I was in fifth grade, and it was the last year of the 1970s. We were living in London, where my Dad was working for the Voice of America, which broadcast shortwave news and entertainment to the world. As a correspondent, his work called for him to do a fair amount of world travel, which resulted in his having a mix of friends scattered all across the planet.
One of those friends worked for the Associated Press, and because his work tended to put him in danger zones, his kids were attending a Hogwartsesque boarding school in downtown London. Seriously. It was near Big Ben, and right across the street from Diagon Alley.
Every once in a while, my folks would invite the boys...Andy and Chrisso...out to Golders Green, a bucolic planned community where we lived in a little semidetached. That's English for "townhouse," kids. They'd stay with us, and as they were years older and wilder, they'd introduce us to what was actually going on in the world.
One of them...Lord help me, but I can't remember which...brought a book with him when he came out to stay, a recent acquisition. It was the Monster Manual, one of the three rulebooks that made up the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I found him flipping through it, and asked to look at it.
It was striking and arcane, an alphabetical dictionary of wild and exotic creatures, and it was like catnip to my preadolescent mind. "It's for a new game that people are playing now," he said. A game? A game with a huge book full of monsters? No board? No dice? How could you do that?
He grinned about the dice part, and then carefully explained it to me. Some players pretended to be someone, a warrior or a sorcerer, wielding magic or a mighty blade. One player would lead all of the other players through an adventure, battling terrible creatures and gathering treasure.
There were things called "hit points," that determined how strong a person or creature was. There were charts and graphs and tables, and the whole thing seemed terribly complex and mysterious and utterly fascinating. It was like telling a story, and being part of a long narrative daydream, and being with your friends, all rolled into one.
It was like no game I'd ever seen, or even ever thought of.
Being a beneficent sort, he let me borrow the book while he was there. And so that night, I read the Monster Manual cover to cover, completely fascinated. When he left, off to do the terribly grown up things that teenagers in British boarding schools did, the Monster Manual stuck in my head.
I wanted to play it. But it was a game that required dice and three large hardback books, and my meager allowance meant that it would take a while to get me those things. In the interim, I did what kids used to do in the days before the interwebs taught us that we should always have what we want instantly: I made up my own game. "Simple D&D," I called it.
I busied myself about making a rulebook, and a manual of monsters.
It was...er...simple. There were monsters with hit points, which I drew and described in my own short manual. There were weapons that did damage. There were characters with hit points. There were maps and dungeons. Then, you told the story, and you battled. There weren't any charts or armor classes or dexterity modifiers. It was just hit points. Period.
I played with my little brother, and most of the time we actually had fun and didn't end up fighting. Most of the time.
I played with my friends, for a little while.
And then Christmas came, and my wheedling and whimpering for the rulebooks and the dice began to pay off. The Monster Manual came first...not that was enough to let you play the game, not really, but it was just so cool. Then, together, the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide and dice, bought with all of my birthday money.
I began playing the real thing with friends, mostly with my buddy Mark from up the street, and my friend Eric.
My characters were all fighters at first, I think partially because I had no luck with dice, and partially because at four-eight and about seventy pounds, I liked to feel the manliness. They were all inspired by the Narnia books, the fantasy novels that had defined my childhood and subtly inspired my faith.
The mighty Caspian gave way to Caspian the Second, following an unfortunate incident with a troll. Who gave way to Caspian the Third, who managed not to die for a couple of years worth of gaming, finally reaching the point where he was the grizzled lord of a small stronghold, mighty and magical two-handed sword slung on his back. I think it was a plus five something-or-other, named Stormflinger or Excalifleur or something flagrantly derivative like that.
As I got older, my network of gaming friends grew. By the time I was in seventh grade, I found myself riding double decker buses around London to see my friends and get to gaming. Being a kid is so much more fun when you can go anywhere you want whenever you want without mom or dad having to drive you.
I’d make my way to the homes of the spawn of American expats and diplomats, gathering to game in the basements of tony brownstones in St. John’s Wood.
Or, rather, that was where we were physically. In our mutual storytelling, we were on an entirely different plane of reality.
It was just an amazing way to spend hours and hours with people, immersed in a world of shared imagination. It was awesome.
In 1982, we returned to the United States, and I went into middle school as the new kid. Being introverted, it took me a while, but eventually I found a circle of people who were less interested in “borrowing” my lunch money and more interested in the things I enjoyed.
Meaning, gamers. We’d gather at my house for the multi-hour sessions of AD&D, or the nuclear post-apocalyptic variant Gamma World. And for the first time, there were girls playing too, included in as part of a circle of gamer friends. That was unquestionably a significant improvement over the prior state of affairs, although it did prove a little distracting.
But something else happened when I returned to the United States. I became aware, as I had not been in England, that there were people out there who hated Dungeons and Dragons. They were afraid of it. They were loudly, aggressively, intensely against it.
And they were Christians, in the most loud, aggressive, and intense way one can call oneself Christian.
I simply could not understand that. I’d been a Christian all my young life, attending church all over the world. I’d gotten my first bible when I was confirmed, which I promptly read in its entirety. I’d attended Sunday School, and learned about the teachings of Jesus, which I’d then read for myself. Yes, I was questioning, and yes there were things I struggled with in my early adolescence. But I was down with Jesus, no question, 100%.
I could see nothing, nothing at all in what he lived and taught, that would lead to a sane person to the conclusions about role playing gaming that my co-religionists were loudly proclaiming. And Lord have mercy, were they proclaiming.
It was demonic! It was the gateway to the occult! It was warping the minds of our youth, and turning them from Jesus! It was the 1980s, remember. The Moral Majority was on the rise, spreading with a fervor that bordered on hysteria through the panicky minds of stressed suburban parents.
Nothing like today. Not at all. Ahem.
Not a single one of these people had ever played the game. Not one. They hated it anyway. And they obviously hadn’t read C.S. Lewis, either, books filled with imagination and wonder and the subtle heart of the the faith. They probably hated them, too. They were angry, and frightened, and ignorant, and they were poisoning the name of Jesus for others by coloring it with their hate.
I just couldn’t process this. Here, a game that taught imagination and fostered community, a game that let us explore what it might be to be a different person...and this was somehow wrong? How could you for a moment believe that imagining yourself as someone different from who you are was antithetical to Christianity? Isn’t that the whole point of our faith? If you can’t imagine yourself ever being different, real Kingdom repentance is just not possible.
Because I’d spent my childhood sheltered in churches that cared about justice and service and grace, and were both thoughtful and open, it was one of the first times I realized that people who call themselves Christian could be evil.
It would not be the last.
That, in part, is the inspiration for this book. I feel, as someone who has dedicated his life to following Jesus and teaching others about his path, that perhaps it is time for someone to write a love letter to D&D on behalf of the church. One which says, you know what, I’m sorry if I was stupid. And you’re awesome.
Because it is awesome, and it can be the friend of a maturing faith.
Maybe it’s been done already. Most likely it has. “Nothing new under the sun,” as Ecclesiastes says. But even so, I haven’t done it, and I’d like to. So that’s part of the “why” of this little tome.
The other inspiration for this lil’ book came a couple of years back, after I discovered and blogged about a California based parachurch organization called the Bethel School for Supernatural Ministry.
Really. That’s what it’s called. Google it.
It was one of those random internet connections, stumbled upon, but it amazed me. It was sorta-kinda pentecostal, and big into spiritual gifts. Amazing, magical, supernatural things were happening in the world, they said, and for only a couple of thousand bucks and a few weeks of your time, you too could learn to harness “the prophetic,” meaning the power of God.
Here I was, right out of seminary, and I’d learned none of that. Oh, I’d learned about the Bible in depth, and theology, and how to counsel and help lead communities. But I’d never been taught the “Flame Tunnel.” I’d never had sparkles fall from the sky during a worship service. I did not know the magic words Sozo and Zanzibar. Well, not “Zanzibar,” but the first one was definitely part of the magic.
So I wrote a blog post, one that in retrospect was perhaps overly snarky. The Bethel School for Supernatural Ministry, I discovered after further research, isn’t evil. They do not teach hate, or cruelty. I reserve my anger for spiritual teachers who are cruel and/or monstrous. I don’t think it’s quite magic in the way it thinks it is, just good ol’ shamanic fervor, the kind of thing you learn about in anthro classes.
In that post, I compared the assertions of that community to the spells I’d not learned in seminary. “Why not Flame Strike,” I said. “I only know the less showy spells.” And then I listed the “less showy spells,” going to my old Player’s Handbook and finding the spells in the Cleric section that I actually sorta kinda knew how to cast.
As I read through the descriptions, I found myself struck by how closely my own actual skillset matched the ways those spells were intended to be cast. Meaning I suddenly realized, you know what, I can really do some of this stuff.
Not pretend. I can really do it.
Without too much conceptual stretching, I could see how I...well...kind of was a level five Presbyterian Cleric.
Which I am not, of course.
I’m level eight now.
The idea has popped and hummed along in my subconscious these last few years, surfacing now and again. Why not write a book for the acolytes and fellow clerics who share my love of the game? Why not write a book for those Jesus folk who have delighted in the game, and might enjoy reading a real-faith-and-AD&D mashup? Talk about the Way in terms of being a Cleric, as if it were part of this world and part of the gaming world, as if it were real and you were teaching it.
And include a spellbook. I’d have to include a spellbook. What’s the point of knowing about the Deep Magic from Before the Dawn of Time if you can’t share it?
So that’s what you’ve got right here. It’s based on original AD&D rules, those old books from the late 1970s. I know gaming has come a ways since then. There are other editions, and rules upon rules upon rules.
But when my kids reached the age I was when I first played, it was those old and well-worn manuals that I brought out on a summer day. It was the Monster Manual, that very same one I bought as a boy, that I shared with them, and said: do you guys want to play this game?
Of course they did.
And so we did play, the boys and I, dad as the DM, they caught up in the adventure. They’re among some of the best dad-and-son times I’ve spent with my guys, which I cherish as they’re rapidly growing up. So, yeah, I’m kind of obligated to use the old school rules. Just out of gratitude.
This might prove be the single geekiest book in all of Christendom. But we all have to aspire to something, right?
So for you, who have gotten this far, enjoy. And keep on leveling up.
