Here There Be Dragons

                Last year, I looked into Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. The most important thing I have learned about D&D is not to judge a game by its 40-year-old apocryphal myths.

                Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has always interested me. Not the actual game, but all the mystery and hatred and vitriol that surrounds it. The only Lizzy McGuire episode I remember ever seeing (though why I admit to remembering or watching Lizzy McGuire is beyond me) is where one of the characters discovers a group of people playing a game—which I later figured out is supposed to be Dungeons and Dragons—and joins them. Soon the character is forgetting to eat, ignoring his responsibilities and friends, unable to sleep, and is pretty much brainwashed into a cowl-wearing zombie. The message was quite clear on D&D: It’s bad news and destroys lives.

                Growing up in a somewhat traditional Christian community, that was the picture I saw for most of my formative years. I was nerd, yes, and I played a lot of games—video and otherwise—but I was not SO far gone that I played Dungeons and Dragons. From what could tell from media (mostly the comic strip Foxtrot), the game didn’t even look fun. It looked complicated and weird. And one of the players doesn’t even actually play the game? What is that about? I didn’t know anyone who played, probably because those people never left their basement, right?

                By the time I was in my 20s I assumed that the game had died with the rising popularity of video games. It wasn’t until around 2 years ago that I started seeing it EVERYWHERE. I am not sure what happened, although I had noticed a general rise in the popularity of nerd culture for the past few years, mostly surrounding sci-fi TV shows and movies. Still, I hadn’t have any contact with actual D&D players or opportunities to play until maybe a year ago.

                I know there have been a lot of extremely violent, negative views on D&D. People have called it demonic and said that it caused people to murder their parents. But I had also heard the total opposite. Last year, I met several strong Christians who play the game regularly. When a game provokes such wide-ranging views, I like to do my own research and form my own opinion. Here are a few things about D&D that have surprised me.

                (Two notes: First, when I refer to a “Dungeon Master” (DM) I am referring to a unique aspect of D&D. The DM creates an imaginary world and story into which the real-life players can place their own characters. Through their characters, the players interact with and change the story. Second, I had the following insights BEFORE I played a game of D&D. The following was conceived after reading the rules of D&D and talking to players. I have since played some and still stand by these initial impressions.)

This game can actually be fun.

                This is not a supportive argument for the game, this is just a fact. I have played MANY board games, video games, and group games. I am fascinated by the mechanics, and have always been on the search for that perfect mix of exciting, fun, and rewarding. I feel like I have become pretty good at reviewing and analyzing games from an objective viewpoint. Before even playing D&D, I read the rules and watched YouTube videos and was struck that this game had the possibility of being FUN. It allows for the complete freedom of imagination, tempered by the randomness and surprise of dice and a DM. Again, this is not support for the game. I still saw D&D as something to handle from a distance. I had the immediate thought, “Huh. I bet this game is easy to get lost in.”

This game is surprisingly normal.

                Based off all of the hate I had seen for this game, I expected demon worship and evil abounding. I was kind of surprised at how normal the game is compared to what is popular these days. The game has magic and evil and non-Christian-religion and monsters and such, but not more than most popular fantasy novels or video games—and much less than some. The thing that surprised me most is that D&D doesn’t even necessarily have to have those elements. I discovered that D&D, at its heart, is a set of very boring rules on gameplay. That’s it.

                It was kind of a let-down until I realized that that was the source of the game’s funness. It didn’t start with a magic-filled story and then add mechanics; it just gave the mechanics to translate any action into something that could be simulated with dice. The DM creates all the specifics. The story, religion, monsters, and even the magic system are added on a game-by-game basis. Technically a DM could write a D&D game that simulated a plane crash in the middle of a jungle, or a group of friends navigating the politics of a first-world country. It would be hard to make that very fun, but you could do it. Yes, most of D&D has magic, but I was surprised at how similar it was to a normal fantasy book or video game, and how controllable it was. (I think magic is so popular in books and games because it provides options not available in real life, similar to super advanced technology.)

This game is centered around choices.

                This may seem kind of obvious, but I didn’t actually fully understand what this meant until I did more research. This game doesn’t provide a world of demons and magic to sucker punch you into changing who you are. There are always choices. Not only are there choices, there are choices where the consequences are accurately simulated, in a safe place, and WHERE GOOD CAN ALWAYS PREVAIL. There is a reason why role-playing is used in therapy and psychology. It can teach extremely valuable lessons about who you are and what you want in a safe environment

                After doing research, I actually came to the conclusion that this aspect of the game can be BETTER for you as a person than other game options out there. (Or worse. More on that later.) In some video games, you can be trapped between Bad and Worse choices, with no other options written into the code of the game. Whichever one you choose, you have no choice but to watch your character perform a bad action. In D&D, you can ALWAYS choose good over evil. 

                I was very surprised at my conclusions about this game. The game was SO much farther from demonic than I was expecting. In fact, I am not sure why it is still thought of that way. I think it is very similar to video games in that it is easy to get lost in, but someone would have to already have a very broken mind for D&D to change the way he thinks or enslave his mind. The most important factor is the nature of the player, not the nature of the game. If someone’s mind is broken enough to succumb to the “dangers” of D&D, then his mind is just as likely to separate from reality due to something completely different, and the blame cannot be placed with D&D alone.

                There is really only one thing I would be worried about with D&D, and I think it is a very rational fear. As with video games, Instagram, or work, I think D&D can become an idol. Just as with video games, Instagram, or work, D&D will become an idol easier to some people than others.

                I wanted to be careful when learning about D&D because I KNOW that I love escapes. I love fantasy books and movies and video games, and it has been a real problem in my life to keep those things prioritized correctly among God and my personal life. My initial views on D&D were closer to the haters’ than to the supporters’. But I knew that I should start learning more about it before I formed opinions on it, especially since I knew strong Christians who regularly played.

                I think, used wisely, this game is one of the better games to play. When comparing it to video games, I think D&D has more positive qualities and fewer negative qualities. (I don’t even mean mechanical qualities, but social and behavioral qualities.) Where video games love to show blood and gore, D&D includes as much or as little as you want, depending on the DM. Where some video games have dark endings that cannot be avoided, the world in D&D can always be saved, depending on the DM. Where videogames can be played for 18 hours without stopping, it would be much harder to do that with the kind of group needed to play D&D. And those 18 hours would be spent talking and laughing and building community rather than in the dark (yes, depending on the DM).

                The most important things to consider when playing D&D are that you guard against its becoming an idol, you play with a DM you can trust, and you play with the right kind of people.

                I think if you want to learn more about D&D, find someone who plays with whom you would enjoy traveling the world.

                I think if you are a parent who is worried about your kids playing it, try playing it yourself, and then playing with your kids. I have been surprised at the number of “normals” (there go my nerd sensibilities) I have seen play D&D and then ask to play again.

                If the magic is what bothers you, I have seen a successful game replace all the religion and magic with techno-counterparts.

                I promise that there is no aspect of D&D that will change who you are by playing once. (You have the same chance of being changed by a video game that you play once.) But playing once will give you valuable insights into what YOU think about the game, without relying on the thoughts and opinions of people who have never played.

God is Not a Nerd

     What is imagination? You would probably get many different answers depending on who you asked. For some people, they would say it was a way to escape everyday life, taking what you know and “fixing it” to make it more to your liking. Others would say it was a childish tool that is best left behind when you finally enter the Real World. Or it could be a way of inventing new things: places, objects, or stories that have never been discovered or seen or heard. For me, this is a question that I have been coming to over and over recently. I am not sure why, but I constantly feeling the weight of this question as if someone keeps on surprising me throughout my week, jumping out of hiding places and screaming, “Why does imagination exist?!” And, lately, I have come to the realization that person jumping out and screaming is God. I don’t think it is a coincidence that my Question of Imagination is arriving hand-in-hand with a time of serious spiritual introspection for me. Let me explain:

     I have always felt that, like many of my fellow nerds, imagination is one of the cornerstones of my mind. I use it freely all the time. It helps me read, play games, and relate to a lot of the strict science of my classes. But at the same time, I know it is a double-edged sword. I have always envied the simple stories and worlds of my books and games. The world for those characters is happening TO them; they are not at all asking for the One Ring or for their father’s mysterious sword: it just happens, and they are propelled by events. But in my own life, especially my spiritual life, I am disheartened and depressed by how much that Doesn’t Happen. I have to surrender and give my life to God; nothing will just make that happen. Faced with this struggle, I cannot help but wonder and ask of God why he gave me imagination; it only shows me things that aren’t real or didn’t happen to me. What is this use of this?

     I have always heard imagination comes from God: that He was the Original Nerd. I have always loved that sentiment. “God is a nerd like me,” I would think. “He imagined this world for us and everything in it.” But today, in the middle of church, I really was hit with this: God is not a nerd and our imagination is both different than his and used for vastly different things. This was not a bad realization. It was actually the furthest thing from Bad and I am very thankful for this. A nerd is passionate about his hobbies. He knows all the small facts about his domain and invents new ways that things could work or new explanations for unexplained phenomena. That falls so short of God that it cannot or should not be likened to Him. because we are not his hobbies. He didn’t just create a world for us filled with detail like an author would. He did—and does—so much more, so much beyond.

     Take J.R.R. Tolkien for example. He is one of the world’s most famous imaginations. He didn’t just create a world for his story. He invented multiple languages, an incredibly sophisticated and intense mythology and history, and peoples and civilizations that went so far beyond his main story line you could spend a year studying it and never read about Frodo, The Shire, or the Ring. He did all of this for his personal enjoyment.

     But God didn’t just invent languages. He invented the concept of language. Of taking physical things like vibrations in the air or gyrations of the hand and ascribing a shared meaning to them so that one person may let another person know what is happening in his brain. God didn’t invent a world and a history. He invented galaxies. He made hundreds of trillion different worlds that all have their own unique histories. And He made them for us. I can’t wrap my head around that and never will. No one can.

     We can’t do this. No matter how much we try, we can not imagine new things. God imagined everything and our imagination can only be inside of his. So the only conclusion I can reach is we are not supposed to imagine new things. Imagination is, for us, to take what God has done and use it to see things differently. To get new perspectives on any and all things. To reach for understanding of the world around us and the God who made it for us. Imagination is a Divine Tool. Why else would God make the galaxies around us? We are unlikely to reach even the edges of our galaxy, so why is there an infinite number beyond ours? God is saying to us, “Here I am, in infinity. You can never reach the end of me. Explore. Spend years exploring. Millenia. You can never reach the end. Take what I have done and use it to explore my Virtues, like Justice, Mercy, Love. I have given you everything you need to get to know me and show the world what you have found. I have told a Story that you can’t possibly ever understand, but you can maybe hear a part of it and tell others.”

     So this is what I have come to believe is the purpose for our imagination. To know and explore God and who he is, and to transform that knowledge gained into part of the Great Story for others to know as well.