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Dungeons & Dragons: Adventure or Abomination?
The 700 Club's Anti-RPG Pamphlet - Pages 3-4
Notes and corrections
Page 3
...acknowledged... that D&D is heavily occult...
- In most cases where the word "occult" is thrown around the way that
it is in this pamphlet, there is often no clear definition given to the
meaning of the word. Webster defines "occult" thusly:*
adj 1:
not revealed : secret 2: not easily apprehended or understood :
abstruse, mysterious 3: hidden from view : concealed 4: of
or relating to the occult 5: not manifest or detectable by
clinical methods alone; also: not present in macroscopic amounts
n. : matters
regarded as involving the action or influence of supernatural or
supernormal powers or some secret knowledge of them
Much
of our entertainment - television, movies, and literature - involves
mystery, secret knowledge, and supernatural elements. It makes for
great storytelling. By
these definitions, anything mysterious or out of the ordinary could be
considered "occultic," and any sort of quantifier would be pointless -
something is either occultic or it isn't. Real-world witchcraft and
paganism would be just as occultic as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis,
Star Wars, Grimm's fairy tales,
Lost,
The X Files, Mary Poppins and
Peter Pan.
Supernatural events occur in the Christian Bible, the Talmud, the
Koran, and the sacred texts of almost every other world religion, as
well as much of our classic literature:
A Christmas Carol, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, War of the Worlds, and most of the works of Edgar Allen
Poe. Which of these are "occultic," and which aren't?
Of
course, Sanchez and CBN likely aren't using the Webster's defintion of
"occult" here, and their definition is vague enough to include anything
that they do not approve of.
(* Definition taken from the Merriam Webster website at www.m-w.com)
"Since it is a role-playing game, it's used for behavior modification."
- Role-playing games are used for entertainment, and not behavior
modification. There are not many guidelines for how players should
behave outlined in any of the
Dungeons & Dragons
manuals, other than some general suggestions on how to deal with unruly
or disruptive players. For something that is supposed to be a method of
behavior modification, there is a lot lacking in the way of instruction.
While
someone could use a role-playing game for behavior modification, it
wouldn't be any different than using a sport or other activity the same
way - it would be outside of the original purpose of the activity, and
wouldn't be a proper justification for banning it.
Dungeon Masters & Deities - Many critics of
Dungeons & Dragons
and other fantasy role-playing games will use the existence of gods and
goddesses in the game as ammunition that it is "occultic," sometimes
even going as far as to suggest that the game encourages the players to
worship and serve them. In reality, deities in the game serve to enrich
the mythology of the storytelling. They can provide background and
motivation for the characters in a game, and aren't presented as
anything that the players of the game should serve or worship. In fact,
at the time this pamphlet was written, the core rulebooks of
D&D did not include specific information about deities - this information was optional, and provided in the
Legends and Lore (or
Deities & Demigods) book.
A Dungeon Master player or DM, as director of a game, determines the actions of deities and how players must appease them.
- CBN actually gets it right here, but doesn't seem to realize how it
hurts their case. This statement explains how deities are handled
in
D&D
and other roleplaying games - as high-powered non-player characters
that the Dungeon Master controls, and not as any real deities that the
players must worship.
Page 4Pulling's 16-year-old son... became one of those voluntary martyrs in 1982. -
While this is a very dramatic way to start off the "Suicides" section
of the pamphlet, it is far from the real story of "Bink" Pulling.