4/24/2021 0 Comments Road To Gaming
In the mid-nineteenth century a board game appeared called The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement.Today fantasy role-playing is a market worth a billion dollars, if much of it online.It has all the usual elements typical of such creations but with one major difference or, maybe expressed more correctly, with an added dimension.The characters at play are not fantasy figures but are real, historical figures.
Also, the character one inhabits at the games start is not some fictional construct but rather the players truest self. This is role-playing for the sake of ones spiritual life, therefore, not so much role-playing as playing for real. His job then was to construct alternative realities, fantasy games, into which players might enter. He told me that his primary interest had always been storytelling; and it was through his capacity to tell stories that others entered into imaginary worlds. During those 15 years, however, Jacek was making his own spiritual and imaginative journey. It was a time when the intransigently Catholic Poland was declared atheist. Children like Jacek were raised looking toward a Red Star rather than the Star of Bethlehem. Like so many attempts to impose a reality other than the real one one in which the Fall and the Incarnation are central this failed. Poland is today one of the most Catholic countries in Europe. It failed on a personal level beginning when Jacek met a Catholic girl. It took years before he was received into the Church, but after many conversations, much reading and, no doubt, much prayer on the part of his future wife, he was baptized. ![]() Perhaps, it should come as no surprise that the birth of what would become The Road to Bethlehem board game emerged from Jaceks reading of the works of a 20th-century Polish philosopher, Feliks Koneczny, and in particular his book: On the Plurality of Civilizations. It was while pondering the question: What makes a civilization that Jacek began to feel the desire to turn his talents and experience as Games Master into something that would inculcate new values in his contemporaries. His motivation was a simple one: he couldnt find such a game to play with his family and so set about creating it. He wanted to have within the games universe the constituent parts of the Christmas story: angels, kings, shepherds, and, at its center, the Holy Family. He wished to help his followers visualize the poverty and simplicity of the newborn Babe. So, too, Jacek wants to help those who play The Road to Bethlehem to come to the manger with a renewed sense of wonder, using their imaginations, but also, and importantly, not to do so alone. The difference from other fantasy board games is that this game deliberately sets out to unite families as they make their imaginary pilgrimage together to Bethlehem. The game also provides a forum for the players to discuss the values and morals implicit within the roles and storyline. By so doing, it is hoped that the game will open new ways of discussing aspects of the faith, especially during the Christmas festivities, when many families and their relatives are together.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |