Kids Games Take A Turn for the Worse

The afterschool games on Monday and Tuesday have been rough this week. The Monday group was facing an enemy that thrives on bad luck and foolish decisions, and they kept making both. By the end they were in such dire straits that they had to appeal to "Bob From Accounting" one of the mysterious "uber-beings" in my game, and had to agree to work for him for a while. It's going to be a rough ride. This group has been trying for a long time to figure out when to be serious and when to be silly. That's a profound insight isn't it? Isn't there at time for levity and a time for seriousness? And when to do what isn't always clear. In my games, humor has great power, but that power can be a double-edged sword. Ecclesiastes writes about this endlessly, and in fact in our Bible study group (which both young RPGers and Dancers attend), talked about this a lot last night. Right now, an inability to navigate this has cost the Monday group a lot.

The Tuesday group is facing a different problem. After a fruitless search for more and more power to defeat one enemy (that ended in disaster), they have gone too far the other direction and focused too much on being cautious. As a result, they holed up in one place too long and saw a lot of the progress they made last week disintegrate when their current enemy took advantage of them staying too long in one place. Luke 14:25-35 reminds us that in life we need to be deliberate and to calculate costs carefully. But the entire life of faith is a constant risk-taking venture. It is about jumping into the pool and pushing life as far as it can go. When to be cautious and when to be bold is as hard a dichotomy to navigate as when to live into the power of levity and when to take life with utmost seriousness. Watching these kids navigate these problems in the context of the game is very interesting. Along the way, in the context of the game, mistakes cost a lot. But that is just helping them to think through these issues on a real-world level going forward.

Interestingly enough, as the kids in both these games explore these issues, they look more and more to Holy Power within the game. It brings up an interesting question. Is God the safe choice in life? Do we only turn to God when things get more dangerous? Is this a good or bad thing. We are talking about that a lot in those games as well.