First, as I like to say, the backstory:

http://www.pvponline.com/2009/06/24/holy-roller/

http://www.pvponline.com/2009/06/25/come-on-inn/

http://www.pvponline.com/2009/06/26/girls-knight-out/

For those who don’t like clicking links, the story is that Jade, the central female character in the webcomic PvP has decided to run her  own all-girl game of Dungeons & Dragons with the other, secondary female characters.  After getting the “girls are into shopping and cutesy stuff” joke out of his system, Kurtz then works his way through the female version of Knights of the Dinner Table.  Samantha is the bad-girl-who-found-Jesus, Miranda is Jade’s sex-kitten sister, and Marcie is just there to fill out the table.

Now aside from the old “girls don’t belong at the gaming table” canard I can’t help but think that, like KotD, the real fool of this story is the DM, Jade.  She’s hell-bent on doing her own story that she insists that the other players forego what would make the game fun or at least comfortable for them: the existence of pseudo-Christianity and roleplaying.

Samantha is willing to play in a game with the existence of other gods, divinely-powered magic, etc.  She just wants her PC to worship the god she wants.  Now I know that I’ve “outed” myself as being a Christian (and, as a colleague of mine jokes, a “professional Christian”) and really wouldn’t care to import my real faith into a fantasy one, but what’s the harm?  Simon Green in his Hawk and Fisher series had the two main characters be Christians admidst an encyclopedia of gods.  It was so he could do the punchline “that’s weird,” but it didn’t detract from the story.  Let the kids play, that’s my motto.

And the “let’s squash roleplaying a vixen” bit?  I can’t figure out if Kurtz really thinks that’s a bad idea or he’s just playing to the whole Jade/Miranda big-sister/little-sister vibe.  If she really wanted to teach Miranda a moral lesson, she could just have the PC get pregnant or contract a venereal disease.

I know someone out there will say, “it’s not real, it’s just a story” but I am a little touchy about how gamers and gaming are portrayed in the public eye.  Jade is the “Voice of Reason” character, the Wendy to the Lost Boys of the PvP storyline, and so her thought process is supposed to be the sympathetic one (just look at the last strip).  And what we see here is that DM’s (or DT’s in this case)  are supposed to be narrow-minded, railroading hacks.