Dungeons & Dragons Is a Lot Like Religion

Dungeons & Dragons Is a Lot Like Religion
"The incident kicked off a lifelong interest in the parallels between religion and role-playing, an idea Laycock explores in his new book Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. His research revealed that critics of D&D were not being frank about their motives. What really bothered them about this game of gods and demons, he discovered, was not that it was opposed to Christianity, but that it was so similar to it. “The critics themselves began to worry that their religion, which they had invested so much in, could be something like this game,” he says. “So I think that by attacking this imaginary game, that was one way of shoving that thought down and not having to think about it anymore.” He’s quick to point out that the parallels between religion and role-playing don’t make religion false. Instead he argues that any wonder narrative, whether true or not, can be deeply inspirational. Scholars of religion have coined the term “the Axial Age” to describe a period around 500 B.C. when the concept of a transcendent realm helped spur social developments around the world. Laycock argues that fantasy worlds have a similar potential."