• The Great Debate
• Theological insights from roleplaying
• Religion(s) in the roleplaying campaign world
• Fantasy and morality

Reflections by James Wyatt

As a former ordained minister and a long-time role-player, the intersection of religion and roleplaying holds great interest for me. I spent two and a half years as a local church pastor in rural southern Ohio, where I felt that I had to keep my roleplaying hobby a secret from my congregations. After leaving parish ministry, I am now working full-time as a freelance writer in the roleplaying industry, where I find it difficult to publish anything that reflects my religious beliefs or even my extensive knowledge of other real-world religions. The integration or reconciliation of these two different worlds is thus not only a matter of personal importance to me, but a professional issue as well.

I have identified several key points along the intersection of religion and roleplaying that hold particular interest to me. I have outlined these points below, with some comments and links to more discussion of each topic, both within this site and elsewhere on the Internet. To make it easier for you to return here, links to other sites open in a new window.

But first: If you're not familiar with roleplaying games, take a minute to look at an overview. You'll also find links you can follow to get more information on roleplaying in general.

There are a few people in the religious community who view roleplaying games as a great evil worth spending a great deal of time and money to eradicate. There are many more people in the religious community who, ignorant and misled, take for granted that what these people write and preach is true, and that roleplaying is an evil occupation. Honestly, I'm not as interested in debunking these claims as perhaps I should be. Other people have covered the subject quite thoroughly, at any rate, so I simply point you to their work.

• Download an excellent FAQ on the subject.
• Explore Uncle Bear's roleplaying advocacy page.
• Explore the site of CAR-PGa(The Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games). This is an organization based in Texas that works towards the common good of RPGs and the people who play them. The site includes news articles and other resources.
• Read Tracy Hickman's advice to concerned parents and roleplaying children.
• Visit Yahoo!'s index on the subject.

Laugh if you will, but I think that in some ways my experience with roleplaying has deepened my understanding of God. About two weeks before I left parish ministry, I preached a sermon that I (privately) refer to as my "God As Dungeon Master" sermon. The readings for that Sunday included Abraham's call to leave home and head to Canaan. It occurred to me while preparing the sermon that God faces the difficult task of trying to reconcile God's dreams and plans for us with our free will. This seems rather like the task of the game master in a roleplaying game, who has to plan an adventure while remembering that the players may choose to go in a completely different direction than intended. In the sermon, I described God as an unusual type of novelist (one whose protagonists have free will), but the guiding image in my mind was God as game master.

My favorite aspect of the game is creating worlds, an activity that I consider an exercise of the image of God that is in me. As God is creator, so God made us creative, and there is perhaps no more godlike creative activity than inventing worlds of our own. Rev. Arthur Collins wrote an excellent and thought-provoking article on the topic several years ago, drawing heavily on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

How is religion portrayed in roleplaying games? Fantasy games are often criticized for portraying a world where many gods exist and interfere with mortals–apparently giving sanction to polytheistic worldviews that apparently conflict with Christian belief.

I have conducted two experiments in monotheistic fantasy worlds. Petroyeska is a fantasy realm where an explicitly Christian church is opposed by evil hobgoblins and wizards. Night is a little more subtle, disguising a Christian religion under another name and another mythology.

While my friends and I were playing an AD&D campaign set in a fantastic first-century Rome, I created but never used a set a supplemental rules for Christian characters in this setting: Shield of Faith.

Tracy Hickman is a strong Christian, as well as the author of some of the most famous fantasy novels ever written. I have a few thoughts about the polytheism of his DragonLance saga, and how a reader might gain some insight into the one true God through the behavior of these many gods.

Similarly, the gods of the Forgotten Realms—the most detailed and complex world in the AD&D game—might reveal, here and there, some glimpses of God behind the polytheism. Early Christians like Justin Martyr (and many Christians since) have believed that God's Word is active in all of humanity, whether they are aware of it or not. Justin believed that glimmers of Truth could be found in any religion, even in pagan Rome, thanks to the influence of God's ever creative Word. Perhaps this Word is no less active in game designers, even if they are not aware of it.

A Christian role-playing game? Some people might call it an oxymoron, but that's what DragonRaid is. It's supposedly designed to teach young people about faith and life, which means that it's a bit didactic for my tastes in gaming. It also relies heavily on allegory, which in my opinion makes for less than exciting fantasy. Worse, I think it has a pretty skewed view of the world, which Jonathan Tweet summed up thus:

This is the game where thinly disguised Christians beat heathens into submission to haul them back home, where the heathens convert. Opposing the Christians are monsters, thinly disguised sinners, such as alcoholics and people who believe in evolution. These creatures are not to be beaten into submission but rather are to be killed without compunction, as they are irrevocably beyond God's mercy. In DragonRaid, I'd be a "selfo," a misguided, slay-worthy creature that tries to do good without accepting Christ. I found the game to be disgusting in that it was a joyful indulgence in fantasy violence against other people (some of them like me).

Speaking of Christian games, Redemption is a collectible card game based on Christian faith.

Even when not explicitly talking about "gods," epic fantasy (whether fiction or roleplaying) has a lot to say about morality. Heroic fantasy is all about the conflict between good and evil, and it is generally safe to assume that good will come out on top. It seems to me that this fundamental assumption of fantasy is an affirmation of something even more basic than Christian faith, the idea that it's a good thing to be good to people. Tracy Hickman has written a discussion of morality in fantasy that embellishes this point.

My tastes run the gamut from heroic fantasy to strange science fiction, but tend to linger in that dark region of the imagination where unseen Things lurk in the shadows. I think Stephen King would agree that horror is also a profoundly moral genre, and particularly so when you focus on Gothic horror fiction like Dracula and Frankenstein. I've done a lot of thinking about why I'm drawn to horror and what horror, at its best, can tell us about the world and our place in it.

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were colleagues, both writers of fantasy fiction and both Christians. Yet The Lord of the Rings is a very different tale than The Chronicles of Narnia, and I've got some ideas about why.