This post is intended as a part of the July month D&D Blog Carnival.

I’m late getting in on this, but I really wanted to put some thought into this so I don’t sound like a moron. I have decided that Gaming is a worthwhile substitute for religion, for me. I make no claims as to the existence of Pelor or Boccob, I do not believe that Lloth exists as such, but I cannot explain how completely gaming, and especially D&D, has changed my outlook on my own power and place in the world. Please don’t take this as evangelism, insanity, or flame mongering, it is not, I know D&D as religion sounds crazy and I know it won’t be for everyone. I just have taken my respect for the human imagination as a tool of empowerment a step further than most would.

First, the basics. I believe that D&D (and RPG’s in general) are part of a sort of understanding that we are, oftentimes, ill adapted and powerless in nature as human beings. The world is bigger than all of us, and most of us know it, so how can we possibly hope to overcome our own natural limitations? To decide, I think it can be useful to look back at a time when the natural world was even more hostile and dangerous. The ancient Shaman might attempt to gain authority and knowledge by wearing the still recognizable pelt of a wolf and going into the wilderness to fast and contemplate it’s ways. He would take on the role of the wolf in the world, and understand how it survived, and teach his people what he observed and why it is useful. Somewhere, maybe before, maybe after, ancient peoples constructed effigies of beasts and would engage them in a hunting-like ritual exercise not entirely different from children playing “Cowboys and Indians” or the like. Once again, the roles of one or more entities was substituted for by the imagination. So where is the parallel in the modern world?

Enter the modern world. The computer that I am writing this post on can process ~60,000 instructions per second. Every day we hear death reduced to figures on the news, whether it is U.S. troops or a bus accident. Anyone I know can tell you what percentage of Americans have tried marijuana. Anyone can recognize(at least vaguely) the meaning of a Full Scale IQ score. We live in a world where statistics make up a HUGE part of our reality and how we perceive it.Every day we become more and more statistically literate, and we don’t even know it. What better vehicle, then, for an esoteric practice than the mathematical definitions of people and animals given in D&D? We roll up a character, give it a personality, an appearance, an occupation, maybe a specialization, and it becomes a symbol of us in this fantasy world, one that will always bear a resemblance to what our real world is, however changed it may be.

But D&D isn’t just about simulation and symbols, and nor was shamanism. D&D is also about stories that you compose by participating in them. A boy scout camp activity that has it’s root in a Native American ceremony and a practice of psychadelic use by authors involves sitting about a fire telling a story by taking turns, each new storyteller picking up where the last left off. The point is to cooperatively create a meaningful story from which each storyteller might learn something about his role in the group. Plus, it’s fun.

Take these three principles and the purpose which they serve, combine them, and you would have something at least recognizable as a role playing game. In the modern west, a person’s religion often restricts a person’s worldview, making them more helpless, and prone to place blame rather than seeking to understand the nature of people’s actions, morals, and use that knowledge to affect a positive change in the world. D&D directly circumvents this, we as players and DM’s take on the role of good characters, evil characters, wizards, warriors, and all the other archetypes and analogues that comprise the game, and I believe that greater understanding, and yes, even capability can come from the experience. Game? A spiritual framework based on a game? Or something much more than the term game implies?

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