Thursday
Editor in chief: Jack Clifford
Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard
Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL J. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com
D
ungeons
andJT^
ragons
deserves deference
.andor faces the ore, watching the
fecund creature swing a heavy
maul toward him. Mike rolls his
twenty-sided die, and it comes up
a 20! Randor’s greats word strikes the ore in
the belly, slicing through the pitiful armor
protecting it. It falls to the ground, a lifeless
That was just a minuscule sampling of the
action happening on campuses around the
country as tabletop adventurers explore pa
per dungeons in search of fame, glory and,
above all, loot. The game of choice for these
adventurers is D&D.
What is D&D, you ask? Dungeons and
Dragons is the progenitor of all modern role
playing games. Basically, the players as
sume the roles of characters that they have
created, much like an actor assumes a role in
a play or movie. The DM (for dungeon mas
ter) takes on the job of “director,” if you will,
controlling the world around the characters,
including villains, villagers, the weather
and even the fictional deities of the world.
Players can wield a sword as a mighty pal
adin, master stealth as a rogue or even com
mand the primal forces of magic as a sorcer
er. All this through the player’s imagination
and a handful of oddly-shaped dice.
The game came about as an extension of a
more traditional war game put out by the
Tactical Strategic Rules game club of Lake
Geneva, Wise., which would become the
leading gaming company of the ‘80s and
heap.
‘90s. After a while, the players found it more
fun to play as individuals completing an
epic quest. With that, Dungeons and Drag
ons was born.
Now in its third iteration (the first ran
from 1974-1980, the second, “Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons,” from 1984-1999 and
the third released three months ago), the
game has proved immensely successful and
laid the groundwork for a panoply of later
games. D&D has also sparked novels, comic
books, a 1982-83 Saturday morning cartoon
and, coming later this year, a motion pic
ture.
With such a runaway and sustained suc
cess, gaming should have been fully accept
ed (or at least tolerated) by the mainstream
by now. That’s what would happen in a
world filled with normal people.
Yet groups like Patricia Pulling’s B.A.D.D.
(“Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons,”
a group she established after her son’s sui
cide, which she blamed on the game) con
tinually try to get the game banned or cen
sored. jack Chick, the religious right’s grand
poobah of foolishness, published one of his
toilet-paper pamphlets excoriating D&D
and calling it a direct entrance to Satanism
and other really, really bad things. James
Dobson of “Focus on the Family” took it
one step further, making the outrageous
claim that it is morally right for a person to
steal and destroy gaming materials to
“save” the players.
So what’s the problem with D&D? The
main complaint from the ruling cabal of the
village idiots is twofold: First, the characters
use magic, which in the Bible is seen as a
tool of the devil; second, that the game uses
its own, often polytheistic, theological sys
tem that has no mention of Jesus Christ.
First, yes, the characters do use magic, but
characters are fictional constructs. To say
that a player is actually casting magic when
his character chants “magic missile” is the
equivalent of saying that Harri
son Ford is a mass murderer
because so many Nazis died in
“Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Just
who has the fuzzy grasp of re
ality here?
Secondly, the religions
in the game are also fic
tional, and so pray
ing, in game
terms, to
Pelor
i
(a good-aligned basic game deity) would
have as much relevance as someone believ
ing in The Force. However, no player I’ve
ever met in a game has had even the slight
est inclination toward the “dark side” (OK,
one went into advertising, but that’s a differ
ent story).
In fact, one of my old friends, the one who
introduced me to the game, is a devout
church member, and, when last I heard, was
running church-sanctioned D&D games. The
guy with red underwear and horns was
nowhere to be seen.
Pat Payne is a columnist for the Oregon Daily Emer
ald. His views do not necessarily represent those of
the Emerald. He can be reached at Macross_SD@hot
mail.com.
The kids aren't all right when history repeats itself
1%^ f
DIARY OF A
i^ftHALCONTENT
MICHAEL J. KLECKNER
It’s National Character Counts!
Week, and the Josephson Insti
tute, a public-benefit, nonpar
tisan, nonprofit organization,
released the preliminary results
Monday of its “2000 Report Card
on the Ethics of American Youth.”
This is not a report card you
want to show off proudly. This re
port card should greatly concern
parents, educators and politicians.
Take a listen to what the Josephson
Institute found in its nationwide
study of 8,600 high school stu
dents:
• 71 percent of high school stu
dents cheated on an exam in the
past year and 45 percent said they
cheated two or more times.
• 92 percent lied to their parents
in the past year and 79 percent
said they did so two or more times.
• 78 percent lied to a teacher
and 27 percent said they would lie
to get a job.
What’s up, y’all? Dirty, lying
cheaters. I know I’m a Gen X-er
and my childhood started in a
kinder, gentler era of American
life, but is our culture so corrupt
and perverse as to have raised
teens this poorly? No wonder Pres
ident Clinton lied about his sexual
endeavors. All the kids are doing
it.
But wait, there’s more:
• 16 percent said they have been
drunk in school in the past year.
• 40 percent of males and 30
percent of females say they stole
something from a store in the past
year.
So now they’re stealing, lying,
dirty, cheating drunks. Great.
Whose fault is this? Are their par
ents so greedy and debased that
they have demonstrated nothing in
the way of personal ethics? Do
they care so little about the quality
of their souls that they’ll sacrifice
personal dignity for a false and su
perficial sense of success? Where
have we gone wrong?
If you call now, you can get vio
lence absolutely free:
• 68 percent of students say
they hit someone because they
were angry in the past year and 46
percent did so at least twice.
• 47 percent (and 60 percent of
males) said they could get a gun if
they wanted.
These statistics are pathetic and
grotesque. Whose fault is it? Who
cares. When I spoke to my parents
about this study, they told me that
lots of kids did the same stuff
when they were in high school.
Yeah, and then those teens grew
up and became parents, and look
where that got us. Apparently to
day’s teens have been taught that
material success is important
enough to live in a world where no
one respects themselves, each oth
er or anything beyond physical
gratification. That’s not success.
Success is living well, with an in
ner sense of character, so that we
don’t all have to walk around the
world thinking everyone else is a
stealing, lying, cheating drunk. No
matter how many toys we have, an
ethics-free world isn’t successful.
But this vision of success is
everywhere. While some people
want to post the Ten Command
ments in schools, it isn’t enough to
say “be good.” The adult world —
media, business, social groups,
peer groups, teachers, everyone —
needs to be teaching by example.
Teens don’t care what their parents
say when they see them doing
whatever it takes to get ahead,
have a better career and buy that
second SUV. Apparently, not
enough people in America care,
because it isn’t getting through to
our kids.
So maybe I should just stop
sounding like Bible Jim and join
the party. Get myself a bottle of
Jack Daniel’s and head off to class
with a baseball bat and a term pa
per I stole off the Internet. After
all, the one thing I know is that 99
percent of all those kids surveyed
will end up being successful in
life. Wait, that’s a lie. But I guess I
don’t care.
Michael J. Kleckner is the editorial editor
for the Oregon Daily Emerald. His views do
not necessarily represent those of the
Emerald. He can be reached at opededi
tor@journalist.com.
Letters
to the editor
Vote progressive
Many voters may be dis
couraged or confused by the
large number of ballot meas
ures in this election. Hopeful
ly, the book-thick voter’s
pamphlet and so many meas
ures will not discourage some
voters from participating.
There IS a solution. If your
general philosophy is pro-ed
ucation and pro-environ
ment, if you support working
families and their interests, or
if you are interested in back
ground checks for gun sales at
weapons fairs, please use the
“Oregon United” progressive
voters’ guide online at
www.oregonunited.org. Or,
check the articles in the Octo
ber issue of “The OTHER Pa
per” at various outlets around
town or online at
www.efri.org/~topaper.
And please, don’t forget to
vote and return your mail bal
lot by 8 p.m. on Nov. 7.
James Jacobson
University classified staff
member