Christianity - Concerns For The AD&D Player

Silver Ghost

[In outline form, the following is why playing AD&D is better for you than being a Christian. If you don't claim to be an AD&D player, you can ignore this. If you claim to be an AD&D player, listen up! -Silver Ghost]

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" -- The Spanish Inquisition

ORU (Oral Roberts University), producer of millions of dollars every year, was founded a long time ago. Estimates of its sales have been as high as: $400 million in 1979, $852 million in 1983, $1.56 billion in 1985, and $6 trillion in 1987--and remember, all this is tax-free. In 1980, 500 children, aged 16-18, became freshmen at Oral Roberts University, where they will take stimulating and exciting classes such as: Chastity After Marriage 101; Peace And Profit 203; Praying In Modern-Day Southern Indiana 604. But these games include some aspects that warrent a closer look by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons players and their parents. Some of these are suggested here:

1. There is a danger in becoming over-involved in Christianity, spending a large amount of time, money, and interest in it.
   1. Jesus, originator of the religion, said that "if thou doest not go to church every Sunday for the rest of your life, thee shall be ridiculed by thy fellow Christians, and thee stands a good chance of burning in Hell for all of eternity. So go ahead, makest my day."
   2. Articles in newspapers and magazines have told of many people who spent many hours a day or week praying, some spending hundreds to thousands of dollars in materials or at conventions.
   3. Again Christ has said: "You have to pursue me with your entire soul if you're going to do well at this sort of thing." (Stoning Role-Players, October, 15 A.D.)
   4. People tell of thinking about nothing but salvation, having no friends who aren't Christian, experiencing peer pressure to go to church, and rejection of those who do not (see Christ as quoted above).
   5. Dragon Magazine 104 tells us that priests can cast Fire Storm and create Holy Water that can do 1d6 of damage to evil beings summoned from another plane; yet few Christians even know how to operate a simple flamethrower, and even fewer know how to dispel or destroy a mere skeleton or zombie.

Does Christianity measure up to these standards?

1. There is a danger in players becoming too involved with deities.
   1. People have said: "I've seen people have fits, yell at ninety-five decibels, hurl small furry animals through stained-glass windows...when they become possessed by the Holy Spirit." "It's when you take the Bible home with you, when Fred's mad for a week because Susie threatened to become a Satanist, that it's an addiction." Dr. Hornblow Nonothing, an eminent leading scientist at Scientific University, said "Those who are put together well to begin with don't need to use pads. Huh? Well what ARE we talking about then? This isn't 'Ask Doctor Ruth?'"
   2. Many find Christianity to be an escape from the fantasy world and find it to be less exciting. But some have found it hard to confuse the real and the imaginary, and end up stranded there forever.
   3. Gary Gygax NEVER talks about giving up your life for AD&D and serving it. NEVER.
2. Christianity contains a lot of violence.
   1. The Spanish Inquisition, though highly humorous late at night when you're about to fall asleep anyway, executed hundreds of witches and heretics without a trial, in fact usually without a charge. Actually, Spanish Inquisitors used really ugly and gruesome torture devices that no sane Dungeon Master would be even tempted to read about, much less put in his dungeons.
   2. The Christian Crusades of 1066 killed a whole heck of a lot of people, too. A lot of them were children. It would appear that it is ecessary to kill, not just monsters but even humans, in order to succeed in the game.
   3. A central Washington police department asks as a standard question of those arrested: "What religion are you?" And another source, which I've got lying around here somewhere...mmm...can't seem to find it, oh well. Anyway it says that 60 suicides were directly attributed to Christianity in 1981. Yep.
3. Christianity is an effective "teacher." Do you know what it is teaching? If you do, please let me know.
   1. Christianity makes use of several effective teaching/learning techniques such as brainwashing, meditation, involving the feelings of the participants, and memorization. The roles include mundane-type things like acountants, bureaucrats, carpenters, ditch-diggers, electricians...the list goes on (for 21 more letters, in fact). Other roles are those of Christian Soldiers, TV Evangelists (a thief/illusionist multiclass), or even Door-To-Door Word-Spreaders. The fantasies include doing battle with devils and demons using various types of weaponry, spells, and incantations.
4. Christianity claims to involve the players in the worship/service of a god.
   1. "Christianity Explained For The Illiterate," cassette number two, says: "Serving a deity is a significant part of Christianity, and most Catholics should have a patron saint."
   2. In the Bible, a total of one god is mentioned. Think of it! Just one god!
   3. Exodus 23:13 tells them not to even mention the names of other gods.
5. Christianity contains much information and encourages activity that deals with the real world.
   1. Dr. Bubba Joe Billy Bob, a Satanistic demon-worshipper, author of the book Buy This Book Or I'll Rip Out Your Kidneys And Feed Them To My Pet Iguana, says "Christianity is nothing but this guy talking mostly about celestial, supreme, awe-inspiring things, I mean cool right, but he tries to tie it all in with all this dull worldly ordinary stuff. What a dweeb."
   2. Christianity is geared toward morons, as evidenced by as excerpt from Christian T. Loyal's Book of One Hundred And One Christian Things To Yell At Football Games: "Two, four, six, eight / We all think that God is great!"
   3. The thesis paper of Dr. Bob, entitled If You Don't Give Me A Passing Grade For This I'm Going To Kill Your Sister, explains that "while the words demon, devil, and Satan appear over 150 times in the Bible, there's never any clear definition of what it's all about, you know? I mean Christians don't even know how many hit points Lucifer has. That Bible's got to go, man. Too imprecise."
   4. While the words "demon," "devil," and "mass homicide induced through hallucinogenic poisons dumped into the reservoir," appear many times in Deities and Demigods, they mean entirely different things.

All of the above information is available from the Silver Ghost, 4121 Grand Prairie, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 49007, for a $666 donation.