Faith & Relevance: the RPG

Heh, one of my yahoogroups (christian gamers, for those who must know) posted a link to this blogpost (more than a year old now, but I'm behind the times) from Dave Muller "announcing" this new Role-playing Game for Christians "Faith & Relevance."

Okay, it's a joke post. If you've never played a roleplaying game, then Dave's post might not mean a thing to you.

But if, like me, you spent thousands of hours of your adolescence (and some of your adulthood too) playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, Star Frontiers, the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Middle Earth Roleplaying Game, Elric, and maybe dabbled with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paranoia, and a host of others (I'm going by memory of what's probably buried in those totes in my mom's attic).

I have fond memories of the old RPG days - and I've kept up a little in what's going on with games (though I haven't bought an RPG product in maybe 10 or 15 years). I even dug out some of rule books and some of the files of notes that I made "back in the day" of adventures, and rules and other stuff that I created.

It's always been a niche market - even in it's heyday, Dungeons & Dragons never sold like Monopoly. There was even a Christian variant called Dragonraid that, of course, I own (with every supplement every published, thank you very much) and I even wrote an adventure for it. But it was kind of a hack job as a roleplaying game - it was really a tool to memorize Scripture (the "spells" of the game were WordRunes that you cast...I mean recited and some spectacular effect is produced - and I'm not sure exactly where that falls on the continuum of taking the Lord's name in vain...I mean, Bible verses as magic spells? Hmmm....)

Okay, so Dave Muller is kind of mocking RPGs, kind of mocking Christians - I'm okay with that. We do things that ought to be mocked. Your Best Life Now the boardgame indeed. Benny Hinn...well, everything about Benny...

So, I'm going to don my Street Leather Jacket of Relevance +1, Doctrine -1 and see who I can impreses with my hipness - and then lay down the Gospel on the filthy sinner!! Yeah, the old bait 'n switch - classic roleplaying game tactic... Fits in perfectly with this new RPG, "Faith and Relevance."