SEEKING A BETTER STORY: FAITH, DUNGEONS, AND DRAGONS PART II
Public domain.
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series exploring the relationship between faith and D&D roleplaying games. You can read Monday’s article here.
Like the gospel, Dungeons and Dragons is not competitive. Nobody is playing to win. The Dungeon Master challenges players with monsters and puzzles, but doesn’t try to defeat them – nor do the players win by overcoming the DM’s obstacles. The point of the game is simply to play it, to enjoy the unfolding story caused by unpredictable dice rolls. I’m reminded of James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games, in which “a finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play.” (1) Carse isn’t just talking about types of board games, but philosophies of living — finite games can include politics, business, war, and even relationships. But D&D is more like an infinite game, where the goal isn’t about winning or losing. Instead of eliminating players, the goal is to keep everyone at the table. This can become its own outlook on life — a noncompetitive philosophy of shared play, rather than absolute victory.
Players recognize that the scope of an infinite game is bigger than their small part in it. Carse writes, “Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.” (2) Carse, like Tolkien, describes myth as a great story told for its own sake. It has no purpose and no audience, but invites the listener into the very act of telling: “Myths are not stories that have meaning, but stories that give meaning.” (3) The gospel is that kind of mythic story, one that we inhabit. We are not fighting to win, but rather playing in celebration of God’s victory. This gospel story is not one that we can pick up or put down, or a game that we strive to finish. It’s a story that goes on and on, and we keep playing as the story shapes our own lives. Perhaps preachers are drawn to Dungeons and Dragons for the way it mimics this kind of noncompetitive play by committing to the larger, ongoing story.
The act of sub-creation in Dungeons and Dragons extends beyond the world and story to the very characters that players create. These characters give players the opportunity to roleplay as a different kind of person, one with a different personality, motivation, ability, or gender. An introverted player can be a charismatic bard, a player with a physical disability can be a brawny barbarian, a cisgender player can be a non-binary wizard. The world of D&D invites this exploration without judgment. This roleplay can be more than indulging a power fantasy or unleashing repressed desire. Trying on these characters can allow players to see the world anew by imagining what it’s like to be someone else. At many gaming tables, players are expected to speak “in-character” (that is, as their character) and avoid offering “out of character” commentary. Instead of metagaming (using a player’s real-world knowledge to determine their character’s decisions in-game), players are instructed to make choices based on what their character might know or want – even if the player knows those choices may not be ideal. These practices make D&D an exercise in empathy and a chance to explore how other people might think, feel, or respond.
Exploring alternate agencies is part of what makes games compelling. Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen describes games as a form of art, a kind that interrogates the aesthetic quality of struggle and invites players to inhabit these alternate agencies. (4) A game can be interesting, fun, challenging, and beautiful; but the real reason we play lies in the inversion of ends and means. In ordinary life, we will struggle for a worthwhile goal – and if we lack a goal, we avoid the struggle entirely. In a game, we set an arbitrary goal with no intrinsic meaning for the sole purpose of struggling to meet it. Our focus shifts to the means – the activity of playing the game – rather than the end. Nguyen summarizes his argument: “When we play games, we adopt new goals, values, and practical focuses. We play around with different ways of being a practical agent in the world… Games work in the medium of agency. So it is unsurprising that they will play a role in the development of our agency… The value of games is to be found in the flowering possibilities of the art of agency.” (5)
Nguyen’s description of playing games reminds me of the Church’s claims about baptism. In baptism, we adopt a new set of goals — a new set of values. The baptismal covenant in the Book of Common Prayer describes the goals that God sets for the Church. We vow to strive after those goals — with God’s help. God is the only one who can live up to those promises, and we spend our lives striving after them. Through baptism we explore alternative agencies: we recognize the ways that we have no power within ourselves to help ourselves, yet we find that the Holy Spirit empowers and sustains us to serve God. What happens when we frame the Christian life, struggling to meet the arbitrary goal of God, as play? Nguyen argues that just because something is playful does not make it useless, wasteful, or unserious. Playfulness is concerned with beauty and joy, and finds freedom in the knowledge that striving after a goal is worthwhile even if we don’t achieve it. We have all sorts of language to express that idea in the Christian tradition: our striving is the long process of sanctification, and we rest in the knowledge that God has already justified us apart from our own effort. The more we play at following Christ, the more we realize that the goals of this game – the vows of our baptism – are more real than any other. In this case, the game is not a distraction from real life – it is somehow more real, echoing Tolkien’s language of the gospel feeling more true than any other story.
And perhaps we preachers are drawn to Dungeons and Dragons just because we love telling these stories. Our sermons are vehicles for storytelling. I’m not talking about sermons as a written manuscript, but sermons as an event between preacher and congregation: together, we play with imagination, agency, and improvisation. Sally Brown says a sermon can act as an “imaginative rehearsal space” – an opportunity for storytelling where the congregation is invited to explore alternate agencies. In a sermon, we come together to imagine ways that we can interrupt the dominant stories of sin and death with the redemptive story of God’s in-breaking kingdom. A primary task of the preacher is to equip the congregation for this witness: to give them a repertoire of stories to fuel their own acts of everyday faithfulness. Brown writes, “[Preachers do well] undertaking in the pulpit vivid, realistic acts of imagination that portray faith-driven, risk-taking, improvisational action that shifts the balance of power toward grace and hope.” (6) A good sermon awakens imagination, inspiring us to act with courage and creativity in a world that longs to hear better stories. A game of Dungeons and Dragons can scratch at that itch, humming with the resonance of the great gospel Fairy story.
Let me be clear – my D&D games don’t involve much theological pontificating or blatant Christian allegory. The group laughs at stupid jokes, attempts absurd feats of fantasy violence, uses silly voices, and occasionally steals imaginary things from imaginary people. But beneath the goofy fun of our adventures, I think our play offers something meaningful to us as people of faith. Not every D&D adventure has a theological resonance, but the very act of playing invites us to dream more deeply about our own Christian journey. Our games can inspire us to be more fully human – even when we’re playing as dwarves and half-orcs! (7) Our collective sub-creation allows us to delight in God’s infinite game, to celebrate the powerful story of good overcoming evil, to work together as agents of hope. This is what Dungeons and Dragons offers me – a reminder that the way of Christ can be playful and fun, full of wonder and adventure beyond anything we can either ask or imagine. The abundant life God calls us to is full of creativity and joy, and the Spirit empowers us to seek it. And the happy ending of this fairytale? It goes on and on and on.
James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games, 1.
Carse, 100.
Carse, 95.
C. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency as Art.
Nguyen, 222.
Sally Brown, Sunday’s Sermon for Monday’s World: Preaching to Shape Daring Witness, 63.
We did have to institute a new rule for our gaming group, forbidding anyone from playing their day job after one player kept rolling human clerics. I’m on the other extreme, excited to start the next adventure with a hobgoblin wizard!
