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I knew a guy who got into d&d in middle school and it drastically improved his grades.
The fact is that gaming is reading, writing, math, make believe, structured socializing, and sometimes history and sometimes art. It’s exactly like school, except fun.
it’s almost like animals evolved play as a way to learn
I learned a lot of English by playing Runescape.
My son taught himself English by setting Minecraft to English. Once he mastered that, he set it to Pirate.
Except you learned british English, not freedom English
I like your grandma. She cared for you; she took a risk by exposing herself to potential danger, fact-checked, and knew math when she saw it.
And the most important part: she admitted she was wrong and that it’s fine
This is the part where Republicans and have the biggest problems with, as in the face pf evidence they usually just double down and that’s it.
I hope not people are like that. I have a coworker insists Harry Potter is “Satan”. She has never read it watch a single book or movie.
I always laugh at these people. I’m paraphrasing, but in the 7th book Harry essentially tells Voldemort, “I died for them, you can’t touch them.”
This is of course mirroring the fact that his own parents had died to protect him from Voldemort in the first place, but it’s also very much symbolic of the central Christian concept of Christ dying to save sinners. Harry is very much a Christ-figure in the end, forgiving those who had been his enemies and even pitying Voldemort himself. It’s not quite as blatant as C.S. Lewis and his, “If people don’t realize the lion is Jesus I’m going to have an aneurysm,” but it’s still obvious.
People who say stuff like this is satanic live in such a pitifully small world. I feel sorry for them.
I bet she’d like it if you told her it was racist and anti-trans…
Might not be Satan, but it’s J.K.Rowling, which is way worse…
Most people that think things are Satanic are woefully ill informed about the subject.
I would go so far as to say all of them. The whole idea of Satan is ridiculous, it’s “The Boogeyman” for adults.
Well some adults are also just plain stupid.
Oh I agree, but I leave a little room for people’s religions even if I think it’s all bullshit.
D&D players aren’t satanists. They’re much worse. They’re math addicts.
Speaking as a Satanist studying computational fluid dynamics…
Need a DM?
I would love this so much.
I’ve never played any non-PC RPG though.
Think you could vibe with my favorite Swedish Doom Metal album of an RPG, Mörk Borg? I’ve also played Cy_Borg, though haven’t tried Pirate Borg yet. Pretty rules-light, very much focused on the bleak vibes of a tired world on the brink of Armageddon. Can do DM+1 player with a little tweaking, but anyone reading this is invited to DM me.
I could set up a matrix room and do a session zero to walk through the rules if you’d like!
A friend calls it “narrative gambling”, because eventually we’re all throwing dice and hoping it doesn’t “ruin” us.
You don’t even need the dice! I was definitely gambling last session when I attuned to a prosthetic eye filled with the trapped souls of everyone that’s ever used it. It gives me 60 feet of Truesight though!
60 feet of truesight, unfortunately you can’t see shit because of all the souls in the way
I mean, it’s not entirely wrong, but saying anything involving dice and risk is gambling, thus meaning it contains the same addictive and problematic features that gambling does, is incredibly simplistic and superficial.
It’s like saying carrots and coke is the same thing because both contain sugar.
How dare you!
<I use an attack of opportunity and I throw my carrot-and-coke cocktail to Squaresinger’s face>
At least not coke and buthane. That would have been worse.
At least not coke and buthane.
Not since the accident…
Exactly why I dislike D&D, it’s more about combat and math. I prefer systems that are less math heavy and more narrative/roleplay focused.
You should check out GURPS. Its a simpler system with universal campaigns (modern, fantasy, mech, dimension hopping, steampunk). The system is super easy. You start with 100 points to make your character. You can spend them on stats, skills, spells, and perks. You can even gain more points by taking quirks.
You roll 3d6 for everything. Your goal is to get under your skill number. Fireball of 13 needs to roll under 13. If its raining or something, your GM can choose to put a -4 on that. So now you need to roll under 9. Just simple addition and subtraction, but it works really well.
also worth noting that fallout originally used GURPS before switching for copyright reasons
Ooo, that sounds awesome! Thank you for sharing!
I’m going to second the other commenter in my enthusiasm for GURPS, but for the opposite reason.
Gurps has the problem of being a universal role-playing system, like Fate, which means session zero includes a long sit-down with your DM about what precisely we will be doing in this game and what mechanics we will be using to create the desired experience. You then fill out the appropriate forms in triplicate to create your character. Usually, your DM makes a template for you to use like a shopping list, but the rulebook assumes you are digging through the first 300-page volume selecting your abilities and skills over the course of a day.
Then, once you start playing, you never have to look at the rulebook again. All the rules you will be using were written (by you) on your character sheet. You roll the dice, see if you managed to roll under your target numbers, and then either succeed or fail. The DM barely has to adjudicate anything.
includes a long sit-down with your DM about what precisely we will be doing in this game and what mechanics we will be using to create the desired experience. You then fill out the appropriate forms in triplicate to create your character. Usually, your DM makes a template for you to use like a shopping list, but the rulebook assumes you are digging through the first 300-page volume selecting your abilities and skills over the course of a day.
Holy shit. This first bit sounds like a bureaucracy simulator.
Yep! That’s the entire appeal of the system! And I want to make absolutely sure that anyone picking up the game knows that they are getting into, because I am well aware that the fact this is my favorite game system says a lot about me as a person
I bought the Fate Accelerated Edition because it sounded fun but I’ve literally not found any published adventures. I’ve found campaign settings, yeah, but nothing explaining what an easy encounter should look like, how to structure an adventure, nothing.
Fate seems fun so I’m ready to be proved wrong.
Sorry that this is off-topic… but your avatar hit me in the feels. I can’t explain fully. When I first became aware as a kid in school, like… first conscious memorized thoughts, I was staring at the Netscape Navigator loading animation. Now every time I see it there’s this feeling. Like super nostalgic serotonin and dopamine running through my veins.
Such a small thing, but I almost cry every time I see it.
That’s because you need to wake up, eye dust! You need to break out of the simulation! It’s still 1999 in here!
Just kidding lol. But thank you for sharing. I know the feeling you’re talking about, just like a tidal wave of nostalgia that is utterly devastating. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head that gives me that feeling, but I’ve felt it.
Oh wow, it sounds so much simpler and easier. Thanks for expanding on the other person’s point!
I just wanted to make sure you understood that the complexity is loaded all at the front, during session 0. Its actually a good deal more complex, but you get to pick and choose what kinds of complexity you want and deal with it at character creation.
Also, their supplemental books really helped me grow as a writer and gamemaster. Most of them tackle a genre and explore it thoroughly.
She may buy into hype but still thinks for herself
Good point, actually. Seems like these days, a lot of people wouldn’t change their opinion after seeing what this grandma saw.
There are 2 sorts of ignorance. Incidental and willful. Incidental can be fixed easily, with more information. Willful only look to support their pre-decided views, and so are far harder to change.
Before the internet became a big thing, both were common on topics. We were forced to rely on what we were told. This lead to a lot of incidental ignorance. The internet made it easy to fix this.
The end result is the ratio has changed. It used to be, say 80% incidental, and 20% willful. Now 90% of the incidental is mostly fixed. So it’s 29% incidental, 71% willful. And so looks a lot worse to casual observation.
The Grandma seems the incidental type. Going to a game gave her the information to update her views.
Also to note, the numbers here were pulled from my arse for example purposes only. Actual ratios may vary.
These days, some people wouldn’t even attempt to see the game with their own eyes and completely makes up their mind based on one FB post.
The conspiracy and accusations must always go deeper.
I’m also surprised it ended with the grandma realizing it was just math, because it could have just as easily ended with her thinking that they’re obviously hiding what the real game is about, and how bad it must be be that they’d go to such great lengths to cover it up.
I have to assume having a good, strong relationship with her grandchild must also be a contributing factor. If D&D remained something only anonymous ne’er-do-wells do, it’d be easy to continue buying into the satanic panic. But someone you know and trust to be responsible telling you it’s no big deal might make it a bit easier to accept.
And it doesn’t even add up to the number of the beast!
Could you imagine doing 666 damage in one turn? I’d be riding that high for weeks.
Weeks? More like decades.
People actually think D&D is Satanism? I thought it was a meme
Pearl-clutching “christians” used to be deathly afraid of anything with even slightly negative undertones. “Dungeons? Dragons? That’s the devil! Away Satan! Our children are making pacts with the devil!” Satan was historically represented by a dragon in Christian mythology.
Don’t forget the woman whose son committed suicide so she created an anti-D&D group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. Her group described D&D as “a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings.”
Her group described D&D as “a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings.”
checks notes so… the same as the bible?
I think the Bible fails on the role-playing game front and I don’t remember any voodoo, but otherwise yeah?
It was totally a thing during the satanic panic. There’s an infamous Chick Tract about d&d that I was genuinely given by cult missionaries when I was a kid.
This is parody, right ?
Chick tracks all feel like a parody of reality, the man was very disturbed, there’s a whole track about a seemingly normal couple and their seven year old daughter, and when missionaries come teach them about Jesus they ask if it’s wrong that they sexually abuse their daughter, after being told that it is in fact wrong, but luckily they can be totally forgiven through Jesus, they decide to be Christians and say the magic words that make you saved, then they promise their daughter to stop abusing her, and all of this is played like it’s really wonderful Jesus is here to save people who molest their kids for years from consequences.
Wtf
Yes. That’s correct.
