Honest Avdvice Requested.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Backstory:

RPG gamer married to Christian minister, whose only concept of RPG's is similar to the Tom Hanks TV movie 'Dungeon Master' (i.e., "RPG's are all alike; inherently evil", and "RPG players are all a few wafers short of a full communion.",

)

Situation:

1) Minister has consented to playing Traveller .
2) Available players could easily reinforce the pre-conceived notion mentioned above once the caffeine starts flowing (players of Cyberpunk, AD&D, Vampyres, etc. ).

Question:

How best to present RPG playing in a Traveller setting to the minister, with available resources and players, and without precipitating the Apocalypse (

=

) or driving the veteran players psychotic with boredom?

A "Friend of mine" (who really loves the minister) needs to know...

 

[siefertma2]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
Backstory:

RPG gamer married to Christian minister, whose only concept of RPG's is similar to the Tom Hanks TV movie 'Dungeon Master' (i.e., "RPG's are all alike; inherently evil", and "RPG players are all a few wafers short of a full communion.",

)

Situation:

1) Minister has consented to playing Traveller .
2) Available players could easily reinforce the pre-conceived notion mentioned above once the caffeine starts flowing (players of Cyberpunk, AD&D, Vampyres, etc. ).

Question:

How best to present RPG playing in a Traveller setting to the minister, with available resources and players, and without precipitating the Apocalypse (

=

) or driving the veteran players psychotic with boredom?

A "Friend of mine" (who really loves the minister) needs to know...

I would actaully take him into a few one-on-one scenarios before I introduce him into the group. That way his preconceived notions will have been put at ease somewhat before he meets the main group.

I know how you feel. I have a gamer-turned-fundie uncle who bought into the whole Jack Chick BS and found JEEZ-us. You should see the acidic looks he gives me when I show up to family get-togethers with any of my gaming stuff. At least he keeps his mouth shut, otherwise I'd be forced to shut it for him--uncle or not. (e.g. WHAM! WHAM! WHERE'S YOUR MESSIAH NOW??? WHAM! WHAM!)

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

thanx fer the quick response.

I'm also a 'fundie', although my rabidity level is way lower than most others - I do not turn Righteous Red, wave a crucifix, and quote the latest Chix Trax every time I see the words 'Dragon' or 'Dungeon'.

My beliefs are more along the lines of "Let's all just get along and play nice". Agreeing to disagree is one of my 'fundie' beliefs.

BTW: I have a template for a "Shephard" character, a la Firefly - any interest?

PS: The minister is a "her", not a "him".

 

[T. Foster]

First and foremost you should brief the veteran players beforehand. Explain the situation and offer them the choice of either 1) trying to stay on good behavior, or 2) finding an excuse to skip that session. As long as your players aren't 14 year old boys and you're not serving liquor they should be able to show some restraint if they know they're supposed to.

As for the in-game activity, I'd choose something where the PCs are placed in the role of 'good guys' and that favors problem-solving/mystery and negotiation/role-playing over crime and violence (or at least sentient-on-sentient violence). Using published adventures as examples, I'd choose something more like Research Station Gamma (PCs motivated by altruism; mystery-oriented) or Nomads of the World-Ocean (PCs motivated by environmental sensitivity; role-playing/diplomacy oriented) and less like those Amber Zones and Patron Encounters where the PCs are hired to steal something or kidnap somebody or various other extra-legal activities.

If the minister gets hooked and wants to join the campaign permanently you'll need to come clean and admit you've been soft-pedalling the violence and other 'rude' behavior for her sake. If she's cool (and if you're inviting her to join your group permanently we'll assume she is) she'll understand. You'll likely still need to keep a lid on things like senseless PC slaughter of innocent bystanders, PCs torturing NPCs for information, and players shouting profanities across the table (i.e. REALLY rude behavior) but I daresay you should be discouraging that kind of stuff anyway -- minister present or not.

(Edited to correct the hypothetical minister's gender)

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Research Station Gamma (PCs motivated by altruism; mystery-oriented) or Nomads of the World-Ocean (PCs motivated by environmental sensitivity; role-playing/diplomacy oriented)

I do not have these adventures. Can you give a brief synopsis without a copyright violation?

 

[T. Foster]

Purposely deleted to avoid spoiling these adventures for anybody else.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Message deleted to prevent spoilage.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I would be curious to know as to why this minister wants to play Traveller, in the first place. Second, a referee must maintain impartiality, and not let the real life role of a player interfere with the flow of the game. If he has consented to play Traveller because he genuinely desires to see what it is like with an objective, open mind, he should be mature enough to be able to handle it... Ministers are supposed to be learned men as well as spirtual leaders...
It sounds like he's already made up his mind about RPGs to me...

Ps: the movie you refer to is "Mazes and Monsters"
The "Dungeon Master" is a true story about a kid named Dallas that had some very screwed up parents, although Dungeons and Dragons is blamed for his eventual suicide... If you can find the book I highly recommend it.

 

[hirch duckfinder]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
Backstory:

RPG gamer married to Christian minister, whose only concept of RPG's is similar to the Tom Hanks TV movie 'Dungeon Master' (i.e., "RPG's are all alike; inherently evil", and "RPG players are all a few wafers short of a full communion.",

)

Situation:

1) Minister has consented to playing Traveller .
2) Available players could easily reinforce the pre-conceived notion mentioned above once the caffeine starts flowing (players of Cyberpunk, AD&D, Vampyres, etc. ).

Question:

How best to present RPG playing in a Traveller setting to the minister, with available resources and players, and without precipitating the Apocalypse (

=

) or driving the veteran players psychotic with boredom?

A "Friend of mine" (who really loves the minister) needs to know...

----------- sorry , this is not going to help your situation at all but i am curious ; why on earth do these people see anything wrong with rpgs? from this side of the water this seems absurd . its a game . ( people that irrational are worrying , who knows where they will turn their blind bigotry next ) .

 

[Ben W Bell]

As a regular believer and worshiper myself I have no problem with RPGs, and I also run Call of Cthulhu. I know what is fact and what is fiction and have no problems seperating reality from that fiction.

Some people do have problems with it though, just explain that it is a film and they are acting the parts but it is completely escapist fantasy with no basis on peoples actual personalities or beliefs.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Baron Saarthuran

Thank you for the correction - I appreciate the fact that you caught my error and spoke up about it. "Dungeon Master" was a book about a kid named Steve D. Egbert (sp?) who allegedly did some wierd things after playing a popular RPG.

The Tom Hanks movie may as well have been put together in the dark corner of some church basement for all the assumptions and innacuracies involved.

As for my motivations, there is only one - to have as much fun with as many people as possible while playing Traveller.

Beyond this, no other reason is conceivable.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

"... why on earth do these people see anything wrong with rpgs? from this side of the water this seems absurd."

Mr. Duckfinder,

I haven't the vaguest idea how to answer your question. To me, a game is a game, religion is religion, and faith is faith. Problems arise when any two of these overlap.

Games and religion - People end up worshipping players and teams, while excluding or deriding anyone else who does not feel the same way (Go Arsenal!).

Games and Faith - The origin of religion; the politics of faith.

Religion and faith - Dogmatic, knee-jerk reactionism to anything that might be 'fun', especially if the church can not get a 'tithe' of the action.

Heck-fire! I can't even figure out why some T20 players look down on my friends and I for adhering to Classic Traveller!

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!" - A World War One song lyric.

"Let's all just get along and play nice!" - Mom.

 

[Anton]

Hi Keklas,

I used to be a Christian but I'm better now... (sorry, joke, no offense intended).

Interestingly I became a Christian after being a gamer for several years. So on a camp, I was very interested to hear that one of the topics was going to be Role-Playing Games. And some idiot got up and gave the usual Chick-like rant - 'cos he'd read this stuff in a book and heard such and such from a friend... He was a bit surprised to find rational, logical opposition to his viewpoint

Over the years, my pastor occasionally tried to persuade me about the dangers of roleplaying:
"Players are sometimes unable to get out of character!" "Nope, never happened to anyone I know. Has anyone warned method actors? Poor Al Pacino..."
"I read again about a D&D player who committed suicide last month." "And I just read an article which showed the number of RPG-related suicides is less than the number of suicides of members of the American Lawn Tennis Association. Your point?"
(I must have been really unsufferable as a teenager!)

Thing was, my friend and pastor was also an inveterate Trekkie... and then I got LUG's Star Trek RPG... and that finally convinced him noone was going to mad or Satanic or whatever playing RPGs...

Funny thing, though. My pastor friend later relocated from Ireland to the good ol' U.S. of A. The first thing he showed me when we visited him was his gun collection...

To answer your question - as others have said, I think any straight political/negotiation type scenario, with the protagonists as obvious good guys, would be good for an initial scenario. Possibly a bit of violence depending on what you know of her and her tastes in fiction in that regard... Later on, you can introduce the moral ambiguity, no real good guys, "real-life" issues...

Hope this helps...

Anton

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Anton,

Good points.

I'm still a Christian and I enjoy Role-Playing Games. It's not an oil-and-water issue. I guess some folks are just down on fun.

 

[Jame]

Now, I'm not much for religion, but I'll live so long as it's not forced on me (if I ever have faith, it might as well be genuine). My advice would be to handle the sessions as you would any other of them, use your sense and have fun.

 

[hirch duckfinder]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />"... why on earth do these people see anything wrong with rpgs? from this side of the water this seems absurd."

Mr. Duckfinder,

I haven't the vaguest idea how to answer your question. To me, a game is a game, religion is religion, and faith is faith. Problems arise when any two of these overlap.

Games and religion - People end up worshipping players and teams, while excluding or deriding anyone else who does not feel the same way (Go Arsenal!).

Games and Faith - The origin of religion; the politics of faith.

Religion and faith - Dogmatic, knee-jerk reactionism to anything that might be 'fun', especially if the church can not get a 'tithe' of the action.

Heck-fire! I can't even figure out why some T20 players look down on my friends and I for adhering to Classic Traveller!

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!" - A World War One song lyric.

"Let's all just get along and play nice!" - Mom. </font>[/QUOTE]-------thanks for your civil reply to my rant .

your points about the evil nature of arsenal are well received by this tottenham fan .

seriously - you make good points . i just cant believe that in this world where we need to be so careful to understand others over staggeringly important issues , people in a position of moral authority can be so ignorant . very worrying .

still , we can only work to open eyes . even if it is against the tide .

 

[campbell]

http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/wt&d/index.html

found this link while surfing. the second issue has a rather nice take on violence in role playing games. there is also a link to Christian Gamer's Guild although the site seems to be having problems at the moment.

 

[Vargas]

Perhaps you could ask the minister if she (it was she right?) ever did any acting in school or pretended patently unreal things during childhood. Or ever knew anybody who did. (Hopefully no one came to a grisly end

)

From recent personal experience, I've found that there are some very careful/paranoid (it would depend on your personal assessment) Christians out there who are concerned/paranoid (same comment again) about opening themselves to evil influences, no matter how trivial they may appear. Their reasoning is not strictly based on logic because faith plays a critical, usually the most critical, role in the decisions they make and how they view the world.

Just a few thoughts from a Christian*


*That's right, Catholics are Christians also

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

The late Pat Pulling, mother of a "D&D Suicide", formed BADD (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons)(!) in the 80s, as she was absolutely convinced that it was all about Devil Worship, which is patently laughable, at best. The unlaughable part of it was that her son, Bink, killed himself the night after a D&D Game. Mrs. Pulling later found out through questioning the dungeon master that in his last game, Young Bink had a curse cast upon him, and the rest is history.

I say from reviewing the Statements of other people around Bink, He was an extremely disturbed individual, regardless of D&D... I say this because the week before his death, he scrawled "Life is Meaningless" on the blackboard at school, and , oh, he also Disemboweled the family cat and 20 (!) pet Rabbits... all while NOT playing D&D. Instead of looking at her son as a possible psychopath and trying to figure out how he got that way, She decided to blame something else besides her, hence she tried to sue TSR!

Pulling later went on to publish a "sourcebook" for law enforcement specifically for "Role Playing Game - Based Crimes" you can still get it, (if youre in law enforcement,) I believe...

Let me just say that in the sourcebook, Being the Dungeon Master is tatamount to being a Cult Leader! Also, for some reason, it had specific police interrogation questions about multiclassed characters... things that made it very obvious that Mrs. Pulling never bothered to do any real research on her crusade, just made the facts fit her delusion.

Now more than ever, it seems, some religious groups are actively seeking remake society in a manner that suits them. I hope that time will show the folly of such endeavors, or at least they can stay the heck out of other people's business for once... Freedom of religion is most definitely a Two-way street, What?

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Here's something that puzzles me about many of the Rabid Right: Why is it that you can know somebody their entire life, believing that they are as nice and intelligent as you all along, and then when you find out that they are into AD&D, Traveller, Poker, Beer, Dancing, Tattoo and body piercing, and anything else considered 'fun' or 'self-expression', do you suddenly consider that person an embodyment of evil, on par with child molesters, mass murderers, and drug addicts?

(*WHEW!* I'm glad I didn't do that all in one breath!)

What's so bad about fun and self-expression? Why must we all be in lock-step with each other over every aspect of our lives? Why do they believe that the rest of us need monitoring and sanction of our private practices and beliefs? What next, mind control by the Holy Inquisition?