Following up on the Unsavory Past

It seems that my last post has caused some confusion. There are those that don’t quite grasp why I take issue with the weak and subjective language used by WotC in regards to their legacy products:

Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.

This leaves a tremendous amount of room for interpretation, which might very well be the intent. “There is nothing here in The World of Greyhawk that suggests anything wrong, therefore I can ignore it,” is what some seem to say, and what I believe WotC is hoping we say.

As I stated in my last post, I am a trained historian. As a consequence, I tend to see patterns in behaviors and the pattern of behavior I see in the weak and subjective language used by WotC is not a pretty one. I could simply go to the first half of the 20th century to illustrate my point, but I think it will be much more useful tell a story from the 4th century.

There was a charismatic priest in the city of Alexandria (Egypt) by the name of Arius who started to preach that there was a time when the Son was not. He and his followers represented an existential crisis for the early Church. Known today as Arianism, the theology espoused by Arius was biblical, trinitarian, and philosophically sound. Their view of God, however, absolutely destroyed the soteriology of the Church.

As a consequence, the First Ecumenical Council was convened. Their ultimate goal was to clearly define what was Orthodox and what was Arian. In the end, they created what is today known as the Nicene Creed. In process, they made a very controversial move by using the word ὁμοούσιος — a word that is not anywhere in Scripture.

The reason they used ὁμοούσιος and not a word found in Scripture was that every time a word from Scripture was used, both Arians and Orthodox could say the same words and mean two very different things. By choosing the word ὁμοούσιος, they made it impossible for there to be any misunderstanding. Everyone had to choose: are you Orthodox or are you Arian? Without this choice, human freedom and our clear understanding of who God and what His salvation is was in serious jeopardy.

In our present, words have been weaponized. People can and have lost their reputations, their jobs, and their livelihoods over the use of mere words. Yet, most of these words are ill-defined and largely subjective. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to keep up with how quickly the meaning of words can change.

In such an environment, clarity is needed. We very much need to follow in the footsteps of the First Ecumenical Council. In order to understand each other, to talk with each other, to accomplish anything positive we need to define terms. Nothing gets done when people have different definitions of words. This reality can only lead to chaos.

Indeed, the very reason people have been able to weaponize words is due to the fact that their definitions are fluid and subjective.

Thus, rather than placing our small community on a solid foundation to move through and beyond the chaos of the moment, WotC has empowered chaos and those who wish to weaponize language.

The very fact that WotC has used such weak and subjective language has made everyone who ever played this game a potential target. Anything and everything that has ever been published for this game now officially may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice. In other words, literally anything from the legacy products of WotC can be weaponized to declare any of us as bigots that were wrong then and wrong today. It doesn’t matter that you and I understand that Gary Gygax did not intend his game to promote prejudice. Because WotC has admitted that such prejudice exists (why else would they need to make such a statement if their weren’t), anything and everything can, and probably will, be weaponized.

The Gygax 75 Challenge

Given my recent focus on practical examples on how to home-brew things for D&D, I would remiss if I didn't mention The Gygax 75 Challenge by Ray Otus. It is a short work (36 pages including the article by Gary Gygax that inspired this work) but does claim to help the reader to "Create an RPG setting in five weeks!"

Since I've been in the mood to record practical examples and since I've been inspired by my own exploration of Human Monster Stats in B/X, I thought I would document my own experience doing the Gygax 75 Challenge here.

Week 1 of this Challenge includes the following Tasks:

1. Get/Create a Notebook
2. Develop Your Pitch
3. Gather Your Sources of Inspiration
4. (Extra Credit) Assemble a Mood Board

For the first Task, my "Notebook" will be this blog. I will record all of this process here.

The Pitch is supposed to be 3 to 7 bullet points to "sell" the campaign to potential players. Working in the background of all of this is an assumption that you are using a specific ruleset, since that will affect every step of this process.

As implied by my post yesterday, this campaign will be built upon the chassis of Moldvay’s Basic D&D. Here are my bullet points:

• Science Fantasy: Lasers! Plasma Swords! Magic! Explore ancient alien civilizations! Chart and claim new territories on the Colony Planet Vurush in the name of the burgeoning Terran Empire!
• Demi-humans are Race-as-Class, but are also all functionally multi-class: Dwarves are Fighter/Thieves, Elves are Fighter/Magic-users, Gnomes are Magic-user/Thieves, and Halflings are Cleric/Thieves.
• The universal struggle is between Light & Heat (Life) vs. Dark & Cold (Death). The Terran Empire is the current champion of Light & Heat.
• Divine Magic represents Life Magic. Arcane Magic represents Death Magic.
• Low Magic: Human Civilization is only capable of casting up to 2nd level spells.
• Dinosaurs: The edge of Civilization has a Lost World atmosphere.

For the third Task, the bibliography should also include a sentence or two about what each item brings to the campaign setting. Here is mine:

• Martian Chronicles by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I want this campaign to feel like the Mars Burroughs portrays: old civilizations, multiple native species, and I love white apes.
• The Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett. This is the source for the universal conflict as being between Heat and Cold. It also depicts the way I want Turning to look and feel like. Lycanthropes, barbarians, and berserkers are all represented here.
• Star Wars novelization by Alan Dean Foster. I want magic to work similarly to the Force: it is an energy that can be used for Light or Dark. Light Sabres are the prototype for the Plasma Sword and I want them to be able to block laser shots. Plus, I love the open possibilities of Star Wars before the Extended Universe and all the other movies.
• The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Give me dinosaurs, neanderthals, and saber tooth tigers!
• Fire and Ice (1983 Film). Subhumans, dragonhawk riders, more barbarians and (again) the conflict between Heat & Cold.
• Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-81 TV Series). The sunsword is another way to portray the Plasma Sword. Although the ancient civilization is our earth, there is this notion that there was a catastrophe that destroyed it. Plus, powerful wizards are most often depicted as the villains.

Finally, there is the suggestion that you put together a Mood Board — a collage of images that give you and your players a feel for what your campaign looks like. Normally, I wouldn't do this. I am a fan of letting players create their own version of what I am trying to describe to them; however, I also know showing pictures to players is a long standing practice in the hobby and I use it myself when words fail me. So,  here is what I came up with:

Click to Embiggen

More Gamer ADD: Re-skinning The Caverns of Thracia

At present, I am rather badly afflicted by Gamer ADD. I’ve spent time meditating on a couple different campaign ideas in my last couple of posts; my Lost Colonies campaign just had a rather climactic event (of which I will write later) and my players are looking for a little break from the fantasy genre over the summer; and my eldest daughter has been bugging me about letting her and her brother play.

The latter occurred after she found an old FRPG accessory I bought back in the late eighties. After Gygax was booted from TSR, he had an imprint called Gary Gygax Presents: Fantasy Master. To my knowledge it only produced a few accessories, of which I own Aesheba: Greek Africa by Robert J. Blake, Frank Mentzer and Jeff O’Hare.

Though I think it a very good product, in the long run it is something that will never be anything other than an accessory to steal ideas from, because I am not much interested in playing in a fantasy world primarily influenced by Greek paganism. I would, however, be interested in playing in a world influenced by a fantasy version of the Byzantine Empire. Since virtually all of my extent campaigns (especially Averoigne and Lost Colonies) have a heavy dose of horror that I feel is inappropriate for my kids at their age, Aesheba is a great jumping off point for a campaign for my kids.

Aesheba posits a version of Africa that is isolated from Europe and Mesopotamia, giving the authors plenty of room to fiddle with history and add fantasy elements. This suits me just fine, not only because of the leeway, it also affords me the opportunity to add two things that I feel obligated to include in such a campaign for my kids: dinosaurs and pyramids.

When asked what they want to be when they grow up, my two oldest will answer paleontologist and egyptologist. In order to accommodate these interests in the campaign, I am going to grab the assistance of Paul Jaquays and re-skin his very excellent classic The Caverns of Thracia.

For those that are not aware, The Caverns of Thracia is a module published by Judges Guild in 1979 and has one of the best conceived maps for a published module of all time. It has multiple ways into and out of various levels. There are secret sub-levels. There are teleportation devices. There is an underground forest and mansion. It is stunning and inspirational. It is, however, something that I would only run as written with a much older and experienced group.

Therefore, I am going to re-skin it. Originally, the history of the Caverns has three basic stages:

1. An ancient pre-human reptilian race that eventually devolves into lizard men.
2. A Mycenaen/Cretan human civilization that (in part) is dedicated to Thanatos, the god of death.
3. Beast men who had been enslaved by the humans and had risen up to destroy and drive out their former masters.

My re-skinned version will assume the following:

1. The ancient reptilians will be one of the many serpent-like people available in various monster catalogues throughout the hobby. Three things of import: 1) theirs is a world where dinosaurs still exist and which some have been domesticated; 2) when humans show up, the serpent people enslave them; 3) either as a means to control the humans or as part of their native culture, they serve Set.
2. At some point the humans rise up in rebellion against their reptilian masters. This rebellion is fueled by a new religion — Atenism. Personally, the pharaoh in whom I am most interested in is Amenhotep IV, aka Akhenaten. He led a failed religious revolution that did not survive him. This religion had trappings of monotheism focused on Aten — originally an aspect of the sun god Ra. One of the things I find fascinating is how it parallels early Judaism. Indeed, there are scholars who find a great deal of similarity between the Great Hymn to the Aten and Psalm 104.
3. After the rebellion, the serpent people retreated, but not without some of their human slaves. In order to make them more pliable and to ensure that they would not again rebel, the serpent people started to do magical experiments on their remaining human slaves in order to create various beast men (kobolds as dog men, gnolls as hyena men, lizard men, etc.). These will be primarily based upon the various anthropomorphic Egyptian gods. Once enough of these had been bred, they sent an army of beast men to crush the Atenist rebellion. The beast men are now in control of the dungeon.

This campaign will also necessitate two other significant changes from a traditional D&D campaign:

Firstly, the Byzantines did not think well of wizards and sorcery. Thus, magic-users as written would not exist; however, there was a sci-fi/fantasy book I read a couple decades ago that postulated a version of the Greek/Roman Mediterranean where all the laws of ancient science worked instead of the laws of modern science. It had a very cool pseudo-magic/science feel. Thus, the magic-user will be replaced by the philosopher — a class that studies the sciences to create machines and devices with the same effects as magic-user spells.

Secondly, elves, dwarves and halflings all really have their origins in northern european mythology rather than Greek/Mediterranean/African mythology. Thus, they are getting re-skinned as something that resonates with the feel of the campaign:

• Elves will be substituted with Kemites — humans in the serpent peoples’ sphere of influence. They are akin to OD&D elves — able to adventure as either a fighter or a philosopher.
• Dwarves will be substituted with white apes — an intelligent ape race.
• Halflings will be substituted with pygmies — short humans that are really good with missile weapons.

Saintly Saturday: St. Augustine of Canterbury

Today is the Feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury. An Italian Benedictine monk, he was sent to Britain at the request of Bertha, the wife of King Ethelbert of Kent. Though pagan, the king had married into the Merovingian line of Frankish kings, which by this time had become Christian. She wanted to restore a church built during the Roman era of Britain at Canterbury and dedicate it to St. Martin of Tours.

The request was granted by the bishop of Rome, St. Gregory the Dialogist (who we Orthodox credit with the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts and who also, inspired by the chant he encountered in Constantinople, was the creator of Gregorian Chant). St. Augustine arrived at Kent in 597.

Despite his pagan beliefs, Ethelbert was very cooperative with St. Augustine. The church was restored and the Christian Gospel was preached throughout the kingdom. Eventually, through his relationship with Augustine, Ethelbert became a Christian himself (and is today recognized as a right-believing saint celebrated on Feb. 25).

According to St. Bede, Augustine was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury, built Christ Church (the predecessor of the present cathedral at Canterbury) and the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul (now known as St. Augustine’s Abbey which eventually fell prey to the dissolution of King Henry VIII).

St. Augustine was not entirely successful in his mission to Britain, however. Celtic Christians from Ireland had also been sending missionaries into Britain from the north (most notably from their outpost at Lindisfarne). St. Augustine came into conflict with these Celtic Christians over local customs (primarily over the date of Easter and monastic tonsure). While Augustine championed the customs of Rome, the Celtic Christians did not want to abandon their own. When he met with some of their bishops to seek unity in 603, the Celtic bishops had been instructed by a hermit to act based upon how Augustine greeted them. If he remained seated, he was to be rejected as arrogant and an unfit leader. St. Augustine remained seated. He would die two years later and it wasn’t until the Synod of Whitby in 664 that this conflict was settled in favor of the Roman customs.

You will excuse me if I find this whole story incredibly inspiring: Pagan kings, Christian missionaries, native Christians vs. imperial Christians and ancient ruins being explored and restored. What more could I want for the basis of a D&D campaign? I could even import some of the stuff I’ve done for my version of Averoigne.

I even see a way to insert some Gygaxian goodness into all of this by re-skinning one of my all-time favorite modules — T1 The Village of Hommlet:

• The Village of Hommlet is caught in-between the Roman and Celtic Christians as they argue over which set of customs to follow.
• The Church of St. Cuthbert is currently under control of the Roman faction.
• All the “old-believers” in town follow the Celtic customs.
• Jaroo Ashstaff (the Druid) is a monastic hermit that serves as the spiritual leader for all the local Celtic Christians.
• Rufus and Burne represent Frankish/Merovingian influence in the area.
• While these two Christian factions argue with each other, the menace of an ancient pagan cult is finding the time and space in which to flourish.
• The local cult is lead by Lareth the Beautiful out of the Moathouse.
• Is there a possibility that one or more of the local nobles are funding this pagan cult as a means to discredit the newly Christian king?
• Can the players discover the pagan plot, unite the Christians and save the king before it is too late?

Grrr. Now I want to play...

Meditating on the 1ed DMG

One of the peripheral consequences of working on my re-imagined Slave Pits of the Undercity (which itself is a result of WotC re-releasing the three 1ed core books) is my own casual re-assessment of ADnD. I have found myself more frequently perusing my ADnD collection than I have in years. There is one exception to this, however. Though I am very familiar with some sections within it, the ADnD DMG still remains largely impenetrable for me.

I am one of those life-long DnD players who was initiated into the game by those who already knew how to play, rather than someone who is self-taught. When it came time for me to try my hand at DMing (as I called it then), Holmes, Moldvay and Cook held larger sway on me than did Gygax because, despite my group playing “ADnD” these great editors were far more approachable in their advice. So, though I used ADnD rules and tables, my mentors were from the world of B/X and Holmes.

This may come as a bit of a surprise, given that there are so many out there in the world of the OSR that cite the DMG as this great and seminal work of the hobby that is a seemingly ever-changing treasure trove of gaming history and advice. This love affair is to the point that there are some who would choose the DMG as the only RPG book that they could have if stranded on a deserted island.

In a way, this reminds me of the Philokalia — a collection of Orthodox Christian spiritual writing compiled and published in the 18th century. In it one can find meditations from the 4th century through the 15th century by a total of thirty-six different authors. It has been described as a seminal collection of such import that it is second only to the Scriptures themselves in the spiritual life of the Orthodox Christian.

The compilers organized the book chronologically. If one attempts to read it thusly (cover to cover), however, the book is rendered impenetrable. Rather, it requires an initiation on how to read it and what order to read the various authors. There are several historical methods, but all of them parallel each other. They all form a key with which to unlock this precious gift.

As one who still finds the DMG to be something of a Philokalic mystery, and since so many of my generation had some kind of initiation process into the hobby, I am wondering if there isn’t some kind of pattern out there for tackling the DMG? Is there a particular order for taking advantage of all the goodness that lies therein?

I do not ask this only for myself, but for those who will be buying their first 1ed DMG sometime this summer. Unlike later editions of the game, ADnD is a bit of an editorial mess. In order that those who encounter it for the first time have the best experience possible, it might behoove those of us who love the old ways to make the world of ADnD a tad more accessible.

Saintly Saturday: St. Nicholas

I am going to deviate from my usual fair today, because tomorrow so many of us will be remembering the tenth anniversary of one of the most tragic events in U.S. history — certainly of my lifetime. Rather than remembering a saint, today I'd like to remember a building dedicated to a saint as well as the men and women who lost their lives in its vicinity.

While many of the talks we will hear and make tomorrow will be about the Twin Towers, there were three buildings destroyed that day in New York. Standing in the shadows of the Twin Towers was a little church called St. Nicholas.

Forgive me while I do a little comparison. Gary Gygax died on March 4, 2008. I only knew Gary through his writing and the game he created with Dave Arneson. So I, like many who have found joy in playing that game in one or more of its many iterations, went back and read those words in order to hold on to what we had lost. What resulted from that memorial is what I have called a golden age in our hobby. We have gone back, rediscovered the magic of 1974, 1979, 1981, etc., made it our own and created all kinds of wonderful. In other words, every time we sit down at a table to play, we honor Gary, Dave, Dr. Holmes and all of those who labored to give us this game we love so much.

In contrast, when New York gathers to remember the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the destruction wrought by hate and the lives that hate destroyed, the very men and women who risked their lives to save people from the attack, the fire and the rubble will not be welcome (they were "honored" on the eighth). In addition, ground zero has been declared a clergy-free zone — on sacred ground where a house of worship once stood. You will excuse me if I think this an abomination.

I ask that all of us take time tomorrow to honor the dead, honor those they left behind and honor those who risk their lives on a daily basis so that we may be free and safe to play the games we play. I also ask that we consider that maybe one of the reasons that a hole still scars the city New York ten years after two planes were deliberately flown into the Twin Towers is that we have not only turned away clergy, but God Himself.

Saintly Saturday: St. Timothy the Apostle

Today is the feast day of St. Timothy the Apostle. A companion of St. Paul on many of his journeys around the Mediterranean, he is the recipient of the letters 1 & 2 Timothy, he became the bishop of Ephesus and he was eventually martyred for proclaiming the Gospel.

Personally, I very much identify with Timothy. Whereas Peter et. al. walked with Christ when He was on earth and Paul was visited by the Risen Lord, Timothy is part of the second generation of Christians (having received the faith from his grandmother Eunice and his mother Lois, cf. 2 Tim 1:5). In other words, he represents all of us who first encountered Christ through the faith of others. This faith was powerful enough that he left his home, his family and his country for the sake of Christ and His Gospel (cf. Matthew 19:29). He received this faith, he protected this faith and he passed it on to the next generation which through almost two thousand years has been passed on to us.

Not to place RPGs on the same level as the Gospel (not even close), but in a sense, I am also of Timothy's generation in terms of this hobby we love so much — I was taught via the Holmes edition of D&D. Just as when the first generation of Christians began to disappear and the four Evangelists wrote down the Gospels, when Gary Gygax died, many of us pulled out our old gaming materials trying to hold on to and rediscover what it was that brought us into the hobby in the first place. One of the fruits of this process has been the OSR, for which I am truly grateful.

In his second letter to Timothy, St. Paul exhorts him to "continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it" (3:14). If there is anything I have learned about our hobby is that it is all about doing. The OSR has reminded me of this beautiful reality. Though there are as many rulesets out there as there are tables, we all have a shared experience. Though many of us homebrew our settings (or DIY places like Greyhawk or the Wilderlands to the point they barely resemble the originals) it does little to damage that shared experience.

As I've repeatedly stated in this blog, one of the tenets of Christianity that I value and promote is that of human freedom. The OSR is an example of the wonderful, beautiful mess that freedom brings. As far as I am concerned, the more the merrier. Thus, when BHP announced its own in-house rule set, I was really pleased. It is another opportunity for me as a player to frankenstein my own game. Even though I use LL as the main ruleset at my own table, there are house rules we use that have been shamelessly stolen from virtually every iteration of the game.

From what has been passed down to me, this is exactly how it should be — because it's fun. I plan on having this fun, and sharing it with others for as long as I can. Hopefully, this thing will continue to have legs long after I am gone.

Planar Cosmology of D&D Part I

Images have power.They stay with us for years and influence how we see and understand things. Images from the early days of D&D still hold sway over how certain monsters are envisioned. This image from Issue 6 of Strategic Review certainly has influenced D&D, both in the way it's played and in the way its rules have been written. It, and other attempts to map the planes, have contributed to the systemization of polytheism into the D&D ruleset.

On the surface, this map poses a serious conundrum to a monotheistic world view. How can there be a one God, when there exists all of these planes, each representing/encompassing a particular world view/alignment? If the traditional Christian God can be understood as Lawful Good, how do explain the planes of Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, etc.? How can there be one God and multiple Prime Material Planes?

In this first installment of a meditation on the Planes in D&D, I will begin to try and answer these questions from a monotheistic and Christian point of view. My goal is to demonstrate that the Planes, even as envisioned by Gygax in Issue 6 of Strategic Review, do not require a polytheistic point of view. Let me begin with a very key Christian dogma.

Creation from Nothing

The idea that God created everything from nothing is implied in the first chapter of Genesis, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” with the phrase “In the beginning” also implying that time is part of creation. The dogma is explicitly stated in 2 Macabees 7:28 “I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise.”

This is in marked contrast to pagan thinking, where gods create the world from something that was already in existance. Whereas pagan gods are limited and part of creation, the Christian God is radically free and radically different than His creation.

God exists outside of time, without beginning. Time is part of creation, which has a beginning and therefore must have an end. All of creation will move towards its end — a return to nothing — save for the will of God.

In terms of the Planar Cosmology of D&D, God is not limited to His corner of creation because the entire multi-verse is part of creation. From a Christian point of view, every plane in existence was created by God, not just our version of the Prime Material Plane. All of creation — every plane in every diagram of the planar map — is hurtling towards its own end — a return to nothing. However, in His benevolence, God is willing it all to continue to exist.

One of the logical conclusions to this dogma is that God created the Devil (and in the D&D multiverse all the various planes of evil and chaos) and continues to allow them to exist. God remains a good and loving God despite this because the existence of the Devil (and the planes of evil and chaos) guarantees human freedom. Without choice of good or evil, law or chaos, humanity would not be free and God would destroy His image in us.

A Guy Named Nestorius

Recently, James Maliszewiski wrote a nice piece on how Christianity was implicit in early D&D. What I found fascinating was not the implicit Christianity (D&D did come out of a Medieval European combat simulator, afterall), but was this:

Gary Gygax . . . explained that he felt it unseemly to include anything too explicitly Christian in a mere game, even if he assumed a kind of quasi-Christian or crypto-Christian underpinning for the whole thing.

In my experience, Gygax is fairly representative of the gaming community — that to explicitly include God in the equation is uncomfortable, odd, or downright blasphemous. I find it ironic (and not a little telling) that this discomfort has contributed to a trajectory that has led to polytheism being explicitly expressed in the game system. That gamers have no problem with various iterations of pagan gods, but hesitate to include the Christian God because D&D is a game, suggests that gamers implicitly understand pagan gods are fictitious whereas the Christian God is very real.

As an Orthodox Christian, this phenomenon reminds me very much of a guy named Nestorius. The word "dogma" in modern America has a lot of baggage, and is seen by many to be a bad word. However, Orthodoxy has long understood that belief systems have consequences — they result in behavior. This behavior, in turn, reveals what we really believe.

During the 5th century, Nestor was a priest whose teachings attempted

to rationally explain and understand the incarnation of the divine Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity as the man Jesus Christ. Nestorianism teaches that the human and divine essences of Christ are separate and that there are two persons, the man Jesus Christ and the divine Logos, which dwelt in the man. Thus, Nestorians reject such terminology as "God suffered" or "God was crucified", because they believe that the man Jesus Christ suffered. Likewise, they reject the term Theotokos (Giver of birth to God) for the Virgin Mary, using instead the term Christotokos (giver of birth to Christ) or Anthropotokos (giver of birth to a man). — http://orthodoxwiki.org/Nestorianism

This is in contrast to the Orthodox understanding that Christ is perfect God and perfect man; that the divinity and humanity in Christ are two natures in one person; and that these two natures do not change, are not confused with one another, cannot be divided into isolated categories, nor be separated in terms of area or function.

These different understandings of Christ result in different kinds of behavior. Nestorianism results in the compartmentalization of life — one's work life is cut off from one's home life which is cut off from one's recreational life which is cut of from one's religious life. This results in a kind of schizophrenia, where one becomes a different person for every aspect of their life. I actually know of a guy who politically claims to be a communist, who religiously claims to be Christian, and economically is a ruthless, exploitive capitalist. This schizophrenia allows us to justify destructive behaviors, because we believe that the behavior of one aspect of our lives does not affect the others. This, of course, is an illusion.

In contrast, the Orthodox understanding of Christ leads us towards a holistic understanding of the human person, where everything we do affects every aspect of our lives. Thus, Gygax's notion that including Christianity in a mere game is unseemly makes little sense to my Orthodox mind. My belief in Christ must necessarily inform my role playing. One of the reasons I feel more comfortable with older versions of D&D is that the game system, by implicitly assuming Christianity, makes this possible. As we have increasingly put D&D into a box, trying to isolate it from this aspect of its heritage by systemically requiring polytheism, the more schizophrenic it has become.

We have been given the illusion of freedom — more choices for creating characters, creating monsters, creating magic items, etc. However, since all of these creative processes have been systematized, we are far from free of doing things in our own unique way. If we don't follow certain paths, we've thrown the game out of balance and/or broken the game. I cannot speak for 4e, as I have not actually read or played the game. However, judging from the reactions of many people about the game, its affinity to video games and for reducing every aspect of the game to a formula does not bode well for a systemic support of freedom and creativity.

From my own Orthodox perspective, this does not surprise me. God is ultimately free. He has made us in His image and likeness, thus giving us freedom. When we freely choose to bring Christ into every aspect of our lives, we experience His freedom. When we freely choose to deny him from any aspect of our lives, we step into the illusory world of sin and darkness. We imagine that we are free, but we are limited by our passions, our sins, and our fallen nature.

This is the very reason I freely choose to embrace the Christian roots of the game of D&D, and carry it through into my own gaming experience.