D&D In Our Schools
Reading/watching this made my day (possibly my month and some justification for a huge part of my life). Boy, girl, white, black, red or yellow makes no difference. It's just a bunch of kids playing together having fun. It's cooperative not competitive. It's always been about using imagination, negotiation, problem solving and math skills to get the job done. The fact that from the outside it looks like it's all about killing things and taking their stuff is so far from the truth. That's just the headline to what's going on.Gazzette.net by Jeremy Arias wrote:
To all outward appearances, Takoma Park resident Erick Carroll is an average 16-year-old. But every Thursday after school, the unassuming teen transforms into the warrior-druid known as Felen Leafwhisper, bane of a thousand demons. Carroll is one of about 35 participants, from ages 9 through 18, who take part in one of the Takoma Park Recreation Department's longest running and most popular after-school programs: Dungeons & Dragons.
[...]
"Right now, my character is a druid and due to some things that happened in my past adventure, he's also part tree," said Carroll, explaining Leafwhisper's detailed history in the newest session's opening class last Thursday. "I once turned into a rosebush to protect my friend from flying squid."
"It happens more often than you might think," added dungeon master Andrew Simler, 14, with a knowing smile.
[Perhaps my favorite part]
"A lot of kids nowadays don't get an opportunity to express their creativity; they spend a lot of time on the console playing games with their thumbs, but the limits of those games are as created by the game creators,"
[...]
"I always wanted to be somewhere else when I was having a bad day, so I would think up where I wanted to be," he said. "[Dungeons & Dragons] teaches people that the little stories in your head aren't wrong; it's not bad to be a little escapist."
Full Article including vid
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Now you are seeing the light my son.
That's the scary part about it. The D&D one is probably the one most lampooned, but all the other ones are just as bad.
It was about a boy who was religious, and followed the tenants of his Christian faith (it didn't specify), but he had not accepted Christ as his "personal" guide and savior.
He had one friend who was telling him that he should follow Jesus, while his other friends told him that "as long as you're a good person, and pray regularly, you'll get into heaven".
When he died in a traffic accident, his soul went to hell, and the devil laughed at him for listening to his friends who told him that being a good person was enough. He should have followed Jesus as his personal guide if he wanted to get into heaven.
There was nothing to indicate that this was a parody, but Poe's Law, of course, applies.