Question Regarding Pen&Paper RPGs

MasterVega

MasterVega

New Member
What is the general community's stance on them here?

I suppose I should have looked around a bit more before joining the forum, but I don't see any boards dedicated to P&PRPGs here. Are they considered off-limits, or does no one here play them?

I'm just curious, kind-of a Christian refugee of a fairly heady and secular forum. I thought I'd go somewhere people would likely not post anti-religious (more specifically anti-Christian) drivel every other day.

Thanks for reading and hopefully replying.

M.V.

Edit: I did read the code of conduct. I'm just wondering if there's some unwritten rules or unspoken animosity toward pen and paper RPGs (like Dungeons and Dragons) here.
 
I DM, create adventures, and play at least once a week on average.

I've thought of starting a blog-thingy here called "Confessions of a Christian Dungeon Master" but I think I'll wait till I'm more experienced.

I would guess that most of us are okay with them, but probably not all of us. We're all trying to follow Jesus to the best of our abilities, and for some of us that means avoiding games like D&D or WoW or even Solitaire, and for some of us that means explicitly being called to play them.
 
Ah, good to know the concept at least seems welcome here. :)

I've recently moved away from my gaming group, so I'm kinda on break from D&D and the like. I'm currently in the middle of making my own progression of D20/3.X, as I'm not a big fan of the changes 4th Edition made.

It'd certainly be interesting to see a Christian perspective on tabletop gaming. I think there's a lot of good ministry that can be done via RPGs, especially with the kind of allegory you can fit into the worlds and characters you create.
 
D&D is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's theories of "Sub-creation." As such, it is an excellent framework for exploring the wondrous parts of the world, such as grace and forgiveness.

It's also a great framework for teaching players why you really don't want to be evil.
 
I love P&P games...would love to get back into them...just don't have the time... Heroes Unlimited was my favorite...

/accepted here :)
 
Good use of imagination...it's fun. I just get worried when people dress up and do the full Role Play thing. Not worried for them...worried what they do to me when I upload all that incriminating video of them up on the youtube!!!!
 
ewoksrule - Spiritual Warfare looks like a fun game, though there wasn't really any information I could find on how the game works. Is there a teaser/preview somewhere so I can look at it a little without buying it?

Neirai the Forgiven - I agree. I've also found, well really only from reading other peoples' experiences, that evil campaigns aren't even fun. They just boil down to "I stab -insert random NPC who happens to be nearby- to death", since no one involved is patient enough to play a mastermind or at least an intelligent villain. At least heroes have a moral compass to follow. It gives the conundrum: "save the children or stop the villain once and for all" some weight. lol

XionTawa - Sadly, I've never played Heroes Unlimited. I've heard good things about it, though I've also heard it's rather easily broken.

Gods_Peon - Ah, good ol' LARPers. They give the basement-bound D&D folk someone to be weirded out by.
 
MasterVega said:
Neirai the Forgiven - I agree. I've also found, well really only from reading other peoples' experiences, that evil campaigns aren't even fun. They just boil down to "I stab -insert random NPC who happens to be nearby- to death", since no one involved is patient enough to play a mastermind or at least an intelligent villain. At least heroes have a moral compass to follow. It gives the conundrum: "save the children or stop the villain once and for all" some weight. lol
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What I find most about "evil" players is that they usually want to be evil because they have a limited view of evil: Evil is the team that gets to wear black, wield awesome magicks, and generally have more fun doing things the unconventional way. Good is the team that is answerable to authority, have restricted options for magic and are less fun. Edit: I felt that I should mention that this view of good/evil is pretty common in today's entertainment. Look at Star Wars, for example. Jedi are cool and all, but Sith can shoot lightning out of their fingers and stuff.

At first, I was strongly against letting my players dabble in playing evil. Nowadays, if they want to, I'll let them. But they'll soon learn that evil isn't synonymous with cool. It's synonymous with a society of backstabbing CENSOREDs.

Example: Our players were running their characters through a dungeon and ran into an evil dragon. Most of the players started fighting it, but the one guy who thinks evil means cool tried to bargain with it. As it happened, he didn't get far, but if he had, I'd have let him side with the evil dragon. He'd have joined forces with it, maybe killed off his former friends (the game didn't have a lot of reasons to keep going, one time thing, so ending in defeat wouldn't have been the end of the world.) Then the dragon would have killed him.

Because evil dragons kill people. They don't just form up a really awesome party of cool people who get to have lots of fun. They use people, and when they're done with them, they cast them aside like so much trash. That's the real way of evil.

By the way, as a truly Christian DM, I believe that good and cool should be synonymous. Which means that good players should be able to wear black, wield awesome magicks, and generally have more fun doing things the unconventional way. I'm not compromising what makes good good, I'm compromising what makes cliched games bad.
 
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I usually ask my players not to be evil, mainly because evil doesn't go all that far in my games... because good isn't dumb. The party paladin won't be so trusting when he starts picking you up on evildar.

And I agree with your opinions on good/evil in D&D. Chaotic Good antiheroes are a favorite in my group back home. The villain's hiding behind politics/the law? They don't care. He's a dead man all the same.
 
D&D4e doesn't have evildar anymore, but players generally know who is evil.

I once briefly played a character that was an evil paladin (you can do that now.) He was evil because when the chips are down, rather than working with or sacrificing himself for his teammates, he becomes scared and self-preservationist. So he'll do anything in his power to save his own life. He's the guy who saves his own life but loses his soul. He'd never join forces with evil or try kill NPCs or PCs, except if his life was in real jeopardy, in which case he might very well do all three. This is a completely different evil character than the Plot Device Evil rogue that shows up in every D&D team and who suddenly switches sides in the final fight (actually usually the first fight with a boss in it.)

My goal was to keep this character around and have a story where he eventually learns to trust in the goodness of "the gods" (when I DM, I do my best to work various aspects of God into the good D&D 'gods.' So for example, Moradin is God's trustworthiness, whereas Pelor is God's mercy.) The character would then no longer be an evil paladin, but a good one.

However, the character's Machiavellian playstyle soon found him isolated from his friendly PCs and he got splatted by a monster. Pity.
 
I played an evil character once, and oddly enough he wound up being one of the more memorable characters I've made. We were going through Worlds Largest Dungeon (GM had to modify it to suit his liking because it will chew up characters like nobody's business otherwise) and I had an atheist cleric who started neutral... but by the time he was forcibly retired and turned into a boss character, he was chaotic evil and had directly been involved in the death of one character, and started a completely role playing (as in, no dice were used or needed, and the GM was not involved at all) chain of events that wound up with him using the talisman of ultimate evil and eliminating the rest of the party. (the talisman only worked against good, had five uses, and no saves. The characters were just gone.

Two things were learned from this: Evil characters if played right can lead to some crazy role playing, and epic campaigns are not forgiving. ;)
 
I GM for our two boys and a Neighbor kid about the same age. They are into the hack and slash and this provides a nice framework. We Generally use the GURPS system. I really enjoy the flexibility it provides as we are now playing through a Highlander (think Duncan McCloud) campaign.

RHo
 
Neirai the Forgiven said:
D&D4e doesn't have evildar anymore, but players generally know who is evil.
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Ah, see I'm not a 4E guy, but that's for another time.

As for your evil character, I'm sad to say that it sounds like he got what was coming to him. :/ Sad to hear his change in character never happened, but being a (double/triple/quadruple?) crosser and/or coward isn't going to make you many friends. *shrug* No offense meant.

On another note, I prefer to make my own settings (up to and including pantheons) instead of using the pre-existing ones. Some are indeed cool, but I'd rather run a game in my own imaginary realm where my players can't toss canon at me in protest of some rulling or creation I've made/borrowed for the game.

@ Elader Arkon - So how exactly did the game turn from D&D to freeform play? Did the DM move away, or simply let you guys decide the outcome?

@ I've heard a lot about GURPS, but never played. How do your boys do with the high-complexity of the system, or do you do most of the mechanical work for them?
 
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MasterVega said:
As for your evil character, I'm sad to say that it sounds like he got what was coming to him. :/ Sad to hear his change in character never happened, but being a (double/triple/quadruple?) crosser and/or coward isn't going to make you many friends. *shrug* No offense meant.
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None taken. This is the lot of (realistically) evil characters. I remember reading something from the late Gary Gygaz saying "if you have an evil campaign that has been going swell for a number of years, what you have is a very bad DM." (Not a real quote.)

If you've been going swell for the last number of years on the dark side, your DM obviously doesn't know what makes the dark side dark. Team Evil is comprised almost completely of jerks, double-crossers, arrogant blowhards, and mean and rotten scoundrels. Therefore, survival on Team Evil is pretty hard.
 
MasterVega said:
@ Elader Arkon - So how exactly did the game turn from D&D to freeform play? Did the DM move away, or simply let you guys decide the outcome?
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Nah, it got to the point where the events built into either a.) the party stays in character and wipes, or b.) we break character and ruin an epic moment.

It was all dialogue between the party concerning what needed to be done (and it was a sacrifice all or potentially spell certain doom moment), and any movement was back through areas we had already cleared, so no rolls or checks were needed for that, and the local enemies had been wiped out. The only other players were in some way good aligned, and the only neutral aligned character was one that was outright killed. So there was no combat, the talisman simply wiped them out.
 
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