Altered Faith?

I find the conservative Christians argument that role-playing games are bad because they disagree with Christian worldview and can alter your morals to be so vague that they could apply to any fictional activity.

Fictional books, movies, television programs, and even children's play activities can be (and are) created which disagree with Christian worldview and teaching, contain fantasy pastimes, create memories and could (in theory) prompt the evaluation of ones values. Should all fictional activities be banned? I don't think so.

I have been unable to find any studies that investigated the claims that role-playing games enforce non-Christian worldviews upon the players. However I have found that the views of the conservative Christians described in the previous section do not seem to be representative of all conservative Christians. In fact it seems that most conservative Christians ministries ignore role-playing games altogether - it's simply not an issue.

Additionally, I have been unable to find any opposition to role-playing in other cultural or religious groups. I did find reports on how Saudi Arabia had banned the Pokemon role-playing card game, but this seems to be because they objected to what they felt was the Star of David printed on the cards, rather than it being a form of role-playing game.

Intelligence?

have also seen many observations and references that state that role-players tend to be of above average intelligence.

Weather this is because role-playing encourages intellectual development, that these people tend to be attracted to the games, or that the industry is just being conceited is unknown. I haven't seen any research on this topic.

My personal opinion is that the former applies: that by forcing players to come up with creative solutions to problems the game encourages creative thinking, develops problem solving, and mental agility.

On the arguments presented by B.A.D.D.

B.A. Robinson for the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance compiled the following list:

• Michael Stackpole calculated expected suicide rates by gamers during the early years of Dungeons and Dragons. He used BADD's estimate of 4 million gamers worldwide. Assuming that fantasy role game playing had no effect on youth suicide rate, one would have expected about 500 gamers would have committed suicide each year. As of 1987, BADD had documented an average of 7 per year. It would appear that playing D&D could be promoted as a public health measure, because it would seem to drastically lower the suicide rate among youth.

• Suzanne Abyeta & James Forest studied the criminal tendencies of "gamers" and found that they committed fewer than average numbers of crimes for individuals of the same age.
• The Association of Gifted-Creative Children of California surveyed psychological autopsies of adolescent suicides and were unable to find any that were linked to these games. Their National Association has endorsed Dungeons and Dragons for its educational content.
• The American Association of Suicidology, the Center for Disease Control, and Health & Welfare (Canada) have conducted extensive studies into teen suicide. They have found no link to fantasy role-playing games.
• Dr. S. Kenneth Schonbert studied over 700 adolescent suicides and found none which had fantasy role-playing games as a factor.
• The Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games has investigated every suicide or criminal case that BADD advanced, and has been unable to find any caused by role-playing games.

To me this strongly suggests that the claims that role-players are more likely to commit suicide, and that they are more likely to commit crimes of any sort, is simply incorrect.