DMing the Bible: Geography Matters

Introduction
Genesis' basic structure revolves around telling the stories of an extended family group whose tales frame the identity of the People of God. The story begins with Abram, called Israel's archetypal ancestor. He is introduced in a genealogy in chapter eleven, but his tale truly gets underway in chapter twelve. Today we'll set the stage for the various episodes of Abram's life told in Genesis. We'll take a brief glance at the promise made Abram by God (y'all don't worry you're totally going to hear lots about it by the time we get done with Joesph). On the game side, as the title suggests, we'll talk about geography and "grounding" your campaign.
Text
We're looking at Genesis 11:31-12:9. From time to time it's good to follow the family trees. Remember: part of the underlying logic of Genesis is that it matters a great deal who your family is. Abram (which is what we'll be calling him until he gets a name change later on) is the son of Terah. Terah, Abram, Sarai, and Lot (Abram's nephew) leave Ur where their family was to move to Canaan. Ur was situated in Mesopotamia. They settle down before getting there in Haran which in northeast of Canaan; in today's geography this would be a region near the Syrian and Turkish border. So far this is not that unusual; large family groups, particularly herders, would have to split apart to avoid over taxing the land.
What happens next is a bit unusual. God gets in touch with Abram and tells him to pack up, leave his family group, and head to lands unknown. Abram's movement is part of the fulfilling of a promise God makes to Abram and Abram's as yet nonexistent descendants. This promise has three major elements: 1)Land, 2) Numerous Descendants, 3)Abundant Blessing. It's worth stopping and taking a closer look at verse 3 in the Hebrew the verb in the clause that closes the verse can be carry either a passive or a reflexive sense. Now, this is the kind of thing that gets Hebrew scholars jazzed up, but the rest of you ...you sighed didn't you? It makes a difference for the translation, though. The NRSV ran with the passive sense, "in you all the families of the world will be blessed," and indicates the whole world receive blessings through Abram. The reflexive sense is rendered, "by you all the earth shall bless themselves;" meaning that all the people of the world will hope for themselves a blessing such as Abram received. Christian translators prefer the passive translation which conforms with Galatians 3, but it's fun to play back and forth with the different senses.
Abram moves from Haran into Canaan moving through the country past Shechen to the Oak of Moreh. This tree was known as "the oak that instructs" or "the teaching oak" it was a place to receive oracles or visits from the divine (this week's vocab. word: theophany= divine visitation). Here God says, "this is the land I have set aside for you." Abram sets up tents for a while in the hill country between Ai and Bethel (the "house of God"). Then moves in stages toward the Negeb, which is an arid wilderness between Asia Minor and Egypt.
This narrative, written probably during the height of the monarchy, sets up the theme of migratory verses settled (most of the Canaanites are farmers, Abram et al are herders), but also explains and under-girds the reason for Israel while at the same time reminding all that the successes enjoyed this nation are divine rather human.
The Game
Games happen somewhere. Your campaign occurs in a particular location even if that location is a whole continent. I love getting grounded in the geography, I love maps, and maybe I love maps too much. I use maps to create characters, I love planning the route a party will take from one place to another. As a DM I spend a lot of time on maps; I like knowing about all the places the PC's may wander. Abrams' route in the passage above takes him through urban and rural places and includes one interesting geographical phenomena. It keeps it varied. Here are two suggestions about the land and your campaign:

• The Oak of Moreh: This was a place that was known for a particular thing. Such locations in RPGs almost cry out to be plot devices. Even if your characters arrive at a place known for being a theophany rich zone and nothing happens it can be meaningful to the action that follows. Boundaries, stone circles, crossroads can be interesting places with which to play.


• Be a Brontë: I've only read a little of the sisters' work, but what I have I recall as being steeped in geographic atmosphere. The land became another character. It breathed, had moods, presented challenges, and exuded malevolence. It's no coincidence that one of the three kinds of conflict is person v. nature.

Reflections on Holy Week

The church has just exited Holy Week to loll about in the relative giddiness of the Easter Season. Holy week is probably the busiest time of the year for ministers (and why any ministers you may see are walking around slightly shell shocked)(give them a hug). Palm Sunday services often have the most pageantry of any Sunday morning service all year. Then comes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Sunrise service on Easter morning, then usually another service or two later in the day. As you can see a busy, busy week.
Each year the dozen or so congregations in the greater Peoria area (we actually call ourselves the Illinois Valley Cluster) get together and share special services throughout the Lenten season. Last week we had four. I preached the Palm Sunday service . The elder statesman of the ministers group preached on Good Friday. His sermon was stunning -- really really good.
A typo had him preaching on the wrong verse, which is my fault (I typed 20 rather than 30). But he took it is this amazing direction. He set up this thought: did Jesus have to die on Good Friday. This is a question with a long history in Christian Theology, and faithful people make good points on both sides. The sermon continued that if Jesus didn't have to die, then he died because humanity chose it. Humanity gets that choice, he said. We observe Good Friday because we need to confront that part of ourselves that would destroy the image of God (ready for a technical term? It's known as the Imago Dei) in another person. It ended up being a Dove sermon, and a really good one.
It snowed here as we went into church on Easter. No one alive today or born in the next 50+ years will see an Easter so early. I'm hedging my estimate conservatively because I'm pretty sure there's more life expectancy progress to be made.
Which makes me think...shouldn't we be spending more money on making sure nobody dies super early than on making sure a few people don't die for a long long time? Another post, to be sure.
The next post you should see from me is a "DMing the Bible" no later than Friday. Maybe I'll post the Palm Sunday sermon as a link, so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

I've got to get my geek on

Once long ago... long long ago. Somebody I respected and trusted turned to me and said, "Oh, Katherine, lighten up." Instruction I took to heart, and not a moment too soon, I assure you. Since then I have sought out past times that are not so very serious. As my hobbies, pastimes, amusements, and diversions amassed I discovered and then embraced my geek-hood.
So, when things get too serious, or when I have too many conversations of a professional nature, or even when I hear that little inner voice say, "Oh, Katherine, lighten up," I get my geek on. How? I'm glad you asked. Here is a small list:

Online Distractions: Ad Report Card on Slate.com and Stupidranger.com make for good reading, but if you're in need of less cerebral offerings there's always addictinggames.com. Beware however the name says it all. As the title of this post suggests, I spend a goodly amount of time on Funny or Die. If you haven't seen the landlady yet you owe it to yourself to watch; go on, you deserve it.

Video Games: I've already mentioned elsewhere about the trouble Rock Band is getting me into, in addition to that Civilization IV, Neverwinter Nights (just the first one for now, will give the sequel another try after upgrading the computer). Diablo 2 and I are currently on break (pathetic creature I am, I always return). Speaking of my pathetic side I have also fallen under the weird spell of time management games namely in the form of Diner Dash 2. Whenever the disk resurfaces, I will be playing Dungeon Keeper 2 again, it's simply genius.

The written word: Voracious and unapologetic reader that I am, this list would not be complete without noting some of the things I read simply for the joy of it. Jayne Ann Krentz and Elizabeth Lowell, Nora Roberts in her many guises, Laurell K. Hamilton (both the Anita Blake and the Merry Gentry), Neil Gaiman, Simon Green, Terry Pratchett, Jeffery Deaver, Kim Harrison, J.K. Rowling, Dianna Gabaldon. There are others, but these I always snap up when I see a new title.

Role Playing: I play with two different groups, and hope to be back in the DM's saddle soon. Currently one group is approaching the climax of an epic level campaign, While the other is just beginning. I'm playing a Gnome Duelist/Illusionist in the one and a Half-Elf Wilder in the other. The epic campaign is in Forgotten Realms, the one that is just beginning is one a recently re-vamped home grown world, and the campaign I am planning is on Ravenloft. I have in the past LARPed with Vampire, the Masquerade which was fun. I also briefly played Marvel, Call of Cathulu and TMNT, but those were years ago now.

On the Telly: Well that's a bit misleading, between Netflix streaming stuff and DVRs I hardly ever watch anything live anymore (especially since Heroes is off at the moment). Still things I watch: Torchwood and Dr. Who from BBC, Reaper and Psych, Heroes, Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, Supernatural, Anime like Ghost in the Shell and Descendants of Darkness, Red Dwarf, Farscape, and always always West Wing.

So that's a short list. What do you guys do for fun?

If anyone is interested

I will be preaching tonight at Eureka Christian Church in Eureka, IL. Here is a map. There is dinner beginning at 5:00 and then the service begins at 6:00. Dinner is free. I'll be preaching on parts Luke 23.
I would have posted this earlier, but I'm afraid Rock Band is overwriting the rest of my memory. Red, Green, Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Orange.

Jesus and the Living Dead

This is a sermon I delivered at United Disciples Christian Church in West Peoria. The text is John 11:1-45.

So I need to tell you up-front something you may have already been able to tell. I am a nerd, a geek. I play video games and read sci-fi, I enjoy tinkering with my computer, I blog, I'm into Heroes and Lost and BSG, I have more computers than tubes of lipstick, I watch fantasy and horror films. That may be why in this past week as I've been working with this text that I just can't keep the same image from lumbering into my mind.
You see, this week I've been thinking about zombies.
There are certain fears that we as a species seem to share: the dark, death, things that go bump in the night. When something combines all those things it has real sticking power in the human psyche. Zombies...the dead returned to a shell of a life numbly but relentlessly striving in unfettered consumption, provide the underpinnings of some of Hollywood's most enduring chills. Zombie tales are not new. Stories about people getting up after death go back all the way to ancient Sumer and the epic of Gilgamesh, and show up in the cultures of Africa, Mesoamerica, Asia, and Europe.
I think zombie stories have real sticking power because the best ones ask us to take time in front of the mirror and look carefully at some of the darkest parts of ourselves.
Consider George A. Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. While telling a scary story about the dead rising from their graves and hunting the living, this film also asked some difficult questions of a country wrestling with racism. Since then zombie films have asked us hard question about human community, emotions, war, violence, greed, class, and ultimately what it means to be human.
Which actually makes zombie films a lot like Lent. Lent is a season that the Church observes each years that takes us into the darkest parts of the Christian Scriptures and asks us to examine our complicity in them. It's a time to ask hard questions of ourselves, and to force ourselves to be honest.
The readings in Lent takes through Jesus' journey to Jerusalem ahead of Palm Sunday. In this reading Jesus comes to Bethany which would have been like a suburb of Jerusalem. It's so close to Jerusalem that Thomas is convinced that they will all be killed. Jesus has been called to the home of Martha and Mary; their brother Lazarus has died. Mary and Martha's home was a place Jesus and his disciples visited, a place where Jesus felt comfortable. By the time that Jesus and crew arrive Lazarus has been dead for four days. Jewish funerary practices dictated that Lazarus would have been entombed the day he died. Mary and Martha would have been about halfway through the proscribed seven day mourning period. Hearing that Jesus has arrived Martha goes out to the road to meet him.
What follows next in the story is something that I think is particularly valuable for modern Christians. Martha makes dramatic statements of faith in Jesus' person and power, but for all of that she cannot see a solution that Jesus can offer her. Death blocks her way -- the ultimate stumbling block. Jesus then gives her an assurance that echoes down through the ages. "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." Jesus performs the greatest of his miracles at the tomb of Lazarus. He called Lazarus out of his tomb; calling him to new life and away from death.
We read Jesus' promise to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live," at funerals, but it seems to me we should read it more often than that. We need to hear Jesus' words about the power of God to bring life from death.
It makes me think of another kind of zombie, actually. Jana Childers, who teaches preaching at San Francisco Theological Seminary, says, "We are in the very real danger of being dead while we are still alive." Our very spirits can wither and die within us. If the classic zombie is "the living dead" this new kind of zombie might be called "the dead living." Our souls are daily under assault. Each day we faces various forces of death. It may be the suffering caused by financial hardships: grinding poverty or demeaning work; it may be abuse: physical, mental, sexual, emotional, even spiritual (too often carried out within churches); it may be violence or unrest within our cities and halfway around the world. Whatever the cause, the effect is spiritual death, and results in people just scrapping along serving out their time rather than really living.
One of my new favorite zombie films is Shaun of the Dead, the British romantic comedy. The film open with people commuting, working as shopping cart returners and checkout girls. After the events of Zed-Day, the film closes with shots of these same people only now they're zombies. Their life before death was indecipherable from their new situation.
People, this is not what we were created for! Turn back about a page and look in John 10; Jesus tells us that he is the Good Shepherd who came, "that they might have life and that they might have it abundantly." It is this abundant life that Jesus offers us all. He calls us into life that is lived and lived abundantly. Jesus unbinds us from all that would hold us back from all that we were created to be. We are free from every death. Amen

The Plague, or why I haven't shoveled the walk

There's the scene in Interview with a Vampire (and I'm thinking the film here) where Louis has become terrible hungry and so he goes down to a part of town where lots of people are sick so he can have a bite out. The why of the scene is less what I'm getting at than the visual of the shanties huddled close to one another each with huge X's on the doors to warn others that this is a house that disease has touched. I feel like I should be putting an X up on our doors. I wonder what Peoria would look like if we had to mark the spread of the flu this season. It's been pretty bad. When there is snow on the ground we're supposed to clear a path for the postal carrier, but being as sick as we are neither Carson or I have felt well enough to do more than just the basic housekeeping (shoveling snow falls outside of that list).
I usually am able to muster through times of sickness with little or no consequence, but this year I have been knocked squarely on my butt. Carson and I have been little petri dishes -- microbial wonderlands. We've managed to pick up and share whatever is going on here. I still have a cough and the remnants of one of the worst ear infections I can remember.
All I can say is, buy Walgreen's stock...I alone have boosted their profits for this quarter.

DMing the Bible: Languages Known

Introduction:
The story of the tower of Babel occupies just a few verses in chapter 11 of Genesis; which is pretty short when compared to the Noah saga we just finished with or the story of Joseph which is practically a novella. However when people think back about the Hebrew Scriptures I would be surprised if this story wasn't on most people's lists. There is something cinematic about the whole thing, and that visual component helps it stay in our memories. In this DMing the Bible we'll take a look at this puzzling story, talk some about PC's, NPC's and languages known, and make a few suggestions on using language as a plot device.
The Text:
For years, Christian scholars working with this text were content with the same interpretation you would find in children's Sunday School material. In this interpretation, the people of the world get together to make a tower to reach into heaven. God, looking on, becomes threatened by humanity's creativity and ensures that people will have trouble speaking with each other. The conclusions drawn from the story suggest that the people's sin was hubris.
This surface reading presents some problems, however. If, as I asserted earlier, God created humanity as creative, striking people done for being what they are, what they were created to be, is monstrous. This is not the only interpretation available so let's for a moment consider one that was offered in part by Josephus, a first century Jewish apologist. It suggest that humanity was created for diversity and that the sin of Babel (if there was one) was the stifling of diversity. This would mean that the scattering of the people was not punishment as much it was the opening of new opportunity for growth.
Chapter 11 opens with all of humanity living in the same place sharing one language and one vocabulary. The repeats of the word "one" emphasizes the homogeneity present in the human community. Fearing being spread all over the earth, the people get together and build a city with a tower. The tower is not the emphasis of the project -- the phrase city and tower was used in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe a certain kind of settlement. In verse 5 God arrives and sees what's going on. Verse 6 contains what can only described as an aside. But how should it be translated -- if the people are not in open rebellion against God and God is not threatened by humanity's creative abilities, is not the typical translation ("And the Lord said, 'Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.'") lacking? A better reading is, "And Yahweh said, 'From what they have accomplished already, it looks like their plans to remain one people with one language in one place will succeed." (Hiebert, T. JBL 126 no 1, p 45) This translation has an almost regretful note and suggests that humanity being all the same is less that what we were intended to be.
Now God takes action. God mixes up their language so that people have lots of differences. The people form little groups of different people speaking different languages and living in different places all over the face of the earth. God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply can be carried out; as Azeem answered the little girl in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves "Because Allah loves wondrous variety."
The Game:
In D&D language is based in a character's intelligence as much as it is based in the culture from whence the character came. "All characters know how to speak Common. A dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, or halfling also speaks a racial language, as appropriate. A smart character (one who had an Intelligence bonus at 1st level) speaks other languages as well, one extra language per point of Intelligence bonus as a starting character." (PHB p12). The existence of Common is super handy for players and DM. The party never needs to worry about walking into a village where absolutely nobody understands them. The DM never need fear not landing an important message or plot point for want of a translator. Many PCs have at least one bonus point in INT (probably for no other reason than because it influences skill points); for non-human PC's this means at least three languages. Languages known, I think, is one of the most "min/maxed" aspects of character creation. Rather than referring to their back-stories players try and consolidate power in the party trying to cover common monster language groups and provide a language that the party can converse in other than common.
It all makes me think of that song by the Refreshments, "Banditos." In the refrain one of the characters tells the border guard that he is Jean Luc Picard of the United Federation of Planets. I had thought for years that the next line was "they speak English everywhere" rather than "he won't speak English anyway." Sure the universal translator was nice, but some of my favorite episodes were the ones when, for what ever reason, the translator wasn't working. So here are some suggestions for using language in play:

• Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra: Why not use some of the interesting ways that language barriers form for people on Star Trek? In this episode though the words are being translated they make almost no sense to people unfamilar with a dense set of local metaphor and idiom. Let characters mourn their lack of Knowledge: Local (obscure village)


• Oh no! I think he understood that: Don't skimp on NPC's languages known. Taking an extra ten seconds during planning to prevent characters from keeping their powwow secret from the bad guys might just make your night even if it doesn't make theirs


• La préservation de diversité: In our world where English is increasingly making the world's population a people with one language and one vocabulary there are places where linguistic diversity is being preserved. Could perhaps your players enter the struggle to preserve or demolish a language group? Adding divine or arcane overtones to such a mission might make for some interesting low-level encounters.
  

Please oh please

OK
I live in a racially diverse (for Peoria) neighborhood where many of the families are renters in low-income jobs. Many of the houses on our block are proud old homes that were built in the 30's when the neighborhood was one of the nicer places to live. Carson and I are not into gentrification. Just to make it clear at the get go. We were sure that we would have a nice time in our neighborhood as we restored the house we had bought, but it wasn't too long into our stay here that we began to notice ...things.
First to arrive on our attention was the excessive amount of garbage that seems omni-present. Now some of this can be laid at the feet of the garbage removal service the handles the route in the neighborhood, but not nearly all. Let me start at the beginning. Because of some questionable choices made by previous owners of our house and quirks of geography, our front and back yards appeared to be collecting trash as it blew in from other yards. Which would be bad enough, but no what was actually happening was worse. People were actually throwing trash into our yard. Pedistrians as they passed --if they finished with whatever they were eating, drinking, smoking, reading would just toss the refuse into our front yard. Our neighbors on either side who weekly seem to amass mountains of trash. And somebody, and I'd like to think it isn't our neighbors made a habit of throwing trash into our back yard. We have a high energy dog who needs lots of room to run, so we fenced in the back yard with a 6 foot tall privacy fence. I was sure this would be the end of it. People walking by would see the improvement we had made to the property and would stop with the garbage already, and blown-in garbage would also cease. Yeah, clearly I'm delusional. I want to say, "Listen people, and listen well...please oh please stop throwing trash into yards --yours or other people's; it's a part of what makes this neighborhood run down."
Moving on in my rant. Car horns. In many neighborhoods like ours honking is associated with drug dealing, and I know that it's a problem in our neighborhood, but the honking. Seriously it goes on day and night. Even the school bus as it drops kids off in the afternoon honks. People who carpool honk, families passing kids back and forth in visitation honk, people just driving down the block honk. Here's what I think -- if you would feel like you shouldn't honk on Grandview Dr. don't honk in our neighborhood. Get out of your car and knock on the door of the house you are interested in, that or be patient. I wish people would have a little more "pride-of place."
This neighborhood isn't run down because people are poor. This neighborhood is run down because the people who live here clearly don't want to do the things that makes a neighborhood nice. Short grocery list of other things that tick me off: dogs (barking excessively, chained up, too many in too small a pen), music (blasting, blaring, frequently after midnight), and truancy (kids should be in school every day it is in session for the whole day). Now to be fair I have to fess up that I am not a fan of some of the landlords in the area and would be happier if more people owned the homes they lived in. I feel this way in part because I think home ownership is a part of that "pride of place" thing I was talking about above. Maybe there's a part of my idealism that's in intensive care, but I'm beginning to think that it wouldn't change much for some of the people in our neighborhood.
You may say, well just move you haters--don't be hatin' on people who choose to live that way. To which I say this neighborhood can be a nice one, it has the potential...and no child, no senior, no anybody should have to live in a neighborhood where people don't take these basic steps.