The Tolkenian role-playing typified by the game Dungeons and Dragons during the 1980s has given way to popular virtual reality-based video games that utilize occult and other mystical themes, reports the conservative Christian newsweekly World (Feb. 27).
Concerns about the apparently occult nature of Dungeons and Dragons and other similar games are likely to pale in comparison with such games as Heresy, which takes place in a “post-apocalyptic” world of religious and social transgressions or In Nomine, which portrays the struggle between angels and demons.
The major video company FASA has issued Vor: The Malestrom, where evil energies have “broken the Earth up into a twisted shell.” What is called “surreal conspiracies” is a popular theme in the new games. The industry leader Steve Jackson Games has pushed this concept with their Illuminati games and settings. Writer Mark Wegierski writes that these games cater to a “thoroughgoing nihilism,” with their notion of “surrounding powerful dark forces.”
(World, P.O. Box 2330, Asheville, NC 28802)