An Ordinate List of Christian RPGs

[Voros]

That goes for almost everything in the Bible, doesn't it?

Most of the protagonists in the Old Testament are terrible people who do terrible things. A lot of the simpled minded readings of the Old Testament come from the assumption that the protagonists are some kind of role models when most of them are cautionary tales.

 

[Endless Flight]

Sodom and Gamorrah is basically the same story as Noah and the Ark although smaller in scale. Instead of world’s every thought and deed being wicked, it’s actually these two towns. God sends two of his angels to check out these reports of wickedness. It’s something I’ve always found interesting about the Bible. God would not need to send any representatives to check anything out, he already knows, but it’s a final test to show just how depraved they really were.

 

[TristramEvans]

God sends two of his angels to check out these reports of wickedness.

Apropos of nothing, I always find it weird how often God forgets that he's omniscient

 

[pawsplay]

Most of the protagonists in the Old Testament are terrible people who do terrible things. A lot of the simpled minded readings of the Old Testament come from the assumption that the protagonists are some kind of role models when most of them are cautionary tales.

Here's a blessing from G_d... oops, someone didn't follow directions and ruined it.

 

[Diastello]

Apropos of nothing, I always find it weird how often God forgets that he's omniscient

I know it seems that way. Study would suggest God set things up to where he purposely has participants and witnesses involved. Human imagers on earth and spiritual imagers in the heavens. He has a divine council that "participates" sometimes by playing a role (1 Kings 22:19-23), sometimes by agreeing (Daniel 4:13-17), and sometimes just by being present and cheering along (Job 38:4-7). It's a really interesting mythology when you can shake off a lot of what you have been told and learn how to see it. Worthy of exploration in an RPG thst takes it seriously rather than making it trite and modern or mocking it.

 

[carpocratian]

I genuinely am of an age to have seen those Chick Tracts in the wild of public bathrooms. I thought they were just precious. I would have kept some, but they were from public bathrooms (yes, plural), and honestly who knows where they've been and what they touched.

I never kept the bathroom ones, for the same reason. It always struck me as an odd place to leave them, but I used to encounter them sitting on top of urinals all the time.

 

[Voros]

Apropos of nothing, I always find it weird how often God forgets that he's omniscient

Doesn't God send the angels to warn Lot and his family to flee Sodom before it is destroyed? The irony being that it's suggested that Lot is one of the few 'righteous' men that God promises Abraham he will not destroy in S&G but his behaviour both in Sodom and after doesn't suggest he's very righteous man.

 

[David Johansen]

Given that Lot tries to give his virgin daughters to the rape mob, I think God cut it off at ten so he didn't have to tell Abraham what he thinks of Lot.

 

[AsenRG]

Sodom and Gamorrah is basically the same story as Noah and the Ark although smaller in scale. Instead of world’s every thought and deed being wicked, it’s actually these two towns. God sends two of his angels to check out these reports of wickedness. It’s something I’ve always found interesting about the Bible. God would not need to send any representatives to check anything out, he already knows, but it’s a final test to show just how depraved they really were.

I've always thought that this is "for the benefit of the readers and a good story", more than about God needing the report...

Alternatively, it's giving a last chance to the sinners to repent!

 

[TristramEvans]

I know it seems that way. Study would suggest God set things up to where he purposely has participants and witnesses involved. Human imagers on earth and spiritual imagers in the heavens. He has a divine council that "participates" sometimes by playing a role (1 Kings 22:19-23), sometimes by agreeing (Daniel 4:13-17), and sometimes just by being present and cheering along (Job 38:4-7). It's a really interesting mythology when you can shake off a lot of what you have been told and learn how to see it. Worthy of exploration in an RPG thst takes it seriously rather than making it trite and modern or mocking it.

To be clear, I am not mocking any faith in God, merely bemused by the human interpretation of events handed down as stories. Not being omniscient myself, it's a concept that I think any person would have a difficult time conceiving of the effects therein. I liked Gustav Davidson's proposal that angels were created specifically as an interface between mankind and divinity, because it would otherwise be impossible for mortals to directly communicate. But that introduces a new level of interpretation of the Eden story, which leads me back to Gnosticism. It is an interpretation that I find fascinating in it's internal consistency, while essentially deconstructing Nicaean theology. But then, I grew up reading a lot of P.K. Dick.

Anyways, yeah I agree, a "straight" RPG interpretation is very much a subject that interests me, hence the origins of this thread. I'd like everything from a heavy researched historical culture game to a Dante/Miltonian-inspired Celestial war as a setting, though an improved Dragonraid or other symbolic fantasy/sciFi setting I think could be done in any number of interesting manners while being faithful to the theology.

 

[Diastello]

To be clear, I am not mocking any faith in God, merely bemused by the human interpretation of events handed down as stories. Not being omniscient myself, it's a concept that I think any person would have a difficult time conceiving of the effects therein. I liked Gustav Davidson's proposal that angels were created specifically as an interface between mankind and divinity, because it would otherwise be impossible for mortals to directly communicate. But that introduces a new level of interpretation of the Eden story, which leads me back to Gnosticism. It is an interpretation that I find fascinating in it's internal consistency, while essentially deconstructing Nicaean theology. But then, I grew up reading a lot of P.K. Dick.

Anyways, yeah I agree, a "straight" RPG interpretation is very much a subject that interests me, hence the origins of this thread. I'd like everything from a heavy researched historical culture game to a Dante/Miltonian-inspired Celestial war as a setting, though an improved Dragonraid or other symbolic fantasy/sciFi setting I think could be done in any number of interesting manners while being faithful to the theology.

I didn't think you were mocking. And I can most often chuckle with those that are.
I've been learning mostly from scholarly material in recent years rather than listening to pastors. I've come to see that trying to break down questions like "what is omniscience?" and "how do angels actually have kids with human women?" is to approach an ancient mythological text from a western, post-enlightenment mindset. The text wes written by ancient Hebrews to an ancient Near Eastern audience, mostly Hebrew. To understand what the text is intending to say, I have to start with an ancient Hebrew living inside my head and ask the questions or have the concerns that person would have. It has radically improved my enjoyment and understanding of especially the really weird references.

 

[Endless Flight]

So from what I understand the Watchers (the 200 angels who came down to Mt Hermon) taught humans all sorts of things such as alchemy, astrology and other strange arts. They had children with human women and they bore the Nephilim, who were anywhere from between 40 and 400 foot tall depending on the source material and had superhuman abilities. These Nephilim would do all sorts of vile things like sacrifice humans, drink their blood, and did perverse experiment with the animals. Basically rampaging the land, sea and air.

The Watchers themselves were even horrified with what their children were doing so they went to Enoch to plea to God for forgiveness on their behalf. Enoch went to God and He replied that there would be no such forgiveness as He heard the cries of creation and decided to take drastic measures. He would turn the Nephilim on each other in a sort of civil war while the Watchers themselves were forced to watch their children kill each other. Then God had the angels bind the Watchers in chains and cover their faces in the Abyss where they wait Judgement Day. Not only that, God would flood the Earth because the contamination of the Nephilim had spread. He chose Noah and his family as they had an unblemished family history.

 

[Mosker]

I'd like everything from a heavy researched historical culture game to a Dante/Miltonian-inspired Celestial war as a setting,

That's the thing about

I didn't think you were mocking. And I can most often chuckle with those that are.
I've been learning mostly from scholarly material in recent years rather than listening to pastors. I've come to see that trying to break down questions like "what is omniscience?" and "how do angels actually have kids with human women?" is to approach an ancient mythological text from a western, post-enlightenment mindset. The text wes written by ancient Hebrews to an ancient Near Eastern audience, mostly Hebrew. To understand what the text is intending to say, I have to start with an ancient Hebrew living inside my head and ask the questions or have the concerns that person would have. It has radically improved my enjoyment and understanding of especially the really weird references.

There's a lot to be said (and infinitely more competently than I can say it) about lenses here, but when I look at the stories in the Hebrew bible, I try to shake off a lot of later interpretations and perspectives and simply ask "How do concepts of the divine, morality, and the divine/human relationship compare to Homer, a rough comtemporary?"

 

[Diastello]

So from what I understand the Watchers (the 200 angels who came down to Mt Hermon) taught humans all sorts of things such as alchemy, astrology and other strange arts. They had children with human women and they bore the Nephilim, who were anywhere from between 40 and 400 foot tall depending on the source material and had superhuman abilities. These Nephilim would do all sorts of vile things like sacrifice humans, drink their blood, and did perverse experiment with the animals. Basically rampaging the land, sea and air.

The Watchers themselves were even horrified with what their children were doing so they went to Enoch to plea to God for forgiveness on their behalf. Enoch went to God and He replied that there would be no such forgiveness as He heard the cries of creation and decided to take drastic measures. He would turn the Nephilim on each other in a sort of civil war while the Watchers themselves were forced to watch their children kill each other. Then God had the angels bind the Watchers in chains and cover their faces in the Abyss where they wait Judgement Day. Not only that, God would flood the Earth because the contamination of the Nephilim had spread. He chose Noah and his family as they had an unblemished family history.

That is a very good and detailed summary! You even caught that the giants didn't die in the flood, but were turned on each other before the flood and that their daddy/watchers had to watch it play out.

It seemed like God was just going to let it go on and finally Michael, Gabriel, Phanuel, and Raphael went to God and confronted him, asking if he was ever going to do something about this mess. He then tasked each with duties to help in cleaning it up. The narrative suggests God was in part waiting for them to intercede. This is echoed when the watchers send Enoch as you said and God replies that they should be interceding for man and not man for them!

Now take that into the S&G story, part of the point of the haggling with Abraham and God is to demonstrate Abraham's (and by virtue Israel's) intended role would be of interceding for the nations. Abraham was acting as a priest and God was hearing him. But, it also literarily connected how depraved the people were by connecting their desires (i.e. for strange flesh) with the desires of the watchers and the depravity that resulted from it. Further, as was stated, even though Lot was not as depraved as they, he was far from a role model of a man.

That is what I have been learning is to not complain about how little detail is present, but to instead realize that the detail that is given is intentional and look for why those details were selected.

 

[Endless Flight]

I have a feeling that Satan was just thrilled with what the Watchers were doing. He knew the Redeemer would come from the seed of Adam, as God told him after the Fall. What better way to stop that other than contaminating the seed of all of mankind. Thus we have another reason for a reset with the Flood.

 

[Mosker]

Satan was just thrilled with what the Watchers

Space and money considerations ended my comic buying (I still have "unlimited" digital subscriptions) a few years back, but Sal Buscema in his prime doing a Mephisto/Uatu team-up? Now that's a temptation (intentional).

 

[Diastello]

I have a feeling that Satan was just thrilled with what the Watchers were doing. He knew the Redeemer would come from the seed of Adam, as God told him after the Fall. What better way to stop that other than contaminating the seed of all of mankind. Thus we have another reason for a reset with the Flood.

Yeah, and that quite possibly may have been part of why God reacted so harshly once he did react.

Satan (or "the satan", ha'satan) is a whole other ball of wax I have recently been studying about. The 2nd Temple writings and Dead Sea Scrolls have quite a few names for this figure that may (I think likely) be the same figure and they are just wrestling more with the concept. OT mostly didn't care to give him a name, and referred to him as satan, a situational role that anyone (human or spirit) could fill. It is just usually translated "adversary" when it clearly isn't a badly motivated spirit, and when it is they translate it as a proper name "Satan" (I think part out of popular expectation). I think 2TP Jews felt obligated to name him after the Babylonian captivity where they dealt with a very dualistic Zoroastrianism where the opponent spirit was named and given attention.
But, given the consistent serpent, anti-serpent imagery and the "seed" theme you referenced, I think there was always a consistent opponent all along and the scripture writers knew it. They just didn't dignify him with a name. In fact, the 2TP names bandied around were some negative quality, worthlessness, emnity, etc.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

Most of the protagonists in the Old Testament are terrible people who do terrible things. A lot of the simpled minded readings of the Old Testament come from the assumption that the protagonists are some kind of role models when most of them are cautionary tales.

To me, this makes the Old Testament have a sort of fairy tale like quality to it. Which is only a good thing.