For the record, I (very arrogantly) consider myself to be a fairly well-rounded individual, and I'm going to try to cite examples from my personal experience where I can. Therefore, satanic killings will not feature overwhelmingly in this account, and anyone failing to see the sarcasm implicit in that last statement should to stop reading now, before that pulsing vein in their forehead explodes. Right, just the open-minded people left?Whilst I'm not religious, I don't mind admitting to an occasional perception that there is a meaning to existence—besides which, I don't have the cast-iron certainty required to be an atheist. Hence in a religious discussion I tend to be the heckler asking awkward questions to test the other person's convictions, seeking perhaps to clarify in my own mind certain things. I strongly support certain Christian morals, but not unswerving, unquestioning commitment to dogma. I don't blindly accept teachings shaped too far by centuries of opinion.
Does anyone remember HeroQuest? A board game where you get to roll dice, move characters, collect magic and treasure, and kill the monsters guarding it? One of MB Games' bigger products, and I don't seem to remember any wave of public backlash at the time (maybe there was one, but I was about ten at the time), or even about its later successor, Warhammer Quest—both of which have the same "objectives" of role-playing games. Or do they? In practise, the aim of the board games seems to be to "win" on that particular occasion, whereas RPGs serve to emphasise co-operation, teamwork, and the building of on-going character relationships.I can see how problems can occur if the group dynamic is controlled by a manipulative bully—but this is just as likely to occur in social groupings such as softball teams or high-school classes. Another problem is if a young person retreats from other activities to pursue gaming exclusively. To which I'd say simply: As with any hobby, role-playing should be accompanied by other activities. To pursue any single activity to the point of obsession is unhealthy, be it football, stamp-collecting or wasting prodigious amounts of time designing web pages. Socially, role-playing can either be including or excluding of others, just like any alternate hobby.
In the same vein, before I left primary school I'd already gotten through quite a few books in the DragonLance saga. Hickman & Weis write much, much less dryly than Tolkien, who is pushed as one of the best and most popular children's authors of the century. Tolkien wrote very similarly (many of his characters are morally ambiguous, and Bilbo is a lying thief), but he is rarely condemned, whilst a new generation of the same literature is held to be corruptive.Digressing slightly, there is the classic example of a public figure advocating censorship being told of a children's book which involved gang-rape, hands being chopped off etcetera, and his subsequent embarassment when—following a harsh denuciation—he recognised the plot of Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", as taught in many British secondary schools. The point is—as I see it—is that the vast majority of people recognise the difference between fiction and reality and are not damaged for life because of something they've read or imagined in their head (or seen enacted blatantly before them on stage!) People, teenagers in particular, are capable of separating the two. Likewise, I can't see them re-enacting in "reality" what they did in the "game world" (eg, lop off someone's head with a sword) unless they were already mentally unbalanced. Besides which, I think that their parents should have noticed something odd about their offspring's demeanour in advance. Glazed eyes and frothing at the mouth, for example.
Role-playing games at least have some positive social effects—I'm far more concerned about the proliferation of violent video games. Today's are much more realistic than classics such as Wolfenstein, boasting copious spurts of blood as your targets are taken out. It's my considered judgement that by your teens you're capable of value judgements. I also like loud rock music and enjoy the odd foray into metal territory, but it doesn't depress me any more than the mindless rubbish in the charts (young groups wailing "oh he/she has left me, my life is over") does. Role-playing games are precisely what you make them. The rules aren't—they're nothing more than guidelines. If your DM (gamesmaster) is a control freak, ditch him or her! People don't become obsessive unless they have addictive, often manipulative, personalities, and these people are already predisposed to alcoholicism, suicide, and a whole host of other personality problems. These people make the best (by which I mean worst!) zealots—the type who become cult leaders and murder their like-minded followers. It doesn't matter if they got the idea from a role-playing game "manual", war film or treatise on ancient Egyptian cough cures—it's in the post, whatever the "cause" responsibility for their crime is displaced onto.
I'm starting to sound altogether too much like one of the zealots I'm attempting to lambast, so I'll sign off with a parting shot: if modern religions (chiefly Christianity) had not "borrowed" the concepts of demons, devils and the like from the pagan ones they superceded, is it even remotely credible that they would still exist to have been "borrowed" by one or two gaming companies? And, in a society without such beliefs, would we behave better towards others?