to make people socially acceptable. On the other hand, if you're trying to 'put people right', they don't work at all.

Also: I just googled 'Angel Boards', and really? I mean, really? Tell me it's all some huge joke.

[Tonio]

A fairly fine point, perhaps, but it's the usual censor's argument ("this won't harm me but it will damage other people")

That fits in with my supposition that when people have to constantly convince themselves that Satan's power is active in the world, they may feel threatened or tempted by the idea of deliberately engaging in (another sort of) fantasy. What you suggest sounds like projection, where they fear it will harm themselves and are telling themselves that it won't. Sort of how homophobes describe homosexuality as though it's a temptation that gays chose not to resist.

[Johannes Busted Larsen]

Thanks for the excellent comparative read.
I can not help but think: maybe the writers do not want players to learn about moral choices. Maybe they want the children to learn what to do when their friends makes wrong choices. Maybe it's just meant to teach the children to quote scripture in situations where they encounter people behave immorally.

Quoting scripture is maybe not meant as a punishment, but is instead the very point of the game. After all don't christian people think that one can actually save a person by quoting scripture?

[Kit Whitfield]

A fairly fine point, perhaps, but it's the usual censor's argument ("this won't harm me but it will damage other people")

A recommend: there's a very good documentary about the 'video nasty' scare in the UK on the first of these DVDs: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Video-Nasties-Definitive-Guide-DVD/dp/B004BDZ0FC/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1JV0GFXANXDYR&colid=3TYNPFUDYDWQ5

... which covers an intriguing moments in British cultural history. One of the points the anti-censorship interviewees make is that nowadays almost all the 'video nasties' are freely available on DVD - and yet the people who claimed they'd end civilisation don't seem to care at all. One activist remarks that this is because they cared about controlling the present, so they move on to other things.

Another thing stood out that was very interesting, and having noticed it there, it stands out elsewhere as well: in debates between Side This Will Rot Our Childrens' Minds And Cause Crimes and Side You Are Undermining The Basis Of A Free Society - let's call them Team Children and Team Freedom - there's a really marked different of emotional tone. Team Freedom speakers tend to be angry: they talk passionately, they can get contemptuous, but mostly there's a kind of urgency in how they speak. Team Children tends to come across as ... well, smug. At least in this documentary, they kept saying that these videos would have all these terrible effects, but they said it without any of the fear or anger or worry that you'd expect someone to feel if they genuinely thought such things would actually happen. Mostly they seemed to be pleased with themselves rather than concerned about other people.

Anger isn't necessarily a proof of rightness, of course, but it is a bit suspicious if someone's saying 'Bad thing X is about to happen' and they look very contented while saying it.

[Morgan]

The example that always baffles me of religious objections to fiction which seem to miss the point is the criticism of the first Harry Potter book for the line "there is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it". The line spoken by the villain. That the evil villain says evil things which the hero rejects apparently means the book is promoting evil. It's like a segment of Christian culture feels they were hoodwinked by Milton and have been on guard ever since.

Jenny Islander: Michael Stackpole relates that he once ran a demo for some concerned parents. As DM, he rolled the dice and announced that a parent's character had been damaged or affected by a spell (can't remember which). He then asked the parent why she, personally, wasn't hurt. The parent said, "Because the Holy Spirit protects me!"

...What the heck. Would you happen to have a link to Stackpole's telling of this story? That's just... wow, I want more context for that.

[Tonio]

they said it without any of the fear or anger or worry that you'd expect someone to feel if they genuinely thought such things would actually happen. Mostly they seemed to be pleased with themselves rather than concerned about other people.

Kit, that sounds almost exactly like the hellfire 'n' damnation RTCs on this side of the Atlantic. Your post reminds me of another classic encounter between Team Freedom and Team...well, I don't know of a charitable name in this case.

[Josh (Enigma32)]

@Kit,
Fair enough; I appreciate the points made and the concerns. We disagree; in my experience with fundies, the vast majority of the ones I encounter are like I said, even if they aren't in your grill about it 24/7 like their leadership is. That said, the most visible ones I cited are the leaders of their church/movements; so I'm fairly sure that the only way the rank-and-file are different from the leadership is that, in some ways, the rank-and-file are less aggressive about it.

[Tonio]

That the evil villain says evil things which the hero rejects apparently means the book is promoting evil.

Makes perfect sense if you believe that evil is inherently tempting. Quicker, easier, more seductive.

It's like a segment of Christian culture feels they were hoodwinked by Milton and have been on guard ever since.

Like Scotty on Star Trek, I don't understand that reference. Why would Paradise Lost feel like hoodwinking for such Christians?

[Kit Whitfield]

@Josh: the point I'm making is that if you're going to insult an entire subculture, you ought to provide evidence and examples rather than just sweeping generalisations.

[Froth]

Is this the thread to pontificate about the moral lessons I've learned from LARPing? It is, isn't it? Huzzah!

Once in a LARP, I destroyed my own god, and it was the good and right thing to do. Said god was a minor deity, the spirit of Bear, and it had been "eaten" by a demon. Said demon had a nasty habit of using the spirits it had consumed as puppets or pawns to defend itself. So when we fought the big battle to finally trap it, it spat out the spirit of Bear, which had just enough self left to give me a blessing before it tried to kill me and all my comrades. The blessing was the ability to destroy it. I used it.

I don't think that story would go down very well with the people who designed DragonRaid. It was the right thing to do. It was heroic and good, to kill what was left of my own deity before it could be puppetted into harming me or my comrades in defence of something that had eaten and enslaved it. But any story where you fight and destroy your own god and regard it as the correct choice is going to be worrying to the fundamentalist Evangelical mindset.

The thing that continues to worry and baffle my vicar is that I play an angel in another game, though that may be less about religion and more about the idea of me having that kind of authority...

[kisekileia]

This is a really interesting post. Thank you for writing it, Mary Kaye.

I know that when I was a conservative evangelical, I would have had a problem with closely emulating occult behaviour in RPGs. I'm not completely sure of the underlying assumptions behind that--I think it may have had to do with a feeling that such behaviour was disrespectful to God, and possibly also with a fear that Satan/demons would respond to even invocations that were meant as fantasy.

When I actually first encountered RPGs, I was kind of on the left-hand border of evangelicalism. My boyfriend at the time was playing in a D&D 3.5 campaign, I had heard that D&D was Satanic and thus was a little nervous about my boyfriend playing it, so I borrowed a copy of the Player's Handbook from the DM to check it out. I was immediately fascinated by what I read, and just as immediately realized there couldn't possibly be anything Satanic about fantasy spellcasting where the player doesn't even perform the actions to cast the spell--they just say (for example) “I cast magic missile.” I've been playing RPGs ever since.

Interestingly, I came to the realization that authority figures often want you to believe things that aren't true at a very late age--23, in fact. I had previously realized there are some cases where authorities do that (e.g. North Korea), but it never occurred to me to believe such a thing of the authorities in my own life. I came to that realization at my first gaming convention, which taught me that debauched partying isn't always a largely hollow experience that only hurts people in the end--sometimes it's genuine fun that doesn't seriously hurt anyone. That was completely at odds with what I'd been taught as an evangelical, which led to me questioning a whole passel of evangelical ideas about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll and ultimately leaving evangelicalism for a liberal. Anglican church with rainbow stripes on the sign. I still look back on that convention as one of the best weekends of my life.

[Morgan]

Like Scotty on Star Trek, I don't understand that reference. Why would Paradise Lost feel like hoodwinking for such Christians?

My understanding (which may be apocryphal, though the reference wasn't serious enough for that to bother me) is that Milton got some flak at the time for making Satan so compelling a character that he was accused of being a crypto-Satanist out to, basically, bless with faint condemnation.

[Mmy]

@Josh (Enigma32): We disagree; in my experience with fundies, the vast majority of the ones I encounter are like I said, even if they aren't in your grill about it 24/7 like their leadership is. That said, the most visible ones I cited are the leaders of their church/movements; so I'm fairly sure that the only way the rank-and-file are different from the leadership is that, in some ways, the rank-and-file are less aggressive about it.

Josh -- my immediate response to reading this is "so what?" We don't know what your experience is and we don't know if you had an interaction with a representative sample of the group you are talking about. Further, your characterization of one group of individuals on the basis of something you know about the larger unit of which they are a part is arguably an instance of the ecological fallacy.

Put another way -- just because I know something about the opinions of the Pope on birth control I am not justified in making sweeping statements about what the Catholic family next door thinks.

[Tonio]

Thanks, Morgan. That sounds like what I mentioned earlier, the strange idea that evil is somehow attractive. Even if that idea presumes that evil is bad because it hurts other people, it still seems to make another presumption, which is that actions that hurt others are always about personal gain or pleasure. Just when I think I've dissected one binary concept, I seem to find another one.

[Jason]

I have seen 3 or 4 of the video nasties and they really aren't all *that* nasty by comparison of the stuff that is out today. I actually own a copy of one of them. In a world of Saws, Hostels, Human Centipedes, and even more brutal remakes of a few of the video nasties, they are pretty benign.

I generally think the world be a better place without torture porn, but the censorship to get rid of torture porn would be far, far, far worse. The Human Centipede and it's sequel make me temporarily forget that I'm *against* censorship. Human Centipede 2 is banned in UK, but to spare you the details you can google if you want to know why.

[Tonio]

I don't get the motives for banning things like Human Centipede. Do some people simply want to be protected from such things at all costs? Or are they afraid that people will be tempted to copy it? From what I've heard about the film, my suspicion is that it's not "torture porn" at all but simply an attempt to inflame sensibilities for their own sake. In my high school there was a boy who was infamous for taking out his glass eye for any reason that suited him. At one point do such extremes become comical like Mr. Creosote?

[Jason]

The original Human Centipede is not banned in the UK. The sequel is banned. The reasons why are too triggering/disgusting for me to explain in polite company. I don't agree with it being censored, but I have to say that when I heard why it is banned my gut reaction was such strong revulsion that I can understand why someone would want to, not on a logical level but an emotional one. The director is also angry with UK because in explaining why they are banning it, they have provided spoilers for the film before it's even come out. I have explained the offending scenes and rot13ed them below:

Gur frdhry nccneragyl vaibyirf fbzrbar jub vf n sna bs gur bevtvany zbivr jub nggrzcgf gb pbcl jung jnf qbar va gur bevtvany va erny yvsr. Gurer ner fprarf bs uvz znfgheongvat gb gur uhzna pragvcrqr ur unf perngrq nf jryy nf n fprar jurer ur encrf bar bs gur jbzra jub znxrf hc gur pragvcrqr juvyr uvf cravf vf jenccrq va oneorq jver.

[Tonio]

when I heard why it is banned my gut reaction was such strong revulsion that I can understand why someone would want to, not on a logical level but an emotional one

That's my whole point. Since you and I agree about censorship, I won't go into a full explanation for why I oppose it. My more general point is that laws shouldn't be based on emotional reactions like revulsion alone.

It's the same reason we have systems of justice. When Casey Anthony was acquitted recently, a hell of a lot of people felt she was guilty. I blame most of this on a natural human desire for justice and closure, a longing to see wrongdoing punished. With the acquittal, one has a dead child and no one being called to account for this, which is very dissatisfying. But such emotions are no basis for determining an accused person's guilt. I've served on juries and I know firsthand that jurors feel that dissatisfaction even more intensely when the evidence isn't there to support guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

So I see censorship in the broad sense as like replacing courts and trials with mob justice, as decisions being made on emotion alone with little thought to the consequences. In both cases, the harm caused would be far, far worse for society than the outrages they're intended to remedy.

[Rowen]

These games seemed designed for those two kids that Daria babysat, for whom watching the Weather Channel was a treat.

The problem I see is that the kids I've meet who were like that, weren't really into the DnD oeuvre. The kids who, even from conservative Christian households, who were into fantasy and who this might be applicable to, were already playing DnD,usually because their parents introduced them to it.

[Ross]

The thing about the video nasties for me is that they are, on balance, entirely unwatchable. Not simply that they were full of gore and torture -- they were -- but today's torture porn, while equally horrible in intent and content, usually displays at least a passing competence in filmmaking.

A Human Centipede, a Hostel or a Serbian Film are all chock full of unspeakable depravity, unlikable characters, and serve little purpose other than to offend, but they at least convey that the actors have some kind of training, and that the filmmaker can tell one end of the camera from the other.

The Video Nasties I've watched were, for the most part, cast entirely from the director's friends and family, shot on consumer-grade equipment, lit by a couple of 60-watts, with inaudible sound and editing courtesy of two VCRs.

Hostel at least looks like a real movie -- The Driller Killer looks like a teenage horror fan playing with dad's camcorder.

I don't like torture porn either, but there are things *about* it that I like. In the age of the PG-13 horror movie, I really like the fact that there are still filmmakers who don't consider coyness a virtue, and who want to depict the *viscerality* of horror rather than a sequence of pointless jump scares, cutaways to avoid revealing anything, and supernatural enforcement of hayes code morality (ie "The ghost monster can only kill you if you have societally-unapproved sex"). I'm not of the school that believes "what you don't see is scarier than what you do see," for a number of reasons (Among them: the belief that this is bullshit made up by filmmakers who either didn't have hte budget or were afraid of a restrictive rating; a deep belief that movies are inherently visual; the fact that I've got quite a good imagination, and if you want me to just use that instead of watching your movie, I can just go home, close my eyes and save ten bucks)

Unfortunately, the line between "filmmaker who is willing to challenge the audience" and "filmmaker whose only goal is to offend the audience" seems to be monomolecular these days.

[Ross]

I will qualify what I said about the production values of the video nasties, having reviewed the list, by clarifying that I was only thinking of the US and UK-made films on the list. The italian-made ones I've seen actually seem to be of production quality pretty much comparable to mainstream lower-budget movies of the period

[Tonio]

Ross, my own position is that "what you don't see is scarier" only works if the filmmaker is skilled enough to pull it off. Sometimes filmmakers hamstrung by budgets and ratings find ways around both to pull off good work, such as Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. Obviously not a horror film, but Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek both evades and mocks the Hayes Code.

Conversely, with effects and CGI, some filmmakers use it to great effect and others use it as a crutch for a lack of storytelling. I refuse to flatly deem these technologies as bad for moviemaking, just as I refuse to flatly deem that horror in films needs to be visual. Not that you're arguing the opposite in either case. But I have encountered plenty of film fans who seem to judge works based on the quality of the CGI alone, and heard about producers who think in terms of CGI first and story second, if at all.

I suppose for me, it comes down to any visual effect in a film being a tool that can be used for either good or bad, and the key being the intentions and skill of the person wielding the tool. Someone like Scorcese could make a work of cinematic art even if he were limited to a Flip phone.

[Jason]

@Ross-

The Video Nasties I've seen:

The Evil Dead - I saw this because my friend said "Rent the Evil Dead 2. It's hilarious." I wanted to start at the beginning of the series. I did not realize that the original was played straight while the rest of the series is a parody. I actually did find the original extremely frightening though I think that may be because I went into it thinking it was a parody. The rare horror movie that actually scares me is a great find so I bought the DVD. I did find the other 2 amusing though I prefer the original which is a straight horror movie, albeit a low budget one. YMMV, but there were several specific scenes that for some reason just really really unnerved me.

Blood Feast - I watched 2,000 Maniacs by director Herschell Gordon Lewis before watching this which was his debut gore film. Herschell Gordon Lewis is basically the father of the gory movie and his films while trash are amusing trash and the gore is too fake looking to be disturbing. I'm as much of a sucker for cheap low budget cheesy horror as I am for good horror, so yeah, I've seen most of his movies. It was stupid, fake looking, had a cartoony villian and terrible acting from a Playboy centerfold, but it was fun to watch.

The Last House on the Left - This film doesn't really have much going for it in the way of redeeming qualities. TW - RAPE: The entire plot is a a girl gets raped and killed and then her parents do a little ultraviolent vigilante justice on the rapists. It's pointless violence and that's about it.

I think those are the only ones I've seen.

I'm not of the school that believes "what you don't see is scarier than what you do see," for a number of reasons (Among them: the belief that this is bullshit made up by filmmakers who either didn't have hte budget or were afraid of a restrictive rating; a deep belief that movies are inherently visual; the fact that I've got quite a good imagination, and if you want me to just use that instead of watching your movie, I can just go home, close my eyes and save ten bucks)

I would disagree. When I see extreme depictions of violence I generally feel more revolted than horrified. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the most frightening films I've ever seen. There were probably about 15 times during that movie that I said to myself "If it doesn't cut away from this, I'm turning this off, because I can't handle it." I always said this immediately before it cut away. My imagination of how horrible what I was about to see was going to be was more horrifying than had I actually seen it. Extreme violence is more horrifying to me if you get a slight glimpse of what is going to happen and then the imagination fills in the rest. If you've never seen the original 70's Texas Chainsaw Massacre rent it. It is THE textbook example of how this works and how effective it is.

People come away from that movie thinking they've seen something really gory, but actually the majority of the violence takes place off screen.

[Kit Whitfield]

The Human Centipede malarkey always struck me as pretty adolescent, and the sequel sounds like more of the same. Lbh'q guvax gur oneorq-jver vapvqrag jbhyq pneel vgf bja chavfuzrag.

On the other hand, I'd say that Martyrs is a pretty good piece of artistic opposition within the genre.

[mercredigirl]

@Tonio:

Sady at Tiger Beatdown had an essay on the Human Centipede [strong trigger warnings for sexual violence, physical abuse, and general squick].

[Tonio]

Two of the scariest movies I've seen are Kubrick's version of The Shining and the first Blair Witch. For me, it's not the immediate shocks but the overall sense of building dread.

But there's a different kind of fear I've experienced in films. I saw Alien when I was 13 and I left the room as soon as gur perngher rkcybqr sebz Wbua Uheg'f fgbznpu. I'm not sure why. I think I have an automatic reaction where I imagine that happening to me. I don't have the same reaction if I watch a film character being hurt or killed by someone else. In real life, I can feel momentary tremors up and down my legs if I see, say, an amputee or someone with another type of dramatic disfigurement.

[Josh (who is posting from work, please ignore any spelling erorrs)]

@Mmy
Thanks for the response;

I think the break here is that you think I'm talking about a wide range of people. I'm not; this is a very specific group, and I've defined them very specifically. The comparison isn't really a fair one; there's a larger segment of Catholics than there is of fundies (although there is some overlap, Catholic fundamentalists are a bit different from Protestant Evangelical ones, who I'm focusing on), so there's bound to be more diversity there, which means a sweeping statement would be entirely inappropriate.

I think another break here is that I haven't been entirely consistent, either. That's my fault (can I blame the fact that I'm tired? Please?) I'll point blank say it, for as much my benefit as everyone else's, and so I'm not shifting the goalposts on anyone, incluidng myself: when I use the term fundie, I'm referring almost universially to Right-Wing Evangelical Fundamentalists. In a previous post I listed Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Pagan fundies. While they exist in all stripes, I'm exclusive refering to Right-Wing Evangelicals, and subconsciously, that's where I direct the conversation, because in America, they're the most common type.

I still believe it's fair to say that a person who thinks the world is only 6,000 years old, that there was a massive flood that destroyed all life on Earth, that the Bible is absolutely inerrant and the Flintstones was somehow a documentary (hyperbole, but only just a little), that gay marriage will somehow destroy the whole of Western Civilization, that a miscarried baby looks like a aborted fetus, and that playing D&D will opent he door to the occult has difficulties distinguishing fantasy from reality. It may just be me, though. And that description is a fair description of most,if not all, Evangelical fundamentalists (with overlap from other fundie groups).

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@Jason
Good God, man! I can't unsee that... *sob*
What kind of sick mind thinks that stuff up? I just don't understand... True Art is Transgressive and Juvenile, maybe? I like horror, but I don't like a lot of the horror movies these days - blood, guts, gore, and all the other Grand Guignol stuff that goes along with it. That's not horror. Psychological - existential - now that's horror. The stuff they have these days, like that Human Centipede movie, is just for shock value. It's a bunch of juveniles trying to get a rouse out of people.

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[Jason]

@Tonio-

Really? Interesting. I didn't find the first Blair Witch even remotely frightening. For one thing, I found all of the main characters so stupid and loathesomely obnoxious that I was actively hoping for their death. For me it boiled down to just 3 people with a camcorder wandering around the woods and cursing.

I similiarly do not understand why "Paranormal Activity" is so damn terrifying.

[Rowen]

Jason,

That reminds me of an experience I had in the Boy Scouts. We were out hiking at one of the big boy scout hiking park things, and what you'd do is hike around, and every couple of days hit some way-station that had activities as well as places to restock your supplies.

At one of them, I remember we had some campfire and the employees were telling ghost stories, dealing with the abandoned cabin (wooooooOOOOOOOOOooooooooo) that we passed. There was something about how the guy who built the cabin went on a murdering spree or something and then WAS NEVER FOUND!!! However, the staff set this story in the '30s or something. So, instead of going to our sleeping bags scared that there were ax-murders and zombies running around, we went to bed making "Alma, check your battery!" jokes, or snickering about being chased down by octogenarian ax-murders who are having trouble maneuvering their wheelchairs through the backwoods of mountains of New Mexico.

[Tonio]

Jason, I suspect that I was simply in the right mood to be scared by Blair Witch. If I had seen it at home, I might have had a different opinion about it. I agree that it's a bad movie in cinematic terms.

I'm a history buff and I saw Titanic twice with different people. The second time, I was scared during the sequence when the boat was dying, because it focused on the inevitability of the doom for most of the passengers. The adrenaline affected me so much that I had trouble sleeping half an hour later.

[Jason]

@Tonio-

I'm a history buff and I saw Titanic twice with different people. The second time, I was scared during the sequence when the boat was dying, because it focused on the inevitability of the doom for most of the passengers. The adrenaline affected me so much that I had trouble sleeping half an hour later.

I saw The Royal Tenenbaums twice. The first time I saw it in the theater with some college buddies and thought it was one of the most hilarious movies I'd ever seen. The second time I watched it with my parents and was pretty much constantly asked "Why do you think this is movie is so funny? It's not funny at all. It's just weird and kind of depressing." What seemed funny the first time I saw it was not even remotely funny the second time through. Watching it with mom and dad just made me feel uncomfortable. This is really the only time where my feelings about a movie completely changed depending on who I was watching it with and I've kind of been reluctant to watch it again because of that.

[Mike Timonin]

Good God, man! I can't unsee that... *sob*

That's why I'm listening to the part of my brain that says "you don't want to look at this, you don't want to look at this..."

I saw Blair Witch late, and I think all of the parodies kinda spoiled it for me before I saw it. The premise had potential, I think. My wife and I have found Japanese horror films - or, remakes of Japanese horror films - to be quite frightening - I had bruises on my arm for a week after we saw The Grudge from where she grabbed me.

[Jenny Islander]

Quoting scripture is maybe not meant as a punishment, but is instead the very point of the game. After all don't christian people think that one can actually save a person by quoting scripture?

Quoting certain fundamentalist-approved verses of Scripture probably is the point of the game because memorization of some verses is believed to strengthen faith and provide comfort in stressful situations, while others are supposed to prove certain fundamentalist Christian beliefs. (The archives of the original Slacktivist contain some excellent essays on the problems with using a single verse, that is, an arbitrary division of Scripture applied relatively recently in history for navigational purposes, without reading the entire passage of which it forms a part.) However, the vast majority of "christian people" do not believe that they can save anybody. Even fundamentalist Protestants generally believe that the best they can do is convince someone to "invite Jesus into their hearts." (Most mainstream Christians think that badgering people to recite a prayer of commitment is rude at best.) I have not heard of somebody reciting passages of Scripture over someone in an attempt to "save" them; usually people who go in for this kind of thing use prayers or exhortations consisting of fundamentalist jargon.

[Caravelle]

There are two difficulties with DragonRaid's approach. The first is that a temptation isn't very tempting if we know that it's not actually available. A pile of money on the table will tempt a dishonest person. A picture of money generally won't.

Right. I call this the "How come I can make my Sims study, clean and improve themselves indefinitely, but I spend my time playing computer games ?" problem.

[Jenny Islander]

@Morgan: Here's a link to The Pulling Report, Michael Stackpole's expose of a then-leader of the anti-RPG witch hunt:

http://www.rpgstudies.net/stackpole/pulling_report.html

While the irrational fear of children becoming mad cultists due to RPGs has died down somewhat since Pulling's day*, it's still with us. I think Stackpole points out in his report that denominations that do not agree with each other and may in fact consider each other to be non-Christian pass around these stupid rumors without checking the source.

*I've told the story before of a kid a couple grades behind me at my school whose parents burned all of the D&D books, dice, etc., he'd bought with money from his own job while a clergyperson prayed over the burn barrel, then forbade him to associate with any gamers, which basically meant all of his friends plus people like me who only knew him from game sessions. Then they told him he needed to fix his attitude; they were only trying to help; why was he so sullen? He talked to me for 5 minutes in the library stacks, glancing over his shoulder the whole time. He was dreaming of escaping to trade school. AFAIK he hasn't been back since graduation.

[Rowen]

Jenny, I come across, on the internet at least, a lot of people who quote scripture to prove themselves right, which seems like it would then have the effect of the other person going, "OMG, I was wrong! It was Earth! Jesus, all along!"

"the fool in his heart says there is no God" and "there is none righteous, no not one." among others. Though, that seems less converting and more arguing online, which requires a lot of navel gazing on both sides.

[Rowen]

Hrm. My del tags didn't work.

[Mmy]

@Rowen: TypePad comment html doesn't like del tags.

[Ross]

I liked the idea of Blair Witch -- I am the person who actually likes the whole "found footage" style of filmmaking (Though even among the few people who like it, I'm probaly the only one who thinks Diary of the Dead is the best example, because I consider camera-shakes-so-hard-your-eyes-bleed a bug and not a feature), but I stopped enjoying it the moment I realied there wasn't going to be a payoff.

That's the seen/unseen issue for me in a nutshell: once it becomes clear to me that there's not going to be a payoff, I know that the thing I'm *not* seeing "doesn't exist" (I mean, it exists less than normal fictional things). Like, the missing scene in Planet Terror: that totally fails for me and feels like a cheap stunt because there *isn't* a scene missing: that scene never existed.

As soon as I realized that *we were never going to actually see anything* in Blair Witch, the movie stopped working for me.

[Mmy]

@Josh: What you haven't demonstrated is that the groups you consider "fundies" are any more disconnected from reality than many other groups. In other words the fact that they are fundamentalists doesn't explain much about their behaviour at all.

To clarify--I have been watching the HLN coverage of the Anthony verdict/sentencing for the last few hours. Many of the people I have been watching/listening to on television seem to have as weak a grasp on reality/facts/the constitution/American history/American law and science as any of the people you describe as fundamentalists.

[Tonio]

As soon as I realized that *we were never going to actually see anything* in Blair Witch, the movie stopped working for me.

What was your reaction to the TV version of Stephen King's IT? I know many people who felt cheated by how the menace appeared in the climax.

[Sixwing]

Re: horror movies: My love of zombie fiction stems from my uncle showing me Night of the Living Dead at a tender young age. My grandmother was horrified. My parents thought it was kind of funny. It was my first encounter with anything like that, the zombies were terrifying that excellent "met the enemy, and it is us" sort of way, and my uncle grilled me after we watched it on what, exactly, the movie had been about.

When I said "zombies," he said "no, it's about people killing each other with fear," and we watched it again. And that time, I saw what he meant. Relatedly, Mira Grant's Feed and Deadline play on very similar themes, and are well worth a read if you like horror with a nice side of commentary in it. One of the characters observes that a society's horror really tells you a lot about that society, and it applies as well to the books as to what the character was actually saying.

Re: RPGs, thank you, Mary Kaye, that was fascinating.

I also roleplay, and love it, and generally can be found in a minimum of two games at any given time, at least one of which will be text-based and online. A particular character of mine actually changed my worldview. Her morality was different enough from mine that playing her was, in essence, running through a lot of interesting and thorny thought experiments, from a perspective I didn't always or often agree with, or even understand.

But, like an understanding I wasn't aware I had, her decisions had a certain internal consistency. I learned to understand her way of thinking from watching her do it, and the lessons I've learned abstracted quite nicely into real life. I have never had to fight an oni, but I -have- had no-win situations at work. I will never have to deal with the insidious taint of the Living Shadow (yeah, she was an L5R character) - but I do have to deal with the kind of moral decision of which the creators of DragonRaid would most definitely not approve.

Incidentally, she's also the first character I've ever had who would actually refuse to tell me her plans. Most have shared, or been more of a "from this starting point, how do I react to X" sort of thing.

[Ross]

@mmy: That's been driving me up a wall this week as well. The seeming complete ignorance of the very principal of "innocent until proven guilty" and the lust for mob justice is *really* creepy. Not to mention Nancy Grace dithering about the need for "vengeance" and the bit about the devil dancing.

Ick.

I keep seeing reputable news articles proceeding from the assumpton that the jury was meant to find her guilty by default and was somehow "tricked" or "found" some way to "let her off". Just no.

"Guilty" requires "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "C'mon, we're pretty sure she did it," and certainly not "Well even if she didn't actually do it, we're absolutely sure she did *something* wrong and should be punished." Yes, she very obviously did *something* wrong. But you can't convict a person of "something", and being a bad person is not a crime.

[Tonio]

Ross, well said.

Just what is wrong with Nancy Grace, anyway? I once caught a minute or so of her show and ran screaming from the room. While she is certainly engaging in demagoguery, her anger level is such that it's difficult to imagine there isn't some deep emotional issue behind it all. Without Googling her biography, I think it's likely that fate wronged her once. Cruelly. Incomprehensibly. (That's Henri Ducard describing Bruce Wayne in the Blind Justice comic.) Maybe Grace should drop the pretense and become a costumed vigilante.

[Ross]

@Tonio: The Huffington Post ran an article on the public reaction to Nancy Grace's reaction, and one of the quotes they threw in from random observers was "I think Nancy Grace is about to turn into Batman."

[Jason]

Speaking of zombies, I have recently begun playing "Dead Rising" on the Xbox 360 and if the idea of killing enormous amounts of zombies in various creative ways using everyday objects commonly found in a shopping mall appeals to you, then you should definitely play it.

The tiny tiny text is a tad hard to read on an standard definition TV though.

[Sixwing]

Jason, that sounds like lots of fun. :D

[Jason]

@Sixwing

I have so far spent about 2 hours playing it and I spent the entire time grinning and laughing. Basically there is one button that allows your character, Frank West, to pick up various objects laying around the mall/merchandise in the stores/etc. etc. and then there is an attack button that allows him to use them to attack, until the object breaks or he drops it for some reason or you choose to throw it. It's not always immediately obvious how the item will be used against the zombies until you try it.

The benches in the hallway are used like battering rams and can take 6-8 zombies out at a time (there are usually between 20 and 50 on screen at all times). I was able to use a guitar, a baseball bat, mall trashcans, an HDTV, a cash register, a mannequin, and a paint can as blunt bludgeoning objects. At one point when I was outside the mall I saw a lawnmower, but could not get to it before getting eaten. It's hilariously over the top.

[Josh (who is finally home and glad to be here. And hopefully won't have anymore speling errors)]

@Mmy

Oh! Okay - I see what you mean now. My apologizes for missing it: that sound you heard was the point soaring over my head.

No, I did not. And I didn't because, honestly, I didn't even think to when I was making that comment. I can't demonstrate that fundies are any more detached from reality than other groups, because they're not. I just focused on fundies because they were the first thing taht popped into my mind with something like DragonRaid. This general detachment is actually a huge pet-peeve of mine, and something I deal with a lot on my blog. Without getting too in depth, most Americans do have a very loose grip on reality. I personally blame the Romantic and Post-Modern movements for it; post-modernism especially, because it gave the Right the tools they needed to chip away at science, logic, and truth in general. I, however, will not rant at any length on that topic. I do see what you mean, and I will acknowledge that I failed to do so.

[Josh (who is finally home and glad to be here. And hopefully won't have anymore speling errors)]

Okay, the error in my name is intention. The misspelling of "that," however, was not.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I'm not afraid of the dark. Never have been. Quite like it, actually. And I'd like to keep it that way. This is the main reason why I've never watched a horror film, and have no intention of doing so.

TRiG.