Advocacy 2001 Article Archive

November, 2001:
 

Since around 1988, when the Lord of the Rings was first translated into Russian, the novel series has become a major hit in the former Soviet Union.  In recent years, Russian fans of the series have begun to form their own live-action role-play groups, where participants dress and act as characters from the stories, and even enact mock battles.

According to sources at the Independent, Kazakh police are accusing the hobbit fans of “being Satanists and conducting dark rituals," and have been arresting and allegedly torturing them.  One anonymous fan made claims of less severe harassment, in which Tolkienesti are stopped in the street and ordered to remove their costumes and surrender their mock weaponry – and that some police threaten a three-day detention for concealed weapons charges in an attempt to extort a sizeable bribe.

With these sorts of claims, one can only wonder how the police would feel about more traditional roleplaying games, with their oddly-shaped dice and ponderous books filled with arcane rules.  Do they consider traditional tabletop games to be part of the “bohemian” lifestyle as well?

But a few of Kazakhstan’s Tolkien fans claim that these stories are not true at all.  On theonering.net, a popular Lord of the Rings website, letters from two Russian citizens deny that such arrests and punishments are even happening.  One fan named Arhi states: “My Kazakhstan friends are saying that they live in Almaty and have never been harassed by the police, and that's the first time they hear about it.”  Another Russian fan claims that information gathered from a popular Russian internet discussion board proves that the story is false – while admitting at the same time that he would not “swear on a bible that (his) information is correct.”

So, are Kazakh police really Hobbitophobes, or is this all a misunderstanding?  Which side of this story is pravda?  We may never know…

Click here to read the Independent story.
 

For reasons that are not presently clear, investigators have begun to suspect that the culprits are involved in role-playing games, and a psychologist is being consulted to produce evidence that RPGs are dangerous.  The head investigator of the crime has announced that “if RPG is involved with this crime, it will be forbidden in Brazil.”

One early police theory was that the murderer played Vampire, and two Brazilian politicians have run with that theory, attempting to censor the books from store shelves and prevent new books from being sold in an effort to prevent future disasters.

This is an unusual place for such a thing to happen, as Brazil has always accepted RPGs as a part of their culture.  The craze for role-playing was so great at one point that citizens were learning English so that they could better understand the gaming manuals, and the Brazilian equivalent of the TV Guide or TV Times began to cover gaming conventions and new releases. 

Unfortunately, when you have politicians, everything can be a potential danger to public safety – as long as banning it from sight will help to secure their next re-election or pay raise.  Stay tuned for more on this story as it comes to light.

To keep up with the current developments on this story, be sure to visit the CAR-PGa eGroup.
 
 

“(It is) an amazing work.  It is prodigious, highly creative and extremely original. It was the best of a number of wonderful papers submitted this year," said Dr Ron Ruskin, Chairman of the Award Committee.  This award has made Unseen Masters the first horror fiction or RPG book to ever receive this type of honor.

To read the full press release, click here.
 
 

I'm tempted to do my usual fine-comb treatment of the full article and point out each and every misquote, error, and untruth, but there's really very little here that we haven't seen already, short of a few personal attacks towards Michael Stackpole, and several instances where the term "ad hominem" is used improperly.  So my time and energy would be wasted, especailly since most of my preaching, like his, is done to the choir.

I will make one exception, however.  There is one claim that Schnoebelen makes that we should pay very close attention to - and bear it in mind whenever his veracity is in question:

"Contrary to the ramblings of D&D defenders like Michael Stackpole, the Necronomicon and the Cthulhu mythos are quite real."

It sounds to me like Mr. Schnoebelen shouldn't even go NEAR any gaming materials... or for that matter, act as an authority on what is real and what is fantasy.  To answer his titular question: Christians should play D&D if they really want to; they just shouldn't invite him.
 

David is a Georgia educator who uses RPGs, LARPs, and CCGs in his classroom to teach a variety of lessons and stimulate his students creativity.

You can check out my interview with David from 1995 by clicking here.
 

May, 2001:

John DeCamp, the Sanders' lawyer, claims he finds himself in a "strange position here."  On one hand, he is "100 percent on the side of the First Amendment."

On the other hand, well... five billion dollars buys a whole lot of golf clubs...

What does this have to do with advocacy for role-playing games?  Imagine for a moment that Harris and Klebold had actually played them (as the media tried to claim on numerous occasions); companies such as White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast would have easily been dragged into this suit.  And many smaller, independent companies could have gotten pulled in as well, regardless of whether or not their games were involved.  Most of them would not have survived.

Of course, the suit is practically evidence against itself - if the "$20-billion-a-year video game industry" is really responsible for putting millions of games into the hands of minors that will eventually cause them to go on insane shooting binges, then wouldn't there be a lot more school shootings than we have now? 

Or am I just thinking way too far out of the knee-jerk-simple-solution box?
 

More recently, the SPLC posted an interview with Mattias Gardell, a professor of religious history at the University of Stockholm's Center for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations, as well as an "expert on right-wing extremism."  In the interview, Gardell focuses on what he perceives as a growing racist theme among neo-Pagans, and made a mention about the possible influences that bring people to Paganism:

"At the same time, this generation was made up of people who had been brought up on [the fantasy novels of J.R.R.] Tolkien, who played [the popular fantasy game] "Dungeons and Dragons," and watched sci-fi epics. They also listened to all this new music — industrial music, Gothic music, black and death and thrash metal."

After some heated conversation between Potok and Spencer Lease, an agreement was reached - and Mark made this statement for our benefit, to clear up any misunderstandings regarding the SPLC's stance on role-playing:

"The Southern Poverty Law [Center] sees absolutely no link between role-playing games and intolerance or racial hatred. What's more, those involved in such games have from time to time been attacked as somehow promoting unhealthy or even "Satanic" doctrines -- a suggestion that the Center finds ridiculous. In our view, role-playing games are unrelated to politics and certainly to hate."

April, 2001:
 

Local police have begun to investigate the possibility that Blad and Carson were involved in some sort of role-playing game that they had taken too far.  No definite link has yet been found, but with a recently-imposed gag order in place, the real story won't see the light of day for some time.

This is unfortunate.  It leaves the story on a very damaging note, that an RPG could be linked to the crime.  A local paper, the Montgomery County Herald, has already printed one story (Stabbing May Be Linked To Role Play) that centers on the gaming angle. 

In that story, reporters Andy Rose and Virginia Hennessey point out that not all gamers are violent, and that the games themselves are "generally viewed as benign fantasies."  But these facts are terribly outweighed by the obligatory references to alleged "gamers gone wrong."  Rose and Hennessey mention the following as examples of cases in which gamers were linked to criminal behavior:

• Rod Ferrell's vampire clan (who did not play RPGs together)
• An unnamed man charged with child endangerment for cutting himself and "having young people drink his blood".  (His fellow gamers turned him in, proving that, as with any group, the law-abiding citizens are the majority).
• The stabbing death of gamer Kris Olinger, whose parents believe was committed by gamers who went "over the edge" (despite the police investigation, which is focused on robbery and carjacking - another example of games as suspects because the victim was a gamer).

Let's recap: we have two marines who attempted to kill a woman.  The police have no evidence that either were acting out a role-playing game, but they are still pursuing that angle.  Three examples of links between gaming and crime are given, none of which hold any water at all.  Neither of the defense lawyers can connect the motive to gaming (or anything, for that matter).  Yet the Herald feels perfectly confident with running a story on the case with the title "Stabbing May Be Linked To Role Play."

Or at least reporter Andy Rose thinks so.  After the story was made public, Mr. Rose became flooded with e-mails regarding his comments about gaming.  He wrote this reply to the responses, and defended his original story.  He didn't attack games, he said.  It was made very clear that the vast majority of gamers are harmless and there is no violence, he said.  It was pointed out that there have been no more than a few isolated cases of gamers committing crimes, he said.

Mr. Rose doesn't have the best memory of his work, however.  By itself, the title of this story turns gaming into a bigger suspect than Blad or Carson.  His definition of "very clear" is a brief half-sentence that is followed by a contrasting phrase in the second half.  At no point does he refer to his weak examples as "isolated cases;" in fact, those two words do not appear in his article at all.  If anything, his examples are used to counteract his statement that games are harmless.

In a direct response to Martin Kliehm (who, coincidentally, first brought this story to my attention - thanks Martin!), Mr. Rose states that no matter what group the suspects belonged to, the Herald would have made it part of the story - be they pro basketball players, Catholics, or chess masters.  With all due respect, I seriously doubt it in any of these cases.  Our nation is far too enamoured with pro sports to allow anyone to attach any sort of blame on them (just look at the frequency of sports riots and the lack of investigation into the prevention of them).  Likewise, a newspaper that dared to attach crime to the Catholic church would soon discover the true meaning of "a flood of hate mail."  And if a chess champ killed someone... well, I just can't picture that headline - "Stabbing May Be Linked To Chess?"  Nope, I can't see that happening.

To be fair, he does admit to understanding "some of the ultra-sensitivity," but it's not clear whether he realizes how much damage this type of reporting can do.  I sent him this email, which I thought was rather friendly, and got this response.  In it, he explains that he wrote about games because of the parents of Kris Olinger and their quest to link the death of their son to gaming.  I'm not exactly sure how to take that - is he trying to help them make this link by writing such an inappropriate story?  Does this mean that there's just as much evidence in that case as there is in this one?

A second Herald story, reported a week later by M. Cristina Medina (Trail Stabbing Story Hits Home) focuses on the younger suspect, Jesse Carson.  This piece makes only a brief mention of D&D and roleplaying - and closes the subject with the police statement that no link had yet been found.

In the end, we have another case for the files (one that likely doesn't involve gaming at all), and another article that the anti-gamers will use in their arsenal against us.

Here is the contact information for the Monterey Herald:

The Monterey County Herald 8 Ragsland Drive, Monterey CA. 93940 (831) 372-3311  www.montereyherald.com Andy Rose: (831) 646-4355 or arose@montereyherald.com Virginia Hennessey:(831) 753-6752 or vhennessey@montereyherald.com M. Cristina Medina: (831) 646-4436 or cmedina@montereyherald.com

You can also reach Nancy Feldman at: 

When asked how they felt about the edict, thousands of Saudi children said "Yeah, so what?  We're hooked on Cardcaptors now.  Pokemon is, like, sooo last year!"

For the full story, click here.