What Makes a Religion?

Religions serve an incredible amount of functions. They can give us morals, teach us valuable lessons on how we should prepare for the future or give us hope in times of need. However, something doesn’t have to be an “established” or “traditional” religion to still be beneficial. In “Implicit Religion,” Edward Bailey puts forth the notion that any activity may be understood through a religious lens as long as it features: participants who make a willful commitment, both of time and resources; integrating foci, being feelings or ideas that the participant brings with them to the game or takes with them from the game; and intensive concerns with extensive effects, which indicates that the participants are able to keep the religious and secular separate and operate in either or both contexts if need be (18).

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DnD fulfils these requirements in stride. Players spend hours creating and role-playing their characters, DMs may spend years developing the areas in created cities and maps, and every player I know owns way too many sets of dice, and will continue to buy more anyways. Participants also bring their own notions of right and wrong to the table, their real-life moral code often dictating whether they see their character as Good or Evil, Lawful or Chaotic, or simply Neutral. The game teaches players good communication and problem-solving skills and rewards them for following the rules of the game through experience points and in-game loot. The way that players are able to differentiate the real world from the in-game world is an important part of the game. Without this distinction, players could act on knowledge that they have that their players wouldn’t, which is known as meta-gaming. This distinction also rebukes the claims of the “Satanic Panic” when it was believed players were acting out game aspects in real life.

Leonard Primiano has stated the importance of scholars not differentiating between “popular,” “established,” or “folk” religions, as it insinuates that “religion some-where exists as a pure element which is in some way transformed, even contaminated” (39). This emphasis on equality and validity of all religious forms, regardless of their institutional organization or lack thereof, is key to seeing DnD as a religious Utopia. The game places no more legitimacy on any system of belief then what they participant puts into it.

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In a study of college students comparing those who played DnD to those who didn’t, the people who played DnD were noted to have a stronger correlation to experiencing fewer feelings of meaninglessness than those who played less (DeRenard and Kline 1221). This study, as well as another around the same period, found no correlation between feelings of alienation form society and playing DnD, which was believed to be related (DeRenard and Kline 1221). This study and the incredible growth in recent years of the online community of DnD players show the game as a something that can bring people together and increase their feelings of life’s worth.