Dungeons and Dragons

What alignment are you?

Jason Thibeault, , , , , 63 Comments

I think this is very proximate to our discussions about gender, given that gender and sex are both social constructs and the problems we’re seeing with having in-depth discussions about these constructs being spectra rather than binary is that it seems those people who can’t answer “trans women are women” think this means we’re creating and reinforcing a binary rather than demanding a spectrum of genders.

Good and evil, order and chaos, are two axes describing spectra of behaviour related to social standing and pro-social behaviour. Dungeons and Dragons has a mechanic wherein you can assign your character Good, Neutral, or Evil, and Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, making a 3×3 grid of alignments. It’s certainly more interesting than a binary Good/Evil choice (or, say, Paragon / Renegade, or Light Side / Dark Side), and it means very little outside of the scope of interactions with other human beings. It’s still by necessity an abstraction. Something like the Kinsey Scale for hetero/homosexuality being a 1-9, or Dawkins’ atheist/theist 0-7 scale — neither of those describes the panoply of positions one can stake coherently.

But, still interesting. Take this alignment test to see how you stack up. A number of my friends (including my wife) got Chaotic Good. I got Neutral Good:

A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Yeah, that does sound a lot like me. Including the sentence fragment in the last sentence! (I assume the “when” is superfluous.)

What alignment are you?
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You rolled a natural twenty! Go straight to hell!

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , 12 Comments

Apparently someone thought enough of Jack Chick’s original tract that they decided to run a Poe-alarm-tweaking Kickstarter to get this movie made. Seriously, this thing is self-parodying, so I cannot tell if this JR Rails character is doing this in earnest, or as a parody. But either way, with the amount of money the Kickstarter made, we can expect such gems as this:

Stretch Goal #2: $21,000 – One of the most powerful ways to get across the powerful emotions that a serious drama like this raises is through song. I’d like to include a dream sequence where Debbie visualizes her internal struggle through verse:

(Debbie, in a sad, thoughtful singsong:)
“Is this God in my hand, or is it just a d4?
Oh can anyone tell me what I’m rolling for?
Are there traps and daggers, magic missiles galore?
No, this ain’t God in my hand, it is just a d4.”

(Ms Frost, cackling:)
“You have mastered the magic, you have mastered the spell,
You are ready to unleash the powers of hell!
You have God in your hand, and you have your d4.”
Now I hope that you know what you’re rolling for.”

Do Christians still get all jimmie-rustled over Dungeons and Dragons? Really? Its popularity explosion was a passing fad and an unnecessary moral panic, sadly. Now the kids are all about their Pokeymans and their hairy potters.

Hat tip to James.

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UPDATE: Sasha Pixlee’s sharp eyes and incredible stamina for scrolling on monolithic websites clued him in to something I missed — he points out that if you go to the homepage and read the FAQs carefully, it’s pretty plain that it’s a satire-and-parody claiming honest representation by virtue of what Chick actually believed. It’ll only read as parody to us because it’s already so outlandish. Dude’s one of us, going for “very earnest Poe”.

You rolled a natural twenty! Go straight to hell!

Pat Robertson's take on youth suicide

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 6 Comments

He starts out unusually level-headed, concerned about something that is actually true and actually a very big problem — kids committing suicide. He correctly identifies pressure as one of the reasons. But then he goes off the rails on a spectacular fashion. Never mind that most of the pressure causing suicide is the stigma that forces them into the closet because they’re different from everyone else in one way, shape or form — no, Pat thinks it’s something else causing their premature self-inflicted deaths.

Is Uncle Pat just a motivated reasoner, trying to avoid any sort of blame for this “pressure” put on kids after all the damnation and hellfire he’s called down on gays (and feminists and atheists and liberals et cetera et cetera), or has a long life steeped in Jesus Juice actually pickled his brain?

Pat Robertson's take on youth suicide