Re: "Non-human" PCs
Posted by: aritter <aritter@...>
such...... I view them as being sent from another world the same way the
dark creatures arrived to E/A however not as being unruly but rather in
exile much the same as John on patmos. I treat them basically as a different
race (i.e. black/white Asian ect.) anyway, I assume that wherever they are
from God has became their substitution. thus making Psalm 139:7-16 more real
to them. anyway that is the position I take.
Tony
----- Original Message -----
From: "stephen brown" <doughboyinc@yahoo.com>
To: <dragonraid@welovegod.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 1:07 PM
Subject: [DragonRaid] "Non-human" PCs
> Greetings, Zach (and others)
> 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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