[Let's Read] Playing With Fire, Part 15: Conclusion

Conclusion ranges from pages 79 to 86, and consists of a single title page, one blank page and six content pages.

Three items of Note:
1) direct quotes from the text will be italicized,
2) my analysis of this text is not an attack on individual Christians or to paint Christians as a whole in a broad brush, and
3) the authors' ideas will be critically examined, especially when they present a Christian idea without using the same rigor that they have used on RPGs.

I've made it through.

Just six more pages to go (and I'm ignoring the 3 page bibliography at the end) and then I'm done. I won't do an overview. I'm sure you all understand that I'm going through some really hard times trying to finish this review and it's boring text.

So I might as well start.

J. Weldon and J. Bjornstad don't like RPGs. They have made wild claims throughout the whole text and have failed to back them up. They've done a bunch of crappy research and have given me, the reader, no indication that they've actually played the game or even read the game books that they reference. That's really too bad. Because I'm sure they have great imaginations. In fact, this whole book is just one big imagination that RPGs will end your life, kill off all your family and friends, and land you in jail. Except nothing they've written here has any truth to it.

I'm not going to continue quoting because I'd have to quote the whole conclusion and refute it line by line. I'm tired and really not in the mood to do so. I blame the authors, naturally.

They spend pages 81 to 84 trying to show that they're fair by outlining all the things that people say RPGs are good for. Don't be fooled. They're just trying to get you to think they are honest people. But they're not. They are liars, down to the core.

They then spend pages 84 to 86 saying how RPGs are bad, reiterating the same reasons that I've already taken apart in earlier posts. And then they say it's your choice but you shouldn't play them because it's bad. And they end with that Thessalonians quote from the Introduction. I won't repeat it here because I'm just too tired.

There. It's over.

If you find this in a used bookstore, pick it up as an artefact from the Satanic Panic and show it off to your gamer friends. The authors won't get any of your money and that's the best part. Mine cost me $2.95 and none of it went to them.

Maybe read a bit, if you'd like. Maybe read the whole thing (I doubt if you actually will, but you might). Don't worry, you won't take it seriously. 

Use it as the butt of gamer jokes. Laugh heartily as you play your RPGs and think not of J. Weldon or J. Bjornstad. Give it as a gag-gift to another gamer friend. 

Maybe in 100 years it'll be a collectors item but I doubt it.