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.

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.
  

DMing the Bible: Denouement

Introduction:

OK. So it's been a while, and if you're just joining me ... welcome. Follow the tag links to catch the beginning and some explanations. When we spoke last Noah and his crew of amateur mariners were adrift in the boat that they had built at God's behest. This time we're going to pick up after the flood. The last few verses in chapter eight and chapter nine contain the end of Noah's adventures. Our focus for the text will be primarily on God's promises and the formation of the post-diluvian covenant. On the game side we'll look at wrapping up campaigns.

The Text:

The rains came and covered the earth, but Noah and company couldn't leave the ark right away. I think sometimes we get a little glib with flood stories; we see a big fluffy wave of blue pristine water pick up the ark, and then once the rains stop, the water recedes like a tub draining. French artist Gustave Dore etched his vision of the great flood (which you can see here), and they strike me as helpful, though icky. In August of 2005 those of us who live in America were confronted with the real grusomeness of a flood that wipes out civilization. Two and a half years later the effects of the post-Katrina flood are still being felt.

So it's really no wonder then that the p-source doesn't have Noah stepping foot on earth until a year after the rain stops. God tells Noah to head out of the boat and let the animals go do their animal things. God's instructions to “be fruitful and multiply” restores the corrupted creation; the world is given a new start. Noah builds an altar and preforms a sacrifice of an unidentified number of animals. The p-source narrator of this story points out that Noah offers some of every clean creature. This is an element of anachronism in the story. It would be a bit like my telling you about the Battle of New Orleans and explaining to you that Jackson hadn't checked his email, which is why he didn't know the war was over. The sacrificial system is established in the covenant at Sinai. Until that point animals were not differentiated clean v. unclean.

God then makes a pretty big promise. Take a look at verses 21b-22, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures , seestime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” God here is removing the curse placed on the ground after the incident at Eden; humanity may well have the capacity for great evil, but God will not scourge the planet and all the other beings with whome we share it because of our shenanigans.

As a perk for having made it through the flood, God allows humans to start eating animals which had hithertofor been a nopey-no. This comes with some instruction though. People should not eat meat with the blood still in it. This is because of what I call the threshold theory. In some Hebrew worldviews and to a lesser extent some Christian world views, places of threshhold -- that is experiences, substances or locales that emphasize the thin line between life and death, flesh and spirit carry with them a kind of power. Being too close to them carried with them risk, being too close to the presence of God was dangerous. Blood is one of those threshhold substaces; when it's inside a creature that creature is alive, but when the blood departs the creature dies. The other caveat to eating meat is that it's bad to kill humans. So Ravenous is right out, but it's more than that. God's stiff penalty for killing people is a sign that God still sees humanity as very good and creatures that are made in the likeness of God.

Then, God makes the first covenant. There are three covenants that God makes with people in the Torah, this one, one with Abraham (which I hope to get to in a couple months), and one with the people of Irael and Moses at Sinai. Covenants are one sided, God has made a promise that is not contigent on the actions of humanity. God establishes the covenant with every human and every animal that never again will God flood the whole earth. God sets as a sign of the covenant a bow in the sky, signifying that God's destructive powers are decomissioned. When we see a rainbow in the sky we can be comforted by God's steadfast promise not to wipe us off the face of the planet (since we seem to be plenty good at that by ourselves). Noah retires to pursue a hobby in vintaculture. Noah's sons and their wives get busy repopulating the earth and planting seeds of racial tension that will plague humankind for millenia.

The Game:

Your players have battled through dangers untold, fought their way into the castle beyond the goblin city, and discovered that the Big Bad ultimately had no power over them. The size of the denouement will vary based on the scope of the campaign, of course, but the very nature of calling it a campaign as opposed to the latest in your series of unrelated missions implies that there is some significance. The city/ area/ world/ plane is different now in a demonstrable way because of your PC's activities. Like Noah, PC's need a moment or two to have their adventures place into perspective. On the other hand, a DM can't say, “Well done, you guys!! Your dominance has killed off all adventuring potential for this world.” Here are a few of my suggestions for balanced Adventure endings:

• The 4 L's: Loot, Land, Leisure, and Legend. Because of the mammoth nature of their exploits, the characters have amassed large monetary rewards with which to rent happiness. Try not to limit your self to the piles of gp that accompany regular play; reach out to the others L's. Allow the PC's to be connected in a proprietary fashion with the geography of the places they have saved. These last two are more ephemeral, but can make or break a denouement. Leisure allows characters to pursue quests and projects that linger as concerns (e.g. pushy bard in town #2 that needed being put in his place, but plot drove the characters away before getting to it). Legend means that when the party shows up again in town #2, people will pay attention.
• Rock the Foundations: If you are playing in Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, you may feel like you can't shake the boat too much because of the pre-written material about political systems and power structures. There are a handful of work arounds, but my favorite is this: “Don't worry about it so much.” The second and third are nearly identical “play somewhere that is under-emphasized in the books” and “play some when that is under-emphasized.” The forth is to mess with the power behind the thrown. Chances are your PC's aren't looking to rule the roost anyway, but if they pushed out another set of advisers to become the regent's go-to guy and gals – that's snazzy too.
• Create a New Natural Phenomena: You want to show your PC's how much you care, but don't know what to get a party that already has everything? Let their last battle create a new constellation, add an aurora to the world in their honor, maybe cause desert to recede and fertile land to appear or make an oasis or hot spring. Maybe set a rainbow in the sky to remind everybody of the characters' accomplishment. Creating a natural phenomena gives players a sense of having changed the world even while you're rolling up the next Big Bad.
• Don't Reset Time: You may have wondered why I didn't include reseting time as a work around to the stable pre-built world; I didn't because I don't think it's a good idea in the long run. Just look at the increasingly insane Doctor for evidence of what happens to characters who are cut adrift of the consequences of their actions. In some cases it feels like a cop out, and in others it created a sense of futility in players. I just don't recommend it.

DMing the Bible: Sometimes we sail

Introduction:
This week we move into the Noah sequence. Let me say a few things about the way I approach this text. This is a story, one that has important theological content, but a story none the less. I believe that having a Biblical faith does not require a literalist interpretation of these texts. I believe these texts resist such interpretation and therefor those who claim to be literalists are in fact selectivists (for more about this, consider reading this by Peter Gomes).
The Noah story gains meaning when moved from "history" to "myth." We can then consider what it is that the people who told this tale were trying to say about their God. Consider, briefly, another story about a world flood, the epic of Atrahasis. In this story the gods created humanity to do the labor the gods no longer wanted to do themselves. The people multiplied and became very noisy -- the gods could no longer sleep for all the ruckus. No matter what disaster the gods set upon the people in 1200 years they had shaken it off. The crankiest of the gods decides to flood where the humans live and kill them all, but a nicer god gives a heads up to a wise man to build a boat. When the flood commences the gods become frighten by the flood and hungry because the human sacrifices which had fed them were suddenly cut off. After the flood waters receded, the wise man emerges from his boat an offers a sacrifice. The gods are so happy with the meal that they make the man immortal. The decide they will never flood the world again, and are very cross with the god who did it in the first place, but to keep the human population in check they institute death in childbirth, barrenness, and infant mortality. What kind of gods are these? What kind of world does this story describe?
The Text:
Genesis 6:9 introduces the beginning of the priestly (p-source) flood narrative, and reintroduces us to Noah. We are told that he is a righteous man which would go along with what we learned about him in verse 8, that he had found favor in the sight of God. The world had become corrupt, even the earth was bent because humanity by-in-large was messed up. God resolved to wipe out the corruption of the earth and the people that caused it. God gives Noah precise instructions on making this ark. This boat would be roughly square or rectangular and would bear little resemblance to the stately craft this story usually calls to mind. God also gives clear instruction to preserve the multitude of creatures that God had created and declared "good." Now if you compare the instructional verses you will see what I mean about texts being resistant to literalism. 6:19 and 20 read, "And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive." If you read on into chapter 7 however you'll discover verses 2 and 3, "Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth." Noah gets the creatures and loads everybody onto the boat. Then the waters came and flooded the earth.
What theologically can we draw from this part of the Noah story? As compared to the world and deities described in the Atrahasis epic, this narrative tradition has a world that was created good and people that were created in the image of God and called very good. The God of these tales is one that demands justice and rectitude, and though corrective action needed to be taken (which caused God grief cf 6:6), planned ahead for the survival of life.
The Game:
Full Disclosure: I am not a boating person. I have lived in landlocked parts of the US my whole life and have only spent fleeting vacations on the shores of great bodies of water.
Recently I've been playing rather than DMing, and in a couple of the campaigns we've been playing long distances need to be traveled, sometimes by land and horse, and rarely the most efficient path took the party by boat. Mostly these trips were undertaken with the assistance of a loyal crew under hire, so role-playing decisions regarding the piloting of crafts was fairly limited. Once the party did have to sail a large pirate ship without NPC assist. The role playing sounded a bit like The Princess Bride, "Hurry up. Move the thing! Um ... that other thing. Move it!" Clearly we were not up to snuff on our nautical lingo, but I had a great time and I think these sessions were some of the most fun of that campaign.
I can't help but think of Noah when ever I look back on those sessions. Here is a man who (nominally) is living in what would later become Iran/Iraq; he was probably painted as a person engaged in desert climate subsistence agriculture. In this world there is precious little water, but one day God shows up and says I've decided that you should build a boat, fill it with animals, and sail it aimlessly for the better part of a year while I cover the face of the planet with water enough to drown all life. Of course you'd want to take on such an important "save the cheerleader" kind of mission for God, that doesn't mean that you know how.
One of the appeals of fantasy role-playing games is that through a group imaginative process people can take part in steering characters who can achieve and preform beyond the abilities of the players in their real lives. This means, in part, that the characters know things that the players don't. While this usually has little impact on game mechanics, it does hamper role playing from time to time. Players worry that they will be penalized for saying or doing the wrong thing because of their own ignorance. I would guess that most of our role playing groups do not have access to stores of naval information and marine strategy. So what do we as DM's do? Avoid ocean going adventures? Make sure there is always a crew hanging around? Here are a few humble suggestions:

• Go on and buy the book: Wizards of the Coast is like a benevolent, but demanding god. There are so many great resources out there, so many pretty books and tiles and miniatures. But they are so very costly to own. However, if you anticipate spending much time on boats, the Stormwrack resource may be a wise expenditure of thirty-five bucks. Share relevant passages with your group, learn new things...educational and fun!
• Cheat, a little: If the point is to challenge players to the point that they no longer want to play, by all means do exhaustive research into vessel construction and navigation and require that they come up with realistic role playing. If, on the other hand, the point is to have fun and enjoy one another's company, you may choose to let "Hurry up. Move the thing! Um ... that other thing. Move it!" suffice for genuine docking procedure.
• Give them the tools: I have long loved the folding boat, a wondrous item in the DMG. I'm gaga for mounts that can shrink to statuettes. What if there was an artifact level item that had some of the elements of the folding boat but was also crewed by departed sailors. An interesting plot twist would be if these sailors are there by some kind of evil magic, then using said vessel would carry some kind of karmic penalty. One the other hand, this might be a little like an afterlife for sailors faithful to a certain god who after death continue to sail in the god's service on behalf of special chosen types.

Dming the Bible: PCs from beyond the Prime

Introduction:
The text for this week moves us from the genealogies of chapter 5 and into the Noah narrative of chapter 6 (which we will in theory cover next week). This prologue to the flood provides us with many bizarre details that interestingly enough get skipped by those who believe in the literal truth of the text.
The Text:
Genesis 6 opens with the natural result of all those generations having other sons and daughters. The world is beginning to feel full and there are a rather lot of unnamed women running about. Characters known as the sons of God decided that they would make swell wives. Now we can't be very sure who these sons were, whether they were human beings of great renown or holiness ( both things that might have resulted in appellation of the title) or spiritual beings who were actually the children of God and some mate (some in early Israel assumed that the Canaanite goddess Asherah was God's wife). This latter belief would not have been out of place in the ANE or even out of place well into the common era. The world was full of the unexplained and mysterious; it seemed a reasonable bet that the world in which we lived was full of supernatural agents who influenced the world and our lives in ways beyond our control. The gods of all the surrounding cultures got married and had children, some of whom had relationships with mortal men and women. In verse 4 we learn that the name of these half-breed children, Nephilim. The Nephilim were great warriors and legendary heros. Verse 5 says that people were getting pretty wicked, and the badness level was particularly high for a world of our size. Some have suggested that one of the signs of this depravity is the tale of the Nephilim; that the mixing of supernatural and human stocks was an affront to the natural order. In this story, however, there is no indication that the Nephilim were anything other than important and noble characters.
The world was getting it's wicked on, and that was something that irritated and angered God. Verse 6 tells us that God was sorry to have made humanity, "it grieved him to his heart." God resolves to wipe out humanity along with everything else. Then God remembered that he kinda liked Noah (who we'll talk more about later).
The Game:
In campaign settings like Forgotten Realms, the gods and goddesses are near-by, active in the world and meddlesome in the affairs of mortals. In addition to the recognized gods and goddesses there are a host of other spiritual beings (extra-planar creatures). Like in our text today, a world brimming with such creatures would inevitable spawn races of hybrids: in game terms, the elemental Genassi, the Aasimar and their lower planes brethren the Tifling.
I have been playing an Aasimar in a long ranging campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting, so I for the first time have been thinking about these races and how I would run them as a DM. The first consideration is, how weird are they: Planetouched characters are not all identical, like mutt puppies the various lineages show up differently in different individuals. ECL is your friend (and while it may not be the player's best friend it can be helpful to them too) use the ECL to determine how unexpected or odd the character should seem to the general populace. A character with and ECL of 1 will seem much more tame to NPCs than would an ECL 3 or 4 character. The second consideration is, how many are there: Is your party made up of planetouched, are there two or three, just one? The more planetouched you have in the party the more of an acceptance problem they're going to have, but it's a fabulous opportunity to move play off the prime. However if there is only one character, chances are that even if the evil wizard could spell her to some other plane, you're not going to want to run a single player adventure while everybody else gets bored and looses interest.
A third consideration on a more adventure writing note: maybe it does mess with the natural order of things. An interesting story line might involve PC's being asked by one god to keep other planar or spiritual beings from fiddling with a particular population and making more planetouched. Another story line might see the characters protecting infant or childling "Nephilim" from angry or regretful deities.

DMing the Bible: This guy begot What's his name

Introduction:
Ah, the begots...the foil of so many readers, the bane of study, the bore of the book, in this installment of DMing the Bible we're going to tackle all the first testament genealogies in one extravaganza blowout. While the modern reader may skip over these texts whenever they appear (and they appear with frequency), to the communities that handed done these texts first in oral then in written form they represented important, crucial information about who they were as a people and about their relationship to the land and to God.
The Text:
The genealogies in question begin at the end of Genesis 4, dominate Genesis 5, pick up again after the Noah narrative in Genesis 10 and 11, and are featured in Genesis 36, Exodus 6, Numbers 26, etc. Being able to claim connection to people in generations past imparted a bit of power to the present generation. The genealogies may well have been used by people in the ANE to establish legitimacy for office holders, or as a kind of calendar to track the when of seminal stories. They also held the people together, and, because so many places shared the names of important people in the lists of ancestors, held them to the land.
In the ANE, staying close to the land, having claim on it, was important not just for property reason. It was believed that gods had specific portfolios that applied not only to their domains (sun, fertility, harvest) but also to geographic regions and specific peoples. Therefore to lose one's connection to important ancestors meant not only losing claim on property or political office, but being disconnected from your god. Thus the genealogies in the First Testament carry not just political or chronographic information but theological information as well.
A prerequisite to any claim an individual could make power was a pedigree that demonstrated a god's involvement with your family. In the Bible this use of genealogies is used by the author of Chronicles. These books sought to show God's direct involvement with the history of the people of Israel, and the large sections devoted to lineages were included to show the deep connection between God, the land, and the people. This would have been especially important for the residents of Judea recovering from the shock of Babylonian Captivity.
The Game:
Biblical Genealogies kept the people of Israel connected to each other and to God. The people drew power (political, religious, personal) from the names of their ancestors. In the realm of D&D, player characters usually have to stand on their own two feet when it comes to claims of power. However I can think of a couple of ways to use this idea of pedigree= power.

• Ancestral Knowledge: lately I have become miffed with Bardic Knowledge, it seems to grant the Bard too much information too easily without any requirement that the Bard be able to show a clear connection to the source. If however the player could roll an ancestral knowledge check, then the character will mystically recall some forgotten lore that was known by a relative, now deceased. Clearly this wouldn't be an option for changelings and orphans who don't do research to discover their roots.
• V.I.F.: The very important family might be a feat that could be picked up first level, it would provide a +1 intimidate, +1 diplomacy, + 2 to two of the following Knowledge : Local, History, Nobility, Religion. When playing in the ancestral stomping ground these bonuses are increased by 1.
• Blood of Heros: This would be particularly the case for characters that wield an ancestral weapon, Characters who can trace themselves back to a particular hero gain bonuses in combat that make their opponent more likely to surrender or run away. This trait only works if the bad guys know anything about the legend of the heroic ancestor.

DMing the Bible: Party Murder

Introduction:
While much is made in popular theology about Adam and Eve and the incident in the garden, the story does not, in fact, introduce human sinfulness into the Biblical narrative. The story we're talking about this week does. In this issue of DMing the Bible we will look at the story of Cain and Abel in greater depth and then talk some about party relationships.
The Text:
Genesis 4 continues with the Yahwist account (the j-source) of the family of Adam and Eve, this time focusing not on the parents but on the first two sons Cain and Abel. Cain is the first born, and shares in Adam's work with plants and agriculture; the second son Abel keeps the livestock. This is a fairly typical distribution of labor for inhabitants of the ANE.
Though God has not laid out a system of recommended giving (as will happen, at great length, in Exodus), Cain and Abel both come to make a gift to the Lord. The both bring gifts from their particular trade. Now when I was a kid in Church School, this story was illustrated and told with great frequency. The story and the pictures always showed Cain, almost Neanderthal in appearance, carelessly dropping of the rotten remainder of his crop (which were usually illustrated as new world crops like tomatoes and corns, but I digress). Clean, blond, somewhat frail, almost radiant Abel comes skipping along with the very first lambs of his flock. The suggestion in these tellings was that Cain and his offerings were clearly inferior to Abel and the offering of the lambs. The story doesn't paint such a clear picture. Abel did bring from the first of his flock, but the text merely tells us that Cain's offerings came from plants. Further it suggests that Cain cam first to make an offering, and Abel's gift was made in imitation. This is not all that surprising when one considers the meaning of their names: Cain calls to mind human creativity, Abel means "shadowy" and "nothing."
It is not clear why God accepts the Abel's offering and not Cain's. Biblical scholars and interpreters through the ages have offered several possible reasons: Abel's sacrifice really was better than Cain's, in later Israelite ritual animal sacrifices are preferred to vegetable, God favors the younger sons in most Biblical tales. The reason is less important to the story than simply that things have been tipped off kilter.
Cain is understandably upset, God has chosen his younger brother over him. God talks to Cain suggesting that the door to acceptance is not yet closed; look at the wording in verse 7, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well , sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." Cain has an opportunity to do well, but God does give warning about what a bad choice will bring. The way sin is described in this story it is lying in wait on the doorstep like an lone roller skate looking for chance to trip you when you're already late. God holds out the possibility that Cain doesn't have to fall for it, and if he doesn't the world would be set right.
As we know it doesn't happen, Cain lures Abel out to the fields and kills him. From this point on in the Bible there in no sibling relationship that is free of tension.God asks Cain where Abel is, and Cain responds with the classic line "I don't know; am I my brother's keeper?" Cain, who had turned the disappointment of his relationship with God outward and onto his brother, is now claiming that Abel and Abel's life and accomplishments mean nothing to him -- that they have no bearing in his life. God knows too well where Abel is and what the consequence or Cain's activity will be. In this case, God is not the punishing agent. The ground is turned against Cain, and so he can no longer stay and be a farmer. Cain says the punishment is too heavy, leaving the land he knew, and being removed from the land meant separation from God. Cain was afraid anybody who met him would kill him (we'll talk about this when we get to Sodom and Gomorrah) but God makes it so that people who meet Cain will know he's connected and cannot be killed indiscriminately.
The Game:
PC parties are often strange things. They are cobbled together of different characters with different skill sets, different races, different values, and different gods (sometimes even different pantheons). Yet this group are not just traveling companions who may bid one another adieu at any time, they are supposed to be a team. Teams in general can pull together and work towards a common goal. All these differences can lead to conflict in a party, and that tension has to work itself out eventually. As a DM you have a chance to provide opportunities for inner-party conflicts to be worked out in such a way that the characters are closer at the conclusion. Here are some suggestions:

• Well that's one thing we've got: The chaotic evil fighter and the lawful good cleric can't agree on much, but they can agree that the demons that are taking over the town are bad. Keeping players focused on places where most everybody agrees might help to bridge some of the gaps in the team building process.
• We call that Improved Critical: Each character has a place to shine (assuming a well balanced party). One way to keep characters from each other's throats is making sure that each character gets a chance to show their usefulness to the party and their competence in general. This is particularly helpful in getting evil characters not to kill off the good ones.
• All Aboard! Express to Therapy: Yes, railroading players is not a good thing, it frequently backfires and annoys players. But, if you were to do it in a limited way...like in dreams or in the dungeon of a mad, but beneficent wizard. It may give a player character or two a chance to work out whatever needs working out. Dream sequences work particularly well between sessions.

They went and killed each other anyway. Well, don't you feel a little like God. What happens now?

• Res and repeat: D&D can at times make death seem cheap; for moderate level parties True Res is not that difficult to come by. This solution gets your plot back on track but ultimately sets things up for a bigger confrontation later.
• Time to Depart: The dead character stays dead or doesn't, but either way the killing character(s) are cast from the party. Your players can introduce new PC's as you see fit and now you have a handy new villain to reintroduce at some later date. The exiled PC's player may be helped to stay involved in the game if you allow a little input about what that character does next.

DMing the Bible: Table Talk

Introduction:
Though this series not intended to be a verse by verse commentary, this third installment will focus on the third chapter in Genesis. In the first two chapters the world and all its fullness was created. The human species received gender and gave us our first cast of characters. Chapter three continues the distinctive j-source narrative as it explains why humans live in the desert instead of the lush garden setting for which God had created us.
The Text:
The first verse of chapter three introduces one further character, the serpent. The word used here is really garden variety snake, but in the Ancient Near East (ANE) the snake was viewed as a creature of supernatural quality. Because a snake will from time to time shed its skin and appear rejuvenated, they were believed to be immortal. Let's take a minute to talk about the serpent as it functions in this tale. I believe if we are to take this tale as a proto-"just so story," it would be inappropriate to draw the character of the serpent out as an allegorical figure. This is simply a character in a fable, and in the rest of our lives we do not need to identify talking animals in fables as agents or personifications of evil. The serpent approaches the woman and engages her in a conversation about the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil
In Genesis 2:16-17, God explains to the human creature that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is off limits for eating. By the time Eve and the serpent discuss the fruit of said tree, she has constructed a second layer of defensive legislation that prohibits not just eating the fruit of the tree but also touching it. The serpent suggest that it is not true that eating the fruit will kill you, but that the reason God gave humanity this rule is to keep you from being like gods yourself. Indeed Eve eats the fruit and gives some to Adam who also eats (though without first debating the question as Eve had done), and it turns out that they didn't die. The realized all kinds of things about themselves and their situation.
God, in the habit of walking in the garden, finds the people and gets Adam to tattle on Eve. In the punishment phase of the trial God makes the world as people living in the ANE would find very familiar: snakes slither about and engender fear and loathing from people, pregnancy is difficult and dangerous for mother and child, the genders are not equal, and agriculture is difficult and thankless. As a kicker at the end of the story we discover that the knowledge of good and evil did make humanity like the gods, to protect them from immortality, God must send them away from the garden. And that's a story about why the world is the way it is.
The Game:
If this story were a game session, the plot places PC's (Adam and Eve) in a position where through conversation they must decide between competing claims of two NPC's. As a DM, I love running this kind of session. I enjoy the side of D&D that encourages people to think through problems and decide upon courses of action. This kind of play demands that people stay more or less in character during play; it certainly means that players need to avoid "table talk."
I define table talk thusly: conversation that sounds like it might just be happening in character. For example anything that would prompt a DM to exclaim "Did you really say THAT?!?!?" or "You did WHAT??" is probably table talk. Here are some solutions.

1. Character "voice":The group with whom I play includes only one or two players routinely use an alternate voice for their characters, and so they have fairly adroitly avoided having jokes the make wind up in the mouths of their characters. This doesn't mean of course everybody has to play with crazy accents or affected speech impediments, but it may mean that a character may have a particular phrase that only gets used in character particularly at the head of a dialogue block.
2. The White Flag: My husband, Carson, is the most likely of our group to wander afoul of table talk. He likes to play out alternatives to the scene during the session (alternatives that would probably have horrible horrible consequences). Our group has basically agreed to let Carson say whatever he wants, with the knowledge that it will be counted as "in-character" unless he holds aloft a piece of white paper set aside just for this task. Whatever Carson says when the paper is up doesn't count. This is a rule that we only apply to one person, but it works for us given the nature of the group.

DMing the Bible: Gender Games

Introduction:
Last time we looked at the beginning of the Bible and the first of the creation stories. This time I thought we might look at the second of these stories. The first creation account is poetic, almost liturgical, which is appropriate as the first story is believed to come from a scripturally forebear known as the "priestly source" or "p-source." The account that is featured in chapter 2 is drawn from what Christian Biblical Scholars call the Yahwist tradition or the "j-source" (because when Germans transliterate Hebrew the letter 'yod' becomes a 'j'). The account is more personal, a little more fable-like, and the one the one that is easier to put on Sunday School felt boards.

The Text:
God again creates the world out of an extant collection of matter. In the first tale the material was described as water; this time the land is described as barren and desolate for lack of moisture. God makes a man-creature, a dust-thing, as one of the first creative acts. Notice I didn't say man; the word in Hebrew is most closely related to the word for dirt. In translation, the word is sometimes rendered human or human-being; what is most important to keep in mind is that until we get to verse 23 "the man" does not indicate a male gendered person.

God places this creation in a garden where all sorts of fruits and vegetables veritably spring out of the ground (can you tell this account was written by desert subsistence farmers?). The garden is feed by the four great rivers that provided water for much of ancient Mesopotamia.

God gives the creature the task of managing the garden. God decides that being alone on the earth is not the way life should be for the creature. God makes all the animals just to see if the a match for the creature. God brings each animal not just for a blind date, but also so that the human can name all the other creatures. God and the human run through every animal, but no partner was found. Male and female are created when God splits the creature in two (check out Rabbinic interpretations of this story for very specific ideas about how the split took place).

The Game:
Most games of Dungeons and Dragons use as backdrops richly detailed worlds that have at their hearts the late middle ages or Renaissance Europe. This was not a time well noted for sweeping equality between the genders. Truth be told our own time is not known for sweeping equality between the genders. The designers of the third (and later) edition D&D took great pains to distribute gendered language evenly making it clear the they were trying to describe a world where men and women were equal partners in the waging of war and the building of civilizations. My interpretation of the text (Genesis 2:4b-25) suggests that in God's world design the genders were also supposed to be equal partners

With all of that said, it is very difficult to fully eradicate gender roles from role playing sessions. Here are some suggestions:
1. Watch your NPC's: Are your bar keeps always wenches? Is the head honcho of the land always the King, noble Lord, or Herr Mayor? Try writing against the period stereotype. If you use pre-generated materials see if they are balanced--most materials can be gender swapped on the fly (just give the physical description a look-see first, and tweak as needed
2. Consider the options: If there is simply no way to even the actual distribution of males to females, check out the wide spectrum of masculinity and femininity. Is it possible the Master at Arms is a gentle and nurturing man? Can the mayor's socialite wife lead the local athletic efforts?
3. Roll with it: Be unambiguous about the values of a society that does not hold either males or females in high regard. Use the tensions of unjust gender roles as a plot point or opportunity for players to shine in problem solving or role playing.

DMing the Bible: When God Began Creating

Introduction:
For our first outing into scripture I thought we might begin at the beginning. The beginnings of the Genesis (a book the by its very name talks about beginning) are not in fact believed to be the oldest parts of Scripture (that honor probably lies in the text of Job), but they are of course the most foundational. Humanity has been for time immemorial as concerned with what came before as with what happens next. Large portions of the oral tradition are dedicated to describing the beginnings of thing, and the traditions that contributed to the formation of the Bible were no exception. In Genesis we have two different stories about the making of the world.
The Text:
Genesis 1:1-2:4 is the first of these accounts, and the one I'd like to use as springboard this week. The text as it was written in Hebrew carries a bit more ambiguity that does any one English translation. For example "Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets." Can satisfactorily be translated "When God began to create the heavens and the earth", "In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth", or "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In this account of the creation though there was matter already present there was still the need for divine creative endeavor to render either heavens or earth as fully created.
The matter that existed prior to creation was all jumbled up and God set about making things better (or good if you prefer). God sends the divine breath, or wind, or Spirit out over the world as it stood and separates light from dark, rain and clouds from terrestrial waters, water from dry land, and seasons from one another. Once proper order had been established the earth could bring forth plants and animals of every sort. After all of this God says (to somebody, but we're left to wonder who) lets make women and men in our image, lets make humankind like us in this natural world. Having done all these things God declares it all very good and takes a day to reflect on the labor of creation.
The Game:
This seems like a lovely text to keep as a conversation partner when considering what was once called the ethical alignments (i.e. Law and Chaos). While it may be argued that the struggle between the moral alignments (Good and Evil) lies at the heart of the majority of global conflicts in fantasy settings, it is not to say that it is the only way it has to be. The campaign setting of Dragonlance, for example, features the lawfully aligned people of Krynn, good and evil alike, battling against the forces of chaos.
It is fairly safe to say that God, as described in Genesis, is operating in a Lawful world view. However unlike many constructed worlds in role playing, there is not a diametrically opposed deity featured in the story. The chaos just is, and God's effort on the behalf of order are not explicitly opposed.
As a DM, it is sometimes tempting to make things tidy and symmetrical for your players. Lawful paladins find natural enmity with the chaotic Robber-king. Having an interesting villain lends face to the forces of disquietude that have been raising the anxiety of local town halls or noble lords. What about the times when things just are? While I would not suggest making a villain-less plot line the major feature of your next campaign, it may be interesting to engage lawful characters of mid to high levels in rectifying chaos caused by a world/ plane's natural process.

DMing the Bible: the beginning

Apologia:
As the series title has indubitably raised anxiety in a few of you let me first of all spend some time talking about Role Play (in particular D&D), religion, and civility. As my user profile notes I am both a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and an enthusiast of role playing games (btw the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a denomination of withing the wider religion of Christianity Check this out for more info). I see no inherent contradiction between the two in much the same way Christian Cubs fans see no basic conflict in their love of God and their enjoyment of Wrigley Field and baseball.
This section is called Apologia because I want to give an explanation I hope will persuade those who are uncertain. Though wittier people than I have placed fingers to keyboard as apologists of role playing to the Christian community, I would like to throw in my two cents. As a Christian I believe that in the person of Jesus, God redeems the world. Reconciling all things through the power of God's amazing love. This activity of reconciliation and redemption is lived out on both the individual and the cosmic scale. On the individual scale God calls people away from broken lives and into new a life and an experience of unparalleled wholeness. Nothing in the experience of a healthy role-playing group damages a person's ability to live such a wholly holy life.
Children, listen to me; if you take part in a group where you do not feel you are safe to be the person you are called to be, if you find yourself in the midst of a group of people who will not accept you as a unique and lovely Child of God-- I don't care where you met these people: at church, at role-playing, at school --get away from them post-haste. People like that are not pursuing a hobby, worshiping God, or attending to their studies they are being abusive. Call it what it is and find yourself a new group with whom to hang.

Methodology:
Here on out I will be looking at Biblical texts with the eyes of a Biblical Scholar and as a Dungeon Master. I will select these texts at whim. I have in mind to talk some about character classes of all types, alignments, play techniques, campaign settings, plot devices, and combat mechanics (oh it's in there, and I won't even have to stretch). Biblical Quotes will come from the New Revised Standard Version, and role playing materials will come mostly from core rulebooks of Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5. You may find it handy to have access to these materials.