Agnostic.com

30 3

Why are many Christian people against D&D (Dungeons and Dragons.) playing? Or role playing games in general? Well went into a local coffee shop and seen to people have met before there. We started talking and told them about going to D&D meeting. The younger guy, said about how that might be fun, and was thinking about getting into it. The older guy sort of just made fun and ridiculed the idea. Then another person online responded that they would not play. They did not like the idea of tempting outcomes. Personally think it is because they do not want to think out side the box. What do you think?

TCorCM 7 Feb 24
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

30 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

Christians think that everything that's not in there book is evil. It's like cops think everyone who's not a cop is a criminal.

Well, we are. I personally broke the speed limit the other day (on my way to work as a corrections officer, i.e. a cop).
"It's basically impossible to get through 24 hours without breaking some law unless you sit quietly in a room with your hands in your lap, and even then you're probably guilty of loitering." - Terry Pratchett

5

Because it is based upon stuff that isn't true....

Wait a minute....

5

Demons, devil's, necromancy - you know, evil shit for fun. Not a good president if you're a holy roller.

Been playing since I was 17, still get together with basically the same group of friends. To us its just like playing poker, or bridge, or monopoly - its just something we do as friends for fun.

1of5 Level 8 Feb 25, 2020

How cool to have such a long-time group!

I'm just a voyeur: my daughter and her friends have been playing since they were young, and I've enjoyed it vicariously. She does tabletop and online, and I've been watching one of the online games intermittently for years. Well, okay, two of the games. 🙂

@Lauren it has been great, almost 40 years. Unfortunatly one passed away recently and I'm the second to move east of the mountains, but were working on a way to keep it going, possibly online.

Bet it's better than watching tv!

@1of5 Oh, no, what a shame! I hope you're able to work out a way to continue because it would be a shame to stop now. My daughter was in awe. I think now she has a new goal in life. 🙂

She draws character and promo designs for a Nat19 game which is how I started watching some of that, and there's a voice actor, Matt Mercer, who masters really entertaining games, too. They don't have the thrill of a live game, but they're fun.

@Lauren all things eventually end. I'll still be friends with each and every one of them till we're dead. We just might switch to combat crouquet for a bit.

Sounds like fun. Hope she can keep it going, it really has been terrific.

5

Wow! This is a real blast from the past. The last time I played D&D Regan was in the White House and MTV had just gone on the air.

I think the problem they have with it is that these are silly ppl who think magic and the supernatural are real things and playing the game is like invoking evil powers to come in and fuck up your life.

Like I said, silly ppl.

Games are perfectly safe. "Invoking evil powers to come in and fuck up your life" is what happens when you talk to telemarketers and insurance salesmen.

4

I think it was realizing if you could think a virtual character through a situation in life you could do that for real for yourself. Prayer is useless.

Also if you create characters and want them to live?

God sucks.

4

Played D&D starting in 1978. The conservative Christian lot branded it satanic. I taught me about teamwork and the power of a well executed story. Since I was on the inside, I knew the claims about satanism was misinformation. If we were playing D&D on Sunday we were not in church and not receiving our weekly brainwashing sessions.
If it took you away from church, it was Satans work at hand.
At its core fantasy role playing and religion were in competition for the minds and the money.

Not in church on Sunday, OMG. Not putting any money in the baskit either.

4

I truly believe that a lot of them don't distinguish between the reality of the world and the fantasy they live in.

Years ago I found a late 19th century book of spells at a used book show. It was fascinating to me because the authors seriously believed their stuff. There were probably a dozen useful spells like "How To Make Your Lover See Your Rival's True Odious Nature". Lol. And safety warnings about procedures that were supposedly too dangerous for laymen to attempt.

I didn't try any of the spells because even the simplest took months of preparation. You had to make your magic brazier and your magic athame knife (among other tools) first. And of course for me it would fail anyway because I didn't believe hard enough. Ha, ha. For me it was a window into the way some people thought then. It was a popular enough point of view to get a book published.

Then one weekend my mother visited and later that week I noticed the book was gone. She never mentioned it but I'm sure for the rest of her life she thought she saved me from the forces of evil. Knowing her, she was afraid of Satan's forces corrupting the world with dark magic and she was appalled that I would allow myself to see any of their works.

I don't distinguish between Christian magic and Satan's magic. To me it's all fantasy.
Believers don't distinguish either but for the opposite reason. To them it's all true.
I can't imagine trying to live that way -- just accepting everything and not trusting even myself enough to explore and examine ideas because I could be corrupted.

I have heard people say things which lead me to believe this is true, but I don't have enough interaction with them to care what silly idea they have.

@Lauren
I'm not sure what you mean by accepting. I will admit to allowing theists their fantasies if that's what they want to waste their lives on -- as long as they keep it their choice, not mine.

Near that same time in my life I had a couple of work friends with which I enjoyed playing D&D once a week. There was a game store in Tucson that let us use a back room where they had a table covered with a grid under clear plastic to play out the game. I was the youngest in the group in my early 20s. One guy was an analyst for Honeywell who liked the role of DM to the point of having tool boxes full of those little metal figurines.Lol. Several of us had college degrees and as far as I know, none of us believed in the supernatural in any way. We were all just 5 or 6 (straight) single guys who liked each other's company. To us it was a game and we played it without any religious connections.
It was only with other people (including family) that I knew believers that thought magic and Christianity were legitimate.

Over the years I've met different people with unusual hobbies. I remember one CEO of a small Seattle company (last I heard he's now a professor at ASU Phoenix) who belonged to a group that would rent spaces where they would dress up and recreate classic paintings. Picture a living Whistler's Mother. Lol.
As far I could tell they were just in it for the social interaction too. Whatever they're into I guess.

@RichCC I'm still a part-time member of the group that I joined at 18 (and I wasn't the youngest member then). 2 of the group ran a game shop in the back room of a used bookstore, where one was part owner and where we met nights and weekends. The building had a full basement where eventually we met on Saturday nights after hours for epic sessions which are still the stuff of legend (minor, local legend, anyway). One game, the climax of the campaign, started at 6 PM Saturday and didn't break up until nearly dawn. We're into a second generation, with the grown children and their friends sometimes DMing games.

Some people bought crystal skull ornaments or dragon tooth pendants or daggers or swords with display stands, because they looked cool. But in all that time, I've never seen anyone who thought the magic was real...

@RichCC I think I totally confused you talking about the religious with talking about D&D players - and was all ready to defend players - I'm sorry! :'( I'll turn off my comment.

4

Basically, it's for the same reasons that many burn books or try to ban movies, etc.
They don't like competing fantasies. It's all they can do to keep up with their own fiction.
Why do you think so many christians are so against the Harry Potter series?
Witchcraft and wizardry made to be appealing to the young folk??
Lordy, lordy!!! It's the devil's work!!
LOL

3

The same reason they don't like Harry Potter. It has magic in it, magic that people can perform. For Christians, magic is the province of their god and no one else is supposed to do it unless God gives them the power.

@TCorCM Thaaat pretty much sums it up.

Worse, it has competing gods who the characters can worship, and who do give out magic. That's a major commandment breaker. YHVH hates competition.

@Paul4747 Yep. 'Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."

3

Just plain stupidity and ignorance

bobwjr Level 10 Feb 25, 2020
3

@TCorCM

What does "D&D" stand for? Please spell out words.

Design & Development
Dungeons & Dragons
Deaf & Dumb
Drunk & Disorderly
Decontamination & Decommissioning

IF you are serious, it is Dungeons and Dragons, a fancy waste of time, for some.

what idiot religious people can't seem to get is IT IS A GAME. IT IS NOT REAL.

My brother in law called me one day , (from the hellfire state of Virginia), worried about his kid. Kid it seemed, was reading Harry Potter and all the Born Agin morons were appalled. He may have been RC at one time, but his syhalitic piece of crap wife, was a "christian" She was/is a detriment to motherhood. She should have been sterilized before Kid #1. (Am I too forward here?, you might hate her at Christian , then you know her realize she is a religious lazy leach ona pustule of society's gonorrhea wart s)

So his call about this "satanic book all the kids were talking about, reading, was of weird shit coming round the bend fear.

I listened and said " Have you read the book(s)?' As expected a, NO was the response. I said well read it , it is fun. I then told him Your neighbors aand wife and friends are all quite stupid. They should get their head outta their butts and more along.

I did explain it was a story of fiction, no worries. Our kids had read all of them, no demon horns were errupting.

This went on for a while. I finally said when you retire move away from Shitheads. problem is he can;t retire here, and he will never believe. His fascination with bigotry and guns precludes him from ever moving back. His kids are born again bullshit artists of the first order of magnitude.

To give you a hint at their stupidity, When a family member was slipping into full blown dementia, she told her. "ya know grandmother you are going to burn in eternal hell because you are Roman Catholic, and pray to false gods." This to a woman who could barely understand what was up or down, from a kid she almost never saw. I did not like them b4 ,I severely dislike them after that, I am not christian, I am not commanded to forgive and forget.

Hope some of this helps someone

@praytothemilkjug

My daughter and I both loved the Harry Potter books. I read the first book in one sitting. Couldn't put it down. Finished it at 2 a.m.

As atheists, Terry and I raised Claire without going to church. "My friends say I am more empathetic than anyone they know," Claire, 29, said last Christmas.

3

The D&D thing came from the Satanic Panic time during the 80's damn near everything was demonized. The compamy changed its packaging and the names and nature of some of the creatures etc. The game survived and nownis experienceing mor interest in groups that play together from all over the world.

3

I was raised in a religion that perceived any interaction, or even encounter, with Satan’s realm as a possible first step toward the loss of one’s soul. In my youth, Satan’s domain included witchcraft, Ouija boards, seances, mystics, fortune tellers, tarot card or palm readers, etc. All of these were “of the Devil,” according to the Christian faith in which I was raised. These were all Satan’s attempts to snare us. The Bible teaches that witches and witchcraft are real, so it is no wonder that Christians today remain spooked by the ‘magic,’ ‘spells’ and ‘curses’ found in everything from Dungeons & Dragons (very retro, indeed) to Harry Potter, and beyond.

3

My take on it, after all these years, is a little more subtle than "They don't like it because it encourages magic and witchcraft".

Players act out the role of characters that they invent, and inhabit a fictional world. In that fictional world, the character they portray, almost by default, will worship some deity that is not Jesus or his Dad, because- Gasp!- in these fantasy worlds, Christianity doesn't exist! Imagine the horror of a world without Christ! If your teenager can successfully imagine being a dwarf who worships Dvalin, the God of all Dwarves, it's only a step away from turning their back on the One True Church!!

And those fictional gods are even better than Jesus, because they grant actual magic powers to their clergy. When did you last hear of the Pope calling down a lightning bolt to smite someone with whom he disagreed sharply? If the Pope had the power of even a middling-level D&D cleric, he'd be able to cast Control Weather and do something about all these tropical storms with which we've been vexed lately. Just pop him on a plane to wherever the trouble is. And no famines, because they can magically Create Food and Water. Imagine having to explain to your kids why your god can't do what the D&D gods can do.

Your run-of-the-mill Xian may not know enough about the game to realize this stuff, but I'd bet my boots the higher-ups do, and that's why they don't want their youth involved in it, nosiree.

3

As has been mentioned below fundamentalist Christians believe in the Devil and wicked spirits. They believe this is a gateway in to demonism, demons and Satan. I came out of a sect that really believes that shit.

gearl Level 8 Feb 24, 2020

I feel your pain. Utterly ridiculous

3

The more you prohibit the more you control

2

I'd think the presumed magic system in D&D as well as the stretching of imagination and fantasy. It seems anything that pulls a person's thoughts and actions outside of what the church preaches and teaches specifically is at risk.

AmyLF Level 7 Feb 26, 2020
2

It's too closely associated with things in the Bible and those who played might realize the bible is a game of fantasy as well

2

Somewhat similar, I love to annoy Jesus and Gawd by taking my warlock, mage or paladin through eviiil dungeons in World of Warcraft.🤣

2

I suspect it's a case of 'How DARE you play games with wizards! Magic and wizards are BLASPHEMOUS - with the single exception of the white bearded, teenage girl raping, mass killing, bigotted, vicious, brutal sky wizard we worship! By playing games which include sorcery, you are getting WAY too close to showing that our own, holy sky wizard is just a figment if the imagination too!'

Evangelicals seem to have a very similar response to the Harry Potter books and movies too.

2

I remember when I worked for the Salvos their magazines were anti anything that mentioned witchcraft or similar topics. It must make life interesting to be so against things that you have no knowledge of.
I did work with some lovely Salvationalists though, ‘there is good and bad, in everyone’ as Mr Wonder says in his song Ebony and Ivory 🙂

1

I don't know why. I wasn't aware it was contentious though that's probably because I don't know many christians. I gave up talking to them a long time ago. I do know a young twenty something that play's it two or three times a week in Lismore NSW. She does it for the socialisation factor I believe. She needs it after long days at work.

1

Maybe because anything that is fun makes you think Must be "evil"??!!!!

A bigshot with a computer company was killed in a car wreck today. It was determined that as he drove he was playing a game.

1

fear.

In D&D we try to convince our brain that this false narrative is a new reality no matter what our senses and logic says otherwise. The PFC treats this as yet another experience to learn from ... draws the comparison internally (myths are not reality) ... and tries to adjust our own internal narrative accordingly. This makes them question their internal narrative and creates a mental dissonance. This insecurity causes them fear and they lash out.

1

It's just so fucking ridiculous like the fact they tried to ban Harry Potter too, there's just no limit to the brainwashed who think they own the planet, fuck them!

@Novelty Marty Stu? Is that you?

0

D&D is a game nothing more. I as DM, (Dungeon Master) make a maze and a story/plot line with places where you , the players, interact with my traps/obstacles. It is a puzzle of sorts. It can be (usually) a giant time waster.

Anyone who thinks it is otherwise is a stupid person. Sorry one must be blunt at times. iI is like my distant relatives who thought Harry Potter was the way to hell. Never bothered to read one, or even ask about it while with a fan.

WOT for me, a great passtime for others. Just like Baseball and NASCAR harmless and time waster depending on viewer.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:463444
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.