Why Discipleship and Gaming go Together

In previous articles for Disciple Gaming Ministry, I’ve discussed what discipleship should look like from a formulaic perspective and how games can facilitate the process. I also discussed the need for deeply personal relationships for effective discipleship. I’ve even pointed out, anecdotally, how the relationships I’ve built at the gaming table helped me feel like I was a part of a community. The relationship a gamer has with their game, and especially their character, can inform and improve many parts of their lives, especially when guided by a skilled game master (GM). When pursued with intentionality, tabletop RPGs (TTRPGs) become an ideal tool for Christian discipleship.

If we look at discipleship examples from Scripture, such as Mark 4:1-201, we see Jesus teaching his audience through stories and then engaging in conversation with his disciples to answer their questions and help them understand the lessons he was teaching. Jesus did more than simply provide a lesson and then disappear. He taught, engaged, clarified, built relationships with his disciples, and then sent them into the world. In the modern era, TTRPGs are a perfect tool to follow Jesus’s discipleship-through-storytelling model.

Discipleship and gaming go hand in hand because a game master and the players work together to tell a shared story, and ideally with similar group goals in addition to their individual player and player character (PC) goals. From a purely secular perspective, TTRPGs provide players with a sandbox that allows them to experiment with various moral, social, and philosophical decisions without the same risks presented by making those decisions in the real world2. For example, if a group of PCs approaches a bandit village with the intent of freeing innocent hostages, they can negotiate their way through the encounter to free the hostages with diplomacy, or they can go in with swords drawn and eradicate the bandits. If they choose violence, when the action is over, no real people will be hurt, so they don’t have to face a military tribunal, international court, or spend the next few months, years, or decades going through trauma therapy. The players leave physically unscathed, even if the PCs and the fictional world at large will have to recover.

Players certainly get attached to their PCs, and the consequences of their actions often matter to the players since they don’t want their PCs to come to harm. Hollander (pp. 323-327)2 suggests that players and their PCs have a enough in common that the overlap, or bleed, from player to PC and vice versa gives players a reason to play the game as if their characters’ choices and consequences matter. Winardy et al. (pp. 821-828)3 found that the emotions experienced in-game are just as real as emotions that are experienced in every other aspect of life. Moreover, players sometimes choose to put themselves in situations that allow them to experience both positive and negative emotions in-game to broaden their understanding of those feelings, to process events from their past, and gain a new perspective. To the players, actions, consequences, and the feelings experienced at the table matter!

In a campaign I’m currently running, one of the PCs died. The player was, understandably, upset. The other players scrambled to purchase a resurrection spell (an option in Dungeons & Dragons that is, notably, unavailable for real people!). But because of the events of the story so far, and the actions the PCs have taken to date, that won’t be an option for the foreseeable future. Knowing this, the players are approaching situations differently than they have in the past. When PCs get near death, there is real fear, but when they overcome that fear, the excitement is equally genuine.

It’s also worth noting that the bleed between player and PC can be a two-way process2, 3. Players often put a lot of themselves into their PCs, but the life-lessons they learn as a result of their PC’s actions can inform how they might respond to similar (though relatively analogous) situations in their real lives, whether it be politically, socially, economically, or religiously. Neither the players’ nor the PCs’ lives exist in a vacuum. They affect each other, even when players intentionally limit bleed to avoid excessively negative experiences3. When they put effort into curating their experience to improve their lives, the games add significant value to both the player and the people with whom they interact3.

Mechanically, then, TTRPGs give teachers and disciples an incredible opportunity to face challenging situations that require a carefully considered response. They get to roleplay resolutions to the challenges they face in a controlled environment. It’s like that work training seminar you were forced to go to, but fun because there are good snacks, colorful dice, and magic (and/or lasers) involved. And when players are intentional about it, the skills learned and practiced at the table carry over to many aspects of the rest of their lives3.

Similar experiences are available in some video games, of course, but software and hardware limits put restrictions on the types of actions players can take. Those restrictions are loosened when a skilled GM opens the world to allow players to explore the world and experiment with ideas like morality, doctrine, and social norms. As an avid video game player, I think they make a great tool for discipleship (a topic for another day), but TTRPGs are far more versatile.

Finally, it’s critical to remember that intention is an important aspect. Going back to Scripture, it’s clear that teachers and disciples pursued relational education with purpose. Lessons may be learned at the gaming table without the GM or players’ preplanned efforts3, but discipleship starts with the conscious decisions to teach and learn (see Matthew 4:18-221 for just one example). This will extend to discipleship at the gaming table. When players sit down with the goal to learn something, and a GM prepares a scenario in which that lesson can be learned, the game becomes about more than just having fun. When the goal is to learn biblical truth and practice doctrine, the game becomes relational discipleship within a community of believers.

Sources and Notes

1 At Disciple Gaming Ministry, we encourage people to read the Bible using an accurate translation that is also easy to understand. With that being said, the translation we use is the ESV® Bible. The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

2 Aaron T. Hollander, “Blessed are the Legend-Makers: Experimentation as Edification in Dungeons & Dragons.” Political Theology. Volume 22, Issue 4, pp. 316-331 (2021). https://doi-org.ezproxy.ccu.edu/10.1080/1462317X.2021.1890933

3 Gary Collins Brata Winardy, Eva Septiana, & Santy Yanuar Pranawati, “Emotional Experiences in Online, Text-Based Tabletop Role-Playing Games.” Simulation & Gaming. Volume 55, Issue 5, pp. 812-836. (2024). https://doi-org.ezproxy.ccu.ecu/10.1177/10468781241250064