Templar said:
I've been told that anything approved by the J.R.R. Tolkien estate is fine to play as a Christian, but that other games like Dungeons & Dragons is wrong.
What makes the Tolkien estate the authority on this matter?
"Finding God in the Lord of the Rings" is a book put out by Focus on the Family and I wrote to them about it. Their reply advocated their book and the works of J.R.R Tolkien but didn't address my questions or concerns.
Seeing no difference in the elements between the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and D&D personally, I'm left confused.
Any thoughts?
As someone who has played D&D in its various versions (1st edition, 2nd edition, up to the current 3.5 edition) as well as other roleplaying games, I can tell you some differences.
For one thing, the setting is vastly different. Tolkien's mythos more or less presents the Judeo-Christian monotheistic view, with one supreme being (called Eru, iirc) and lesser beings, much like angels, underneath him. In fact, Gandalf, Saruman, and even Sauron were all such lesser beings -- Sauron fallen and corrupted, of course -- called the Maiar (again, if memory serves me right). So, the mythos of Middle Earth does mesh fairly well with a Christian perspective.
This differs from the various D&D fantasy settings in that all these settings present a pantheon, or a multitude of various gods that resemble in many ways various pagan gods of our own world, such as a god of war, etc. In fact, this is the one aspect of D&D that still bothers me to this day.
But don't let that make you think that Middle Earth is Christian in all respects. When you get right down to it, it departs from Christian principles at times. For example, people in Middle Earth never apparently experienced a fall into sin. Hence people are basically pure and the only way they can be corrupted is by some conscious venture into evil (e.g., Gollum and his lust for the Ring). Evil is also presented as a twisting of creation in some form -- hence the trolls were made in mockery of the ents (remember Treebeard?), and orcs were made in mockery of elves. In reality, though, we are all twisted and corrupted from our original created state by Adam's sin and our own choice to sin. Apart from Christ, every one of us is a Gollum at heart, lusting more and more after sin and becoming more and more corrupt and enslaved to sin unless God's power and grace break this deadly spiral downward.
When it comes to magic -- and this is the part that worries most evangelicals, I believe -- the funny thing is that Middle Earth and D&D worlds have both similarities and differences. They both contain the idea of magic -- powerful unseen forces that certain people can manipulate. However, Middle Earth is what many RPG people would call a "low magic" setting in that spells and magic are rare and used by only an elite few (such as Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, Galadriel, etc.). D&D worlds, however, would be considered "high magic" in that they are overflowing with magic spells. Spellcasters abound in D&D settings, and creatures that cast spells are not uncommon.
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