For those who would like to see our long version, two hour, four minute video of this subject, please go to our video called, D&D Dungeon Master Testimony, Dungeons and Dragons, War Gaming, Violent Video Games, and Wasting Time, as found on our YouTube channel, SeeAnswersTV. The following is a short segment from that original video before we begin our main presentation here. I will begin this analysis by mentioning the fact that I was what is called a dungeon master in Dungeons and Dragons besides being a player of it for years before that. For the moment, I would like to take our viewers on a historical odyssey of how I actually ended up being a dungeon master. While I was in high school, and actually even before high school, I was involved in something called war gaming. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was already writing magazine articles for an international wargaming magazine called the Avalon Hill General. Here you can see the actual article I wrote called, Is Defense Really Necessary?, which covered a defense strategy for the French, Dutch, and Belgian armies I came up with in the face of the May 10th. 1940 German invasion of France. The article goes on to illustrate the defensive moves that needed to be made in lieu of the German onslaught. You can see my old address in Houston, Texas at the end of the article. Here's what the cover of the Avalon Hill war game looked like that my article was based on. This particular war game was called France 1940. During my school years, I played many different war games on a regular basis with my friends. Here's one of my favorites called Blitzkrieg. Here's one we played quite often called Borodino, which covers the battle fought by Napoleon against the Russians during 1812. We played the epic World War I naval battle fought in 1916 between the German and British fleets across the entire living room floor of my best friend's house. The December 1944 Battle of the Bulge game between the German and American armies was another popular favorite. This Avalon Hill war game was a simplified version of the June 22, 1941 German invasion of Russia called Stalingrad. However, later, Avalon Hill came out with a highly advanced war game covering the German invasion of Russia called War in the East, which turned out to be my all-time favorite war game. The playing map was huge and it had over 2,000 playing pieces. Here you can see some of my war gaming high school buddies actually playing War in the East on the floor in my room in Houston. Here's an actual view of the map and the masses of unit counters for the War in the East game representing German and Russian military forces in an actual game being played. Each move in the game usually took over an hour to be played and the same game could take weeks to complete. Having played numerous war games for years, I actually invented my own war game. Here's a map board I created myself. Here's a closer view of the map. The game was played by numerous players who possessed tank armies they could create by their various industrial capacities. The goal was to conquer everything on the map and destroy the other players. It was very popular. Here's another map I created for yet another wargaming invention. I often thought about copywriting these games and marketing them, but I never got around to it. While I was in high school, I was a member of the marching Springwoods Tiger Band. There I am on the back row right on the end with my baritone. My brother Gary is there with his tuba. Many of my band friends played war games with me. Besides all this, there were other war games out there by other manufacturers besides Avalon Hill. Here's one called Diplomacy produced by Games Research Incorporated out of Boston, Massachusetts back in the 1970s. Here we see Diplomacy players pretending to be diplomats of the various countries represented in the game. As you can see, a meek and mild game, it is not. The winner of the diplomacy game is represented here by our actual science teacher at our high school holding the world in his hand while shish kabobbing all the other players with a sword. Another popular war game is seen here called Risk, which I played diligently from my middle school years up into college. Here's the wrist war game being played by seven players with two onlookers in one of the study rooms at a university dormitory during 1976. Many of the players seen here would later be participants in my Dungeons and Dragons game. Wasting time and not worrying about God was one of my strong suits while I attended the university here in Austin, Texas. I was a member of the University of Texas chess team. I played in more chess tournaments than I can count throughout high school and on into college. Here's my tournament chess board, chess clock, favorite chess book on chess traps, and other paraphernalia. When you're successful at something, you develop a lot of pride which of course the Bible frowns on if you're the one exalting yourself. Proverbs chapter 16 verses 18 through 19. Here I am in a self-portrait I produced for a photojournalism class assignment. I even came up with the slogan as you see here, play with the best, lose with the rest. I was also on the University of Texas bowling team. I'm the second from the left. This picture was taken at a National Collegiate Bowling Tournament being held in Las Vegas, Nevada with 106 teams competing. Speaking of pride, bowling was not only a major source of pride in my life, but an incredible time waster. Here I won the Presidential Sports Award in bowling from President Jimmy Carter. I racked up all kinds of awards in this sport as you can see here. Here's the one I was most proud of though as I rolled an 800 series in the Austin City Tournament averaging 268 and made it into the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame as a result. And I also got a gold ring for it. The one good thing I will say about bowling, though, is I did meet my future wife because of this game. My wife, Diane, was on the University of Texas women's bowling team while I was on the men's team. I really liked the way she bowled. While still students at the University of Texas, we were married at the University of Texas Catholic Student Center directly across the street from the UT Tower, which is shown in this picture collage. A few years later, the two of us actually won the City of Austin Mixed Tournament as individual champions for our classes. My wife for the women's division and myself for the men's. Besides all this other activity, while I was attending the University of Texas, I was also in the Longhorn Band. When you have not been supernaturally changed in your heart by the power of the Holy Spirit as given to His chosen people by the God of the Bible, you waste your time on vain and useless things that bring no glory to God at all, but simply pander to your own sinful lusts and desires. Although I wasted my time on many deceitful lusts and activities, a prime example is found in the game Dungeons and Dragons. Here you can see an assortment of D&D books. Here's the basic Dungeons & Dragons Player Manual, 65 pages. The Fiend Folio, 128 pages. The Advanced D&D Monster Manual, 112 pages. The Advanced D&D Player's Handbook, 128 pages. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player Character Record Sheets, 34 pages. And of course, the Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide, 240 pages. Back in the days when I was a Dungeon Master, this book was my real Bible. I studied this more in one day and the other D&D books than I would look at a Christian Bible in an entire year. Here's the only known photo I have of some of us actually playing Dungeons and Dragons. This shot was staged for the camera, but you can see me there with the hat on and my Dungeon Master Guide while several players are gathered around, one holding the Advanced D&D Player's Handbook. You can barely see on the table some of the small figurines we used to represent some of the player characters participating in my dungeon. This picture was taken December 18, 1980. It is interesting to note that God would interrupt this highly successful dungeon five months later on May 16, 1981, when He supernaturally enlightened me by the power of the Holy Spirit through a born-again experience, John 3, verses 3-8, that would change my life for all eternity. We have some very interesting guests. First of all, Larry Wessel, who's the assistant editor from Believer's Guide magazine out of Austin, Texas. And he's going to be talking to us about the game Dungeons & Dragons. Or is it Dragons & Dungeons or Dungeons & Dragons, Larry? Dungeons & Dragons. Okay, I want to make sure that I got that correct. And then a little bit later in the program, we'll be talking with Thomas Baird and Roy Krumno of We Win Toys about toys that are being made as a Christian alternative. So if you have children that are you going to be buying gifts for children in this Christmas time, you'll want to be listening to the program. And if you have questions during the program, the phone number is 388-KBBW. So write that down. We'll be back with our guest right after this. 824 North Valley Mills Drive in Waco. And we are back to your On the Air on this very wet Monday. If you happen to be driving outside, be careful. Fog is descending right now. The program today is going to be talking about children and toys and Christmas. Our first guest, Larry Wessel, is the assistant editor of Believer's Guide magazine, a Christian magazine from the Austin, Texas area. And it's a news magazine for Christians. But we're going to be talking about Dungeons and Dragons. Larry, how in the world did you get involved in this game? Well, it started way back when I was in high school. Me and the fellows used to play a lot of games. You know, you're growing up as a kid and you play these little board games. And we started playing these kind of military conflict games called war games. And we just started getting to more sophisticated levels. And I think it came one Christmas uh my best friend got a gift for Christmas and the name of the toy was Dungeons and Dragons and uh he uh he was he finished he graduated third in his class in high school and so he was very intelligent to read all his books even at a younger age and He quickly assimilated all the information books that Dungeons and Dragons comes with. It doesn't have a board or anything. He just has a bunch of books that explain these various rules and things, and there's some dice that go with it. And he started to explain it to all of us and say, hey, this could be a lot of fun. And so we started playing the game year in and year out. Now, not constantly during high school, but pretty pretty consistently uh once every two weeks or uh once every three weeks something like that uh and we play usually when we did play up to uh five to ten hours and then when i got to college we were playing playing the game on a single evening from 10 to 14 hours it's a very addicting game and uh well what uh what We've heard a lot of things about the game. We've heard a lot of people, Bob Larson has talked about it on his show, how bad it is, all this kind of stuff, what kind of a cultic type symbolism and things it deals with. But I don't think anyone that has not played it really knows anything about it. Can you, you said it doesn't have a board, it just has books? That doesn't sound like a very good game. Can you, I know it's probably very complicated, but can you explain a little bit about how the game itself works? Well, it's a pretty simple idea, actually, but, you know, he puts the meat on the bones, so to say, the inventor of this game. It's kind of something out of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or something, where you have an imaginary Middle Earth or something with dwarves and gnomes and all these mythical creatures, and the game is based primarily on imagination. And what he uses in this game, the inventor of it, Gary Gygax, he comes up with a system to play a fantasy role-playing game where you have characters, usually something like a magic user, a cleric, an orc, an elf, a fighter, a paladin, a bard. There's innumerable names for different characters you can be. Thieves is one of the more preferable ones in this particular game. You want to be a thief? Thieves do fairly well in this particular game because after all the game is played to capture treasure to acquire wealth and thereby build up your experience points. In this game, you try to raise yourself. You start at a level one character and then as you play the game weeks in, weeks out, hours on end or whatever, it doesn't really have an ending to it. You capture so much treasure. You kill so many creatures. This game comes with monster manuals, and as you can see as I'm showing you the book here, a fiend... It's for all of our viewers. Yeah. I'm showing it to y'all here in the studio. A fiend folio. It has all these ghastly creatures on it. Demons and things like this. It's an amazing game which takes in your your imagination uh you adventure through this this kind of mythical land and you encounter these monsters which we're just talking about you slay them you capture treasure you fight off dragons you steal from people many times there's murder involved you know when i got in college i i was a dungeon master uh and i was at the highest you can go or something or That means that you're experienced enough and you know the books well enough to where you can actually run one of these games yourself. I had all the books, like the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual, and Fiendfolio, and Player's Handbook. the other assorted manuals that explain all the rules and things like that. And so with a thorough knowledge of the rules and how the games played, I was able to start my own game. It's similar to someone that starts a business, I guess. He understands a business and he gets a few people under him and he He starts explaining how the business is run and it goes like that. But the dungeon master is a role in the game, right? I mean, you're the ones that sets the problems for them to solve. Right. I make the game or break it for them. I create the dungeons. I create worlds for them to be on or islands. Usually, it involves getting a simple piece of graph paper. drawing out a meticulous little cavern or dungeon or something with different rooms and staircases and trap doors and towers and everything else. And I mark on my dungeon without anyone else being able to see it. Only the dungeon master knows what's in his dungeon. He sets the monsters that go in there. And he kind of pretty well controls the whole play of the game. And so I can set creatures to attack on a certain level of my dungeon if they're venturing through my dungeon. It sounds like a computer game without the computer. It's very complex. I only wish this were a television show so I could show the books here. Now let me ask you a question. There's obvious, the pictures in the book, which obviously our listeners can't see, have little devils and ghouls and goblins and all kinds of real demonic looking creatures. However, We find these kind of characters in Lewis's Narnia books. We see them in The Hobbit, which was written by a Christian, J.R.R. Tolkien. What is so wrong with this thing? I believe that fantasy role-playing in and of itself, there's nothing wrong with it. We all remember playing some chivalrous knight when we were kids or something. Cowboys and Indians. If you don't have a good imagination, a lot of people have their creative ability through their imagination as their kids they become writers or whatever but I think there's a distinction between something that's a healthy fantasizing in this case, like we were just discussing, or something in Dungeons and Dragons where you're engaging in stuff like magic and witchcraft and occultism and killing things. In fact, killing things is the main thing of this game as you're playing through it. You're constantly killing creatures, you're stabbing other players in the back. One night we were playing, I had 10 people at my apartment, And I was a dungeon master and I got them all to kill each other off simply by giving them little suggestions on what, you know, that this guy's trying to betray you. There's a lot of deceit in the game. There's, you know, there's rape in the game. There's sexual implications. There's almost any kind of vile idea you can think of, you can employ it into this game. And there's rules that take in for that. what you're, correct me if I'm wrong, what you might be implying is the fact that the game may take characters that are evil and good, so to speak, but it seems as the predominant factor in the game is that it just basically glorifies whatever happens to be stronger at the time. In other words, if evil if the dungeon master wants to be evil, then evil is good, or evil is the thing to be, or rules. In other words, in Tolkien, or in Narnia, you have a Christophany, or a Christ type of figure that always wins. They are the victor. He is the victor because Christ is the victor. There is a distinction. You've got those Christian novels that have a Christian worldview, a perspective, from the very beginning. Dungeons & Dragons, though, is completely different from that. It comes from an amoral, non-theistic universe worldview philosophy. Actually, you get brownie points, don't you, for being more wicked, essentially? Oh, of course. In fact, when I played the game all through high school and college, before I went on to be a Dungeon Master, I rose to a 12th level wizard which there's different alignments in the game. You can be chaotic evil, you can be chaotic neutral, you can be lawful good, but I found it was good to be chaotic evil because in that situation you could, you know, you could stab someone in the back if you needed to, to gain experience points, to raise yourself higher levels. See, the whole game is based on achieving higher levels and at each level you attain through killing people and attaining treasure and wealth then you can become a more powerful figure and you have a better ability to kill people and gain more wealth. So it's a vicious circle you keep going and going. Larry, let me ask you, do you know anything about the inventor of the game? Not a whole lot. I did bring a couple of quotes from the writer or the originator of the game. I can tell that he doesn't really have a a Christian perspective in that he doesn't believe in the supernatural as a Christian would, simply because the Bible talks so much about the supernatural. Like I have a quote here from the originator of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax, he said, We certainly aren't trying to play witchcraft. Any resemblance between the spells and magic in these books and what is quote unquote the real, and again I don't believe in it, the stuff is purely coincidental. Because as far as I know, I dreamed up all these things out of my own head. Sure you did. But as you go through the manuals, the Dungeons and Dragons manuals, you'll find the spells that the clerics and the magic users use match up perfectly in many times, in many cases, with what's in actual occult books and witchcraft books. And that's one of the things that freaked me out, so to say, when I became a Christian and I started studying some of these other topics, like the occult, and I started realizing, A lot of these spells in the actual witchcraft books are right in Dungeons and Dragons. At the time I was a dungeon master and all this, I wasn't a Christian. I didn't know God or Christ and, you know, just in the world. But when you become to the realization that Christ is indeed real that God created this world and that there is a devil out there you know you you start taking precautions you start studying to show yourself approved under God as the scripture says and as I was doing this research to defend myself against you know as you're reading Deuteronomy chapter 18 I think it is starting in verse 9 it talks about all those occultic things and as I studied that I found that all these things are in dungeons and dragons and I go my goodness, you know, and then of course my D&D game eventually ended up in a trash can and so Unfortunately today at least for you in the studio. I can't show you all my dungeons. I worked on I spent countless hours of time and research. Maybe one of the worst things about this game is it takes so much time to play it. Not only for the dungeon master to set the dungeons, go through all these manuals and books, as you can see they're pretty thick and small print. it just gobbles your time up and then you can go and sit for 10 to 14 hours straight at just a kitchen table like we did in a small apartment. You can imagine what this kind of game can do and it becomes addicting in a way. We had one character who, or one player that got a character and he played it for months on end, and finally one of the other players killed him while he was sleeping. You know, according to the game as we were playing it in our imaginations, the one character said, I'm going to slit his throat while he's sleeping, you know. And so I rolled as Dungeon Master. I said, well, you don't want to do that. You know, I didn't want him to kill it at that time. You know, Dungeon Master has a lot of power to try to stop things from happening. He really controls. In fact, I could get rid of any characters I wanted to without the players really knowing I was doing it. throat slit we rolled the dice and everything and he died and this player whose character this was and he built him up level after level for months on end you know you kind of work to build yourself up capturing treasure and killing monsters and other people and stuff and it had kind of a traumatic effect on this player i remember seeing him and he was So he was out of your game then after that? Well, he could come back as another character, you know, but he couldn't have the one he had, and he'd have to start all over again at a level one. You see, now he had to spend more months working him back up to where this first character was, and he got a kind of a... He did roll some more characters up, I recall, and he tried to immediately inflict damage on the guys who had just killed his character. It was a revenge motive, and he even carried it over into real life, This is where there might be a reality distortion in that he held a grudge against the other players who had killed his character in real life. You know, I mean, outside of the game, he didn't appreciate these people, wouldn't associate him with them anymore, you know. You said that you quit playing the game at some point in your life when you became Christian. What happened to the other people that you played this game with? Uh, well, uh, they... Are they still playing the game? As far as I know, most of them are. When I became a Christian, I started trying to talk to them more about God and the Bible and explain Bible prophecy and everything else. But it's like the Bible says, I think in Peter somewhere, it says that your old friends of the world will leave you when you don't partake in their excesses. And so I think I lost just about every friend I had. And my game, of course, was disbanded when I cared more about you know, talking about God and, you know, summoning demons like there are in this game. Okay, you're listening to your On The Air. We're talking with Larry Wessel, who's the assistant editor of Believer's Guide magazine, and the topic today is guest hosting, filling in for Boyce & Judy Lancaster. If you have a comment or question during this hour, give us a call. The phone number is 388-KBBW. How do you feel about these kinds of toys for your children? Have you purchased them in the past? Well, I haven't even talked about the clerics in this game. There's a religious aspect to this game. In fact, even in one of the books here, it says that you have to declare a religion right off the bat. Either if you're going to be agnostic, atheist, you don't care, or some other religion. And this game involves all kinds of gods. In fact, in my game, I made up a whole slate of gods. uh, for the clerics to, uh, worship. And what they had to do in my particular dungeon when I was playing the game was that they had to pray these prayers to these, uh, gods. And I had evil gods and good gods and neutral gods and, like, uh, the players usually picked the evil gods because they had more power, you know, to destroy things. And so they would pray some prayer like, oh, Kali, uh, you know, if only you'll hear my prayers and, you know, he'd say a bunch of bloodthirsty phrases of worship. And I mean, I made my players literally get on their knees and make this prayer to this God before everybody. I said, well, that's the only way you're going to get your wish through this particular God that's your, you know, for your game. Because usually you call on a God to zap some zombies that we're attacking or some monster or some player or something like that. And so you've got a religious aspect to this game besides all the other dubious ideas that go on in it. Okay, so we pretty much established we haven't been able to really get into the game and to really talk about all the garbage, which really maybe we don't need to do. It's pretty apparent if anyone has gone into a store and just looked at the book covers that there's a lot of demonic type influences in this thing. Check out our websites. BibleQuery.org. This site answers 7,700 Bible questions. HistoryCart.com. This site reveals early church history and doctrine, proving Roman Catholicism is not historically or doctrinally viable. MuslimHope.com. This site is a classic refutation of Islam, a counterfeit religion created by Muhammad. Free newsletters are also available. Hello, this is Larry Wessels with just a quick message to our viewers to check out our main YouTube channel, SeeAnswersTV, which stands for Christian Answers Television, where we have all of our over 610 videos posted. By going there, you can see all of our videos organized by playlist, categorized by subjects. 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