Do You Say "Lord Of The Rings" To Nervous Christians?

Let me explain that title. I'm thinking about bringing my Pathfinder Adventure Card game with me on vacation this summer, where I will be spending time with some extended family members that may or may not be a little wary of anything that looks remotely like (Gasp!) Dungeons & Dragons.

In thinking about that scenario, I realized that many years ago, when people would ask me about my interests and the topic would come around to Fantasy Tabletop Games of any sort, I started using Lord Of The Rings as my go-to comparison. "It's a game where you play as a group of heroes on an adventure, like Lord Of The Rings."

I started doing this when I noticed that some Christians who are nervous about D&D are accepting of The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe and Lord Of The Rings (likely because they heard they were written by respected Christians, but who knows).

Just curious if anyone else has found themselves leaning on LOTR in a similar way, or if you have another approach to presenting fantasy games to the wary.

I've tried for years to evangelize D&D to my family, as conservative a bunch as you could ever desire.

My parents introduced me to Narnia and Middle-Earth when they saw I enjoyed fantasy and mythology. My mother introduced me to The Book of Three. My father bought me a copy of Lord Foul's Bane, a book that he particularly enjoyed. My oldest sister gave me a nice hardcover of Le Morte de Arthur. Mary Stewart's Arthur stories were also deemed acceptable. You'd think it would be a short hop from there to D&D. No dice.

Both of my sisters love Tolkien and Lewis, but D&D, Magic the Gathering, and even Yugioh are deemed to have "too much sorcery in them." Yes, I am quoting my sister. Both of my brothers love fantasy gaming. I eventually persuaded my mother to read the Dragonlance Chronicles before she passed, but we never really talked about them. Harry Potter was actively rejected by both sisters and mother.

I don't know why the divide is so sharp within my family, but I think it has to do with the imagery of the source material. D&D/Magic/Yugioh all have violent content graphically portraying demonic images. That element is missing from LOTR/Narnia.

The material is fundamentally philosophically different as well. Magic in LOTR/Narnia is of divine or natural origin, this is well understood and fundamental to the setting. Magic and Yugioh have you literally (figuratively) summoning monsters and employing demonic agency. D&D is based on a philosophy of personal empowerment through magic, that when divine, requires your character to actively worship a pagan god. In fact, in the heyday of 70s/80s Satanic Panic, the D&D "meta" of the time was that your characters were to level up until they could kill the gods and take their place.

So how did I find D&D and why did I rebel against my parents and corrupt my brothers? Not sure. I had friends who played the game. The books captured my imagination. And I never took it as anything other than fiction in a self-contained setting, whose underlying philosophy and further extrapolation I never bothered to contemplate until I was much older.

I don't try to sell anyone on this stuff any more. I just do more harm than good. Having said that.....

If you want to ease someone into the concept of fantasy gaming and its associated elements, choose something that doesn't look threatening. I know that may sound silly, but the sister who declares that Yugioh has too much sorcery in it (!) is perfectly comfortable with Munchkin or Heroscape.

Really interesting to hear about your experience. And your advice makes a lot of sense.

And I suspect you are dead on target regarding the effects of imagery on the perceptions of D&D and other properties.

That meta-game trend stood out to me. I didn't know that about the history of the game. Oddly enough, that is the motive and ultimate plan of my default evil wizard, Elderast. Which, though dark, I consider the natural and arguably appropriate desire in a reality where only flawed deities seem to exist from the character's standpoint.

I'm not an active evangelist for D&D or other nerdy delights, but now and then I do find myself answering questions about them and looking for new ways to describe them and make them less off-putting. Really appreciate your perspective, as I think it gives me a clearer idea of what elements may be the underlying concern for people.