Farewells, Role Playing and Religion, Political characters

[tcpip]

Went to vasco_pyjama's farewell gathering on Saturday as she about to go to Afghanistan for a year. We like noble people like that. Also met bushwalker and kafechick in real life. Fine conversation, although I don't recommend Touk's for their food, wine or service.

In few days I've started up the design mailing list for the Mimesis RPS, the opening scene for the next chapter of Ten Thousand Islands and a draft Call for Papers for "Immersion: Journal of Role Playing Systems and Simulation Environments". On Sunday ran a few scenes for Outbreak of Heresy, with the intrepid adventurers getting on step towards taking on the Hapsburgs.

On a related note for Sunday....

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Role Playing and Religion


Promoting occultism, Satanism and witchcraft, suicide, perversity and violence. Lowering human value and dignity. "The catechism of the New Age". "The chief weapon in .. the spiritual raid on our children".

These are just some of the accusations leveled against players of role playing and simulation games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, by religious fundamentalists. Is there any basis to these claims? Why are such people and organisations so ardent in their denunciation of what appears to be a bookish, even slightly nerdy, hobby? Is there any educational value in role playing games or even the possibility for furthering understanding between those of different religious convictions?

These questions will be discussed at an address on Sunday August 21st at the Melbourne Unitarian Church, 110 Grey Street, East Melbourne at 11 am on the topic "Role Playing and Religion".

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Have spent the better part of the day working on the motor company website. I hope to finish this by the end of the week. Have also engaged in some interesting data recovery excerises (with success) for a Borderlands person. CCNA studies continue well; I'll be doing two module tests this week rather than the requisite one.

Vale to David Lange, who showed that you can and should have guts when you're running a small country. Bronwyn Bishop attempts to revive the old tradition of "special friendships" between sailors and young men. Meanwhile, Young Libs show their moral fibre by trashing a campus women's room.

reddragdiva gets a mention in The Guardian. Which reminds me, I do have a couple of hundred articles I should write for Wikipedia...

Excellent link from fryboy. Terry Pratchett tells J.K. Rowling to get a clue.

Comments

[elzia.livejournal.com]

See "Witch Week." It is the best and talks about Guy Fawkes which is a bonus. It is part of the Crestomanci series. I was into that book when i was a kid and then i recently (past 2 years or so) made it my goal to read all th ethings she has written because i can read them quickly and they are still entertaining.. and obviously not as predictable (or not as the case may be- JK in my opinion is predictable because you can never identify the bad guy [no clues] and because of the text structure) as JK Rowling even though she aims for the same age range.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I've just discovered that caseopaya has a small mountain of her books. Mind you caseopaya is an expert in young adult fantasy, so I should have expected that.

She also reminds me that I was actually expressed interest in reading the book that you mention.

[elzia.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, i forgot, i just looked at the first two entries in her journal and she was talking about Howl's Moving Castle (the movie). Well, she probably already told you that Howl's Moving Castle was also written by Diane Wynne Jones- the art in the movie is fab but the book is better in terms of giving you all of the plot details... That's a pretty good series, too, all the ones with the wizard Howl.