My buddy Scott wrote me recently to ask if I happened to know why the Together for the Gospel blog has gone silent. I took a look at the blog and, sure enough, it has not been updated since April. I snooped around some. As far as I can tell, the reason the blog has not been updated is this: the four “friends” are no longer talking to one another. There is a bit of a spat going on that they’ve been unable to resolve. I gave this scoop to Scott and thought I’d let you in on it, too. Here’s what I wrote him.
You probably knew this already, that after the Together for the Gospel conference wrapped up, all of the speakers went back to Al Mohler’s place to relax and play some Dungeons & Dragons. They’re all huge fans of the game and have been gaming together for years. Dr. Mohler has a whole gaming setup in his library. It’s pretty impressive, really. He’s great at painting up the D&D miniatures and has an extensive collection of them.
Anyways, a couple of hours into a quest, when they were clearing out a dungeon, there was some kind of argument over whether Dever’s level 6 dwarf ranger had actually destroyed Mahaney’s level 7 cleric. I guess Dever happened across an enchanted Threnalian war blade that he thought would enable him to balance Mahaney’s Inflict Moderate Wounds spell, so he attacked. But, as it happened, he ended up losing. He misunderstood the ratings of his gnashtooth chainmail, not realizing that it costs him -3 HP against clerics (which is funny because that’s pretty common knowledge). Dever came on strong and inflicted a fair bit of damage with his new sword, but Mahaney kept casting regenerate spells to fix it up. He also cast some spell (I never found out which) to counter the benefit of the dwarf’s surefoot boots. He actually ended up winning by a pretty good margin. This kind of swung the balance of the game. How could it do otherwise, really?
Mohler, playing a level 4 halfling bard, turned on Duncan’s elf rogue even though they had earlier decided to work together (and had even completed the Caverns of Shaagh quest together, and you know how long a quest that is!). So suddenly you’ve got Mohler’s halfling ditching Duncan in favor of Mahaney. Piper was dungeon master and ended up ruling in favor of Mahaney and Mohler! Well, you can imagine how well that went over. Dever said something about “not as well as I deserve” and threw a handful of 20-sided dice at Mahaney. C.J. told Dever to preach this to himself, and smacked him upside the head with the rule book (The 4th Edition one from Wizards of the Coast, which, as I’m sure you know, is like a six-pound hardcover). Mohler tossed a glass of water at Duncan and told him something about “now you’re baptized too” while Duncan rolled up his sleeves and yelled “Time to bring on the hurt!”. And things just went downhill from there. MacArthur and Anyabwile waded in and did their best to break it up while Sproul sat back and watched the show, a single tear falling slowly from his eye.
So pretty well the guys avoid each other now. The T4G blog has gone silent, as has their World of Warcraft clan and the fantasy football league. I’m hoping they can work things out. T4G 2010 just won’t be the same if they won’t talk to one another.
That’s how I see it. I guess I could have gotten confused in some of the details, though.
