Monday, November 14, 2005



Kickin' It Old School: Or, In Which D&D Players Are Compared to Girdles

There's a site that I used to check out fairly frequently, when in the mood for a good dose of conservative idiocy. It's one of those wonderful fundie sites that specializes in publishing hundreds if not thousands of articles all saying the same things, more or less, backed up with seemingly random Bible quotes. Way of Life was also notable for the vicious personal hatred which the writers spewed towards anyone whose theology differed, even minutely, from their own. I don't know why I stopped checking out Way of Life; perhaps I died of sensory overload one day while trying read a minute percentage of their articles. I don't recall.

Anyway, Way of Life was one of the last bastions of support for the old Christian Right campaign against Dungeons & Dragons. And, I was proud to note today, that this solemn tradition is still being carried on by the site's editors:

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GAME DAY 2005. Friday Church News Notes, November 11, 2005 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Dungeons & Dragons Game Day 2005 was held on November 5 and drew participants in many countries. It was the 31st anniversary of the fantasy-sorcery warfare game, which was a predecessor to the even more demonic games that are popular today in electronic format. Scott Presley, a game player at The Fantasy Factory in Lakeland, Florida, said, “A lot of online gaming out there now owes a great deal of debt to the Dungeons & Dragons gaming system” (The Lakeland Ledger, Nov. 5, p. D1). The game is about casting spells, ghouls, goblins, pentagrams, and other things associated what the Bible describes as the demonic realm. Though promoted as innocent fun, it is anything but that. Graham Braddock of New Zealand warned: “Even in its most basic forms players are introduced to magic, the casting of spells, the use of magic circles, pentagrams and thaumaturgic triangles as protective psychic devices. Players battle or seek the aid of demons and pagan deities. Players are encouraged to align themselves with a deity or deities and even to worship them” (Maranatha Message #80, 1984). “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). “This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing” (Jer. 23:10).

Hmmm, not only compared to a girdle, but to an apparently broken one as well!! Well, that ought to about do it for Wizards of the Coast, the company that publishes D&D! Anyway, it's good to see the old ways being carried on. Let's all life a pint of virgin's blood to Way of Life, in the hopes that that years and decades to come shall see a continuing parade of badly-writted, mis-informed, bile-spattered rants against anything that the writers fail to completely understand!

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