"Non-human" PCs
Posted by: doughboyinc <doughboyinc@...>
I think you are misunderstanding what we have been
saying. We are not assuming Earth and EdenAgain are
the same. The two principles we are dealing with are
thus: One, we want to have a good, consistent story,
without holes, and Two, we have as a primary purpose
for this game discipleship.
Here's the problem with "non-human races". Are they
really a separate race, as separate as dogs are from
humans. If so, how are they saved from the power of
sin? On Earth, Christ became a Human to die in our
place on the cross. This is called substitution.
Substitution is the key. Because DR is first and
foremost a discipleship tool, and because substitution
is essential to the gospel, we want to teach
substitution to the players. Substitution IS used in
the storyline for EdenAgain, where He becomes human to
free them from sin. If He became human, how does the
OverLord's death affect the "non-human races"?
There are two basic solutions for maintaining those
first two principles.
1. Elves, dwarves, etc. are actually the same
'species' as humans. They somehow diverged into
different 'subspecies' in EdenAgain's history, maybe
by something LIKE the tower of Babel, maybe by other
means. Therefore, the Overlord's substitution for
humans would apply to them because they are of the
same species.
2. Elves, dwarves, etc. are NOT the same 'species' as
humans, and therefore, when the Overlord substituted
for humans, it didn't apply to them. This can lead to
several possible story lines, which I won't write
about here because it is off-topic.
So, if we are trying to teach substitution as part
of the Gospel, and we want the players to participate
in that idea, then the only way we can include
"non-human" PCs is to do option 1. Otherwise, they
won't have the connection to the substitution of the
OverLord that is essential for gameplay.
Like you, I like the fun of having "non-human" PCs.
That's why I have them played as different
'subspecies' of humans.
-steve b.
--- "Zack "BearClaw" Kirback"
<dragonraid_bearclaw@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think "non-human" "races" are a good idea. Gives a
> greater depth to the world. Man, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome,
> and Halflings are common in fantasy mythos. As is
> the drow/Dark Elf, giant, troll, and ogre. As to the
> Tower of Babel thing, it's (frankly) ridiculous. You
> are assuming that EdenAgain would follow Earth.
> Remember the world was younger when the OverLord
> came to it than Earth was.
>
> If you took two worlds with similar origins you
> wouldn't get the same results (i.e. Stargate and
> Sliders) there would be differences all the way down
> the line. Personally, I feel that it is a mistake to
> not add them due to them being deemed as unhuman by
> some. My question for those people is (A) have you
> tried role-playing said races? And (B) this is an
> allergory, aren't you going too far and being too
> afraid of REAL role-playing (like the Christians
> that mean well but still denounce D&D and any RPing
> as evil?
>
> Yes DragonRaid IS a dicipleship tool. But DR is a
> game too. It can be used as a teaching method and it
> can be used for fun. Personally I find the ONLY
> human thing... boring. I used to only play Humans on
> EverQuest. But that got SO dull. Most of my humans
> were deleted for nonhuman counterparts. Why? Because
> sometimes I find it fun to role-play a dark-elven
> shadow knight, sometimes I want to be my frog
> paladin. Sometimes I want to go "balls-to-the-wall"
> and be my berserker.
>
> Imagine the fun of having an Elf in your group
> AFRAID to go into the cavern that the LightRaiders
> have to go into, or the Dwarf that has to pass
> through the woods with the group (The trees are
> alive I tell you! ALIVE!!!). What better way is
> there to teach that no matter our fear that Christ
> can help you through it. When our strength and
> willpower fail, his is there to help us through it.
>
> I guess the point boils down to this: Are the
> lessons that could be taught worth NOT adding the
> new races of human in?
>
> Arthur Vinson <jude@chez-vrolet.net> wrote:
> What qualifies as a non-human? We're told that
> Human beings are created
> in the image of God. Since the theological question
> of what the image
> of God actually consists of has been around since
> Moses wrote that
> description, I don't think we could come up with
>
> In my own opinion, "image of God" means both that an
> individual has a
> physical body, categorically overlaps with God as a
> thinking, emotive
> and volitional person and has an understanding -
> dormant or not - of God
> and spiritual things. Animals don't count because
> they are more
> instinctual than volitional. Angels don't qualify
> because they lack a
> physical body. By that logic, there's nothing that
> would exclude elves,
> dwarves, halflings etc, from being "Human." Any that
> existed on Earth
> would be a son of Adam anyway and would be included
> in group that needs
> Jesus' death to be forgiven of sins.
>
> Regarding Otherkin: The community started out as
> nothing but admirers of
> elves, dragons etc in the fictional sense. But the
> freedom and
> emotional expressiveness of the community and the
> individuals within
> allowed pagans and wiccans within. Just very similar
> to the furry
> community (of which I'm a part), as openness of the
> subculture allowed
> many sorts of undesirables without any sort of
> checks and balances.
>
> Otherkin have a large population of people who do
> practice the occult,
> but it's not 100%. In fact, most otherkin only turn
> to paganism after
> they feel slighted by Christians specifically. But I
> do know a few
> Christians who are struggling against the grain of
> the subculture that
> God's placed them it.
>
> Avoiding dwarves, elves and the like just because of
> a few spiritually
> confused people within the otherkin community comes
> across as somewhat
> haughty, perhaps even hypocritical in a sense. While
> DragonRaid is
> understood by us to not just be a table top RPG but
> a discipleship
> system, people do see the similarities easily.
>
> Should a parent automatically remove DragonRaid from
> consideration,
> without critically examining it, because it bares a
> passing resemblance
> to Dungeons and Dragons. We already toe the line in
> that aspect.
>
> As for me, while I would welcome the official
> addition of halfings and
> such, as the system and canon history stand, there's
> not a real
> explanation as to why those beings exist as they
> would. Actually, I
> just remembered something from the source material.
> EdenAgain's
> population didn't start with an "Adam and Eve" but
> with a small group of
> people, who apparently all fell. It's feasible that
> each "race" had
> First Parents in that time before the fall. Or
> maybe, if we aren't
> willing to go that way, then the "Noah" of EdenAgain
> had a had 3 sons -
> one drawn toward the forest, one drawn to the
> mountains and one drawn to
> civilization. The intermarrying of descendants
> produced the 6 races we
> see today... or something like that. (Hmm. Perhaps
> there was no flood,
> and that's why we have the current population of
> Dark Creatures...)
>
> The real key to solving this and presumably many
> other obstacles is to
> decide once and for all how strict an allegory we
> want the DR mythos to
> be. Something strictly allegorical and tight, like
> Pilgrim's Progress,
> where _everything_ was symbolic of an aspect of the
> Christian life. Or
> would we better served with a looser, freer
> allegory, like Karen Hancock
> used in The Arena? Or perhaps we want only an
> allegory in the most
> nominal way - like Lewis did with the Chronicles of
> Narnia. Narnia
> could be considered an allegory but it really was a
> world to itself with
> some of it's own rules that didn't always apply back
> on Earth.
>
> Personally, I'm more inclined to fall in somewhere
> between The Arena and
> the Chronicles. It gives us the freedom to stretch
> our imaginations and
> creativity while still providing a solid mythos in
> which we can teach
> and instruct without being internal inconsistent.
>
> --Arthur
>
>
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