August 28, 2023 • 31 mins
For centuries, Freemasonry has been riddled with exposes and investigations into rumors and myths that surround and, at times, protect our Ancient and Gentle Craft from the outside world. In this episode, WB Jason Lee looks into the connections that Dungeons and Dragons and Freemasonry share in their portrayals in media and life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast,the only five star rated Masonic podcast endorsed
by the Grand Lodge in New York. Any opinions, thoughts, or viewpoint
shared during this program are that ofthe individual and do not reflect the official
position of any Grand Lodge appendant orconcordinate body from which that member may hail.
I'm your host, Brother Michael Arsay, co founder of Craftsman Online dot
com. A quick reminder, youcan now listen to this episode early and
(00:36):
add free with our new subscription offer. Click on the link in the show
notes for this episode to start yourfree seven day trial. On this round,
we welcome back my pastmaster, WorshipfulBrother Jason Lee, Pastmaster of Saint
John's Lodge, here at my lodgein Washington, DC. Welcome back to
the Craftsman Online Podcast, Brother Jason, Pleasure be here. Thank you.
(00:58):
I'm excited, and now I saythis for every episode, but I really
am because we go in so manydifferent places, and on this one we're
gonna be talking dungeons and dragons,and I know some of the stereotypes that
come. I'm sorry what my notesare completely wrong. Then I misunderstood the
promise I know that sometimes Dungeons andDragons has the stereotype or sometimes even a
(01:23):
stigma, And I found it interestinghere at my lodge in DC to come
across brothers that still play this onour adult age. I thought it was
just something that we did in theeighties as kids down in our parents base
room. So let's start there.How did you first get into D and
D and what made you interested inplaying? So for me, it started
around twelve or thirteen years old anda friend of mine received what I believe
(01:48):
is colloquially called the Red Box AdvancedAdvanced Dungeons and Dragons starter set for Christmas.
And this was, you know,something that we both were extremely excited
that he had received, and itwas immediately taken away from him while his
parents, who were both very veryreligious his father was a deacon at our
(02:09):
church and his mother was a youthteacher of Sunday School at our church,
while they could explore this a littlebit more. He'd received it from an
uncle who hadn't quite given the greenlight on this gift, and eventually it
was brought back to us, andincidentally, in a case of the old
man shakes his fist at the Cloud. We didn't really understand the investment that
(02:32):
we've been given because that red boxset is now selling on eBay for like
one hundred and fifty dollars. Backwhen I was about twelve, we started
in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Ithen moved on to what is colloquially known
as third Edition. I'm blessed tosay that I skipped three point five and
four, and I've recently been backin fifth edition, specifically during the pandemic
(02:59):
when Virtue Tabletop really took off fora lot of people. And yeah,
it has strangely been a lifetime ofinvolvement for me and on again, off
again, really surprisingly rewarding game forme. I'm a lot like your friend.
(03:19):
My parents forbade us from playing Dungeonsand Dragons, and basically our circle
of friends nobody really got into iteither. And I guess that's one of
this I mentioned. There's somewhat ofa stigma. I think the polite way
to call it is moral panic thatis around Dungeons and Dragons. And well,
I actually I want to interrupt youand say that the actual historic term
(03:40):
is called the satanic panic. Jeez, well that's what it was that my
parents thought that possession would take place, or that there's some some form of
devil worshiping, and I was likeout of a board game. It was
a gateway drug to satanic worship andsacrifice and all of the things. So
(04:01):
Rock and Roll, dungeons and dragons, and I'm sure to some people,
freemasonry all share that same connection ofthe evil triad of lizard people who are
coming to steal our children. Andonce you meet the people that are involved
with these things, you're like,they're just as normal as everybody else.
They're they're not exactly Yeah, it'sjust astonishingly enough. When we did finally
(04:24):
receive the box set back, thecomment that my friend's mother had was that
really the only evil thing that shecould find was that you roll three six
sided dice in order to create yourcharacter, So six six six was the
only connection she could find, whichtells me that she didn't really do a
(04:45):
very deep search, because there's actuallya lot of the like spells and stuff
that you can do. This arcaicgoing to that world. Now, there's
nothing that's written into that, butit draws from so wide a range of
our cake and our cane storylines.That it sort of accidentally hoovers up things
in the background. Well, andto me, people are probably wondering,
(05:09):
how does this even begin to connectwith freemasonry. But here's where it starts,
is that it doesn't so throw tomid reel. Well, there aren't
direct connections to the ritual or ButI think when you talk about the person
that's into dungeons and dragon, whenyou start to describe them and what their
(05:29):
makeup is, you also are beginningto describe a man who would be interested
in freemasonry, which is an openthinker, somebody who's interested in exploring new
ideas or new possibilities, that doesn'tmind being a part of a group that
seems like it's a cult or it'soff the beaten path. That they're an
independent person. They're an individual that'sseeking others just like them and doesn't mind
(05:50):
getting into traditional ways of meeting.What really fascinates me with this is that
it's a board game from my childhoodthat I never really ever got to play
with. But people are still playingthis the same way. I'm sure there's
digital or computer versions of it,but to see guys still get together and
roll the dice and do this tome, I would love to just watch
(06:13):
this as somebody in an audience.I think it would be extremely entertaining.
Because of the widespread availability of YouTube, that is literally a thing that you
can do now. You can actuallywatch real play podcasts of people going through
an actual adventure, either pre writtenor something from the Dungeon Masters imagination,
(06:34):
and they are telling the story infront of the podcast and you are experiencing
that. I believe Vin Diesel hada short where he was doing a couple
of live action recordings of his actualgames and they were textbook random encounter charts
dice. Everything was determined on thetable by how you rolled, So there's
(06:58):
the whole gamut of that. Thereare a lot of similarities in what people
can take out of the game.There are no parallels, accidental or intentional,
which is kind of funny for howmuch D and D did hoover up
in its creative process. They didn'taccidentally pull anything in from freemasonry that I've
ever been able to find. Wherethe parallels are is it is an outlet
(07:25):
for people to find an experience thatthey may not have ever had. So
in freemasonry, I have witnessed peoplewho would be debilitated by anxiety and stuttering
and stammering. Over the course ofthree years, become a chaplain and start
(07:47):
giving lodge prayer, and start movingthrough the places and stations at the lodge.
And I've seen them truly open upas transformed introverts. They didn't stop
being reverts, but they could suddenlycommunicate because they had been brought into a
community of people that created a safespace for them. We didn't care that
(08:09):
they brought an eight and a halfby eleven sheet of paper with letters that
were kindergarten big for the prayer.We cared that they said it, and
we cared that this is a personwho was putting effort into changing the way
that they handled things. We havehad a worseful master who in his own
words said that he was absolutely petrifiedof a leadership position and ultimately became worseful
(08:33):
master of the lodge and eyewitnessed amazinggrowth of activities that we did because he
had broken out of this mold ofbeing an introvert. Examples could go on
and on and on, But inthe same way, I have seen people
come to the table whom it wasobvious that it was a deep effort for
(08:56):
them to even walk up to mewhen they found out that I ran a
game of Dungeons and Dragons and askto come and participate. Like we had
more words exchanged in the process ofcoordinating when they would come over to my
house and play than we had exchangedin two years of our acquaintanceship. And
sitting down at the table and beinggiven a character, whether it was made
(09:20):
for them or they made it forthe game, and being thrown into a
situation where it's not you, MichaelRsay who's speaking, it's your character.
So you need to think about whatwould your character say in this situation.
And there's a lot of tropes aboutoh, it's what my character would do
that have some negative contexts, butfor the foundation of what it does to
(09:46):
the individual. For a lot ofpeople, this is their first exposure to
an environment where there's no consequence forwhat happens other than people might laugh and
everybody has a good time. There'sno risk of anything going wrong, and
everything that does go wrong they canblame on the dice or the character or
(10:07):
the big bad, evil guy inthey came. So I've seen people just
bloom in this process. And aftersix or seven months of playing, I've
seen them really a changed person,and I know that that is part of
a bigger process. It wasn't theysat down at my table and I made
(10:28):
them a better person. It wasan element in this process of their exploration
of how they could change things intheir life. This was someone who had
taken all of their efforts to justget out of the house and start going
to a running club where I metthem, and then got up the courage
(10:48):
to ask to come over to effectivelya stranger's house and play a board game
that they've never played before. Soit was a step in the evolution.
I like to say that when friendsand acquaintances find out that I'm involved,
the speed with which the question howcan I join? Is asked is staggering.
(11:09):
This statement is equally accurate from myexperience as a mason and as a
DM. I actually am a lotmore a lot more open about the fact
that I'm a mason than I amas a dungeon master, because like,
as soon as you say that yourun a d and d agam like,
oh, we should get a gametogether. When can I come over?
Right? Well, that's the funny. You as soon as you say you're
(11:33):
a freemason, you either get pepperedwith a thousand questions or it just soars
and nobody responds at all and there'sno attention made. But I think if
you said, oh, I'm stillinto dungeons and Dragons, I'm I'm a
dungeon master, people be like,how old are you? Like? Who
do you hang out with and dothis? You must be running out for
your kids, right I can.And I'm also thinking, you know,
(11:56):
as someone that was into D andD to hear the words ancient mysteries,
chamber of reflection, inner, sanctum, sanctorum, heremic legend, you know,
the things that are associated with masonry, those buzzwords. When you were
going through your initiatic experience, waslike twelve year old Jason that was just
discovering that red box series of Dand D. Was did he have a
(12:18):
part that night? Was he inyour mind there in a strange way?
Yes. So I had been originallydrawn to masonry because the History Channel special
on masonry were better for worse,it brought a lot of people in.
You know, I went through along ordeal of asking several people before I
(12:43):
found the lodge that I eventually entered, and that first night, I remember
sort of chuckling at oh, sothis this has a little bit more live
action cosplay than I expected, right, And even as a tabletop gamer,
(13:03):
you know, you have you havehierarchies of what to break it down into,
the classic high school stereotypes. Youknow, the jocks looked down at
the nerds, and the nerds lookdown at the tabletop gamers, and well,
the tabletop gamers definitely kind of lookeddown on the live action role players
and the LARPers, and the dividebetween you know, you're you're making a
(13:26):
little bit too much of a seriousendeavor out of something that's clearly supposed to
be a game. You know,how do you eat cheetos when you have
vampire fingers on? That kind ofthing? So I sort of chuckled to
myself as I was dawning the costumeand trying desperately to listen to the lecture,
(13:48):
as I was just generally hoodwinked aboutthe experience and and trying to understand
what was being said to me,and in the darkness, just having these
these images flashed through my mind thatreally sort of paralleled the creative imagery that
(14:11):
comes from tabletop gaming. You know. We did not have expensive props.
We rarely even had any type ofa map that was laid out. We
usually just had grid grid squares thatwere big enough for markers that we used
to move pieces around. The dragonfrom one quest often became a cobalt in
(14:33):
the next one, and it wasshaped like G I Joe figuring the whole
time. So we used a lotof creativity there to look at the space
we were in and see more ofit. So in that respect, yes,
there was a little bit of mychildhood that came rushing back in creativity
(14:56):
as I went through that process.Imagine we spent a lot of time,
I feel this season talking about theHaramic legend, but just that experience again
with being hoodwing for a majority ofit and really basically hearing the play that's
going around and this murderer and thismystery and all of these things. And
you know, and I can onlyimagine how much more vivid your experience was
(15:18):
and your imagination than mine, whichwas like, is this like an episode
of CSI. It's like, Idon't know what's going on right now?
When did I end in a bitbabyl Loot what Yeah, And to that
respect, I I feel like brotherJohn Nagi probably has an answer to this
(15:39):
question. I've always kind of beencurious about, is there like a fourth
or a fifth person perspective on theritual that we go through that looks at
things from a different angle. Youknow, the story that we experienced in
(16:00):
the first person as the candidate,and the story that we experience in the
third person in the audience, andthen the story that we experience as the
the cast members. All of thoseare telling the exact same story. And
I've always been curious, you know, what would the guard who turns the
(16:26):
fellow crafts away, what would hisexperience have been in that storytelling other than
the moment that we touched them.It's one of the things that we had
talked about was the recent Dungeons andDragon movie that came out, and what
I like about it is a nonD and D tabletop gamer, is that
I found it extremely entertaining. Itreally shed a light onto the story and
kind of the fantasy of Dungeons andDragons and did give you some clues a
(16:51):
little learning on some of the termsand what it means. And my thought
was was that a typical experience thatyou would have was that like a story
that you could purchase. So myquestion, Jason, is what would have
been one of your favorite D andD adventures in Why are you still so
attached to it? You can,in fact purchase adventures pre written. You
(17:15):
can run a game that is entirelyborn out of the imagination of the DM.
You can run something that's in themiddle. That's really one of the
things that drew me to D andD is that it is all things that
you want to try are possible,and the DM is really just there as
the arbiter of chance and understanding whatis going to succeed and fail and if
(17:40):
you do succeed, what is theevent of that and if you fail,
what are the consequences. For me, the most memorable experiences were when a
story was coming together in such away that I knew elements about the environment
that for obvious reasons, I wasn'tgiving away, and my party was desperately
(18:02):
trying to figure out a solution.And I can't tell you what campaign it's
in. I can't tell you ifit's pre written, it must have been
because of the nature of it.I can't tell you what they were doing
before. And I can't tell youwhat happened afterwards. I could tell you
everybody who's sitting around that table,and I can tell you every character that
(18:22):
they had, and that through aseries of events, they had a woken
an army of the undead ghosts,skeletons, zombies were all shambling, shambling
after them, and the party ranup a spiral column stairs on the outside
of the columns as opposed to onthe inside, and they were running and
(18:45):
running and fighting, the fighting retreatand they get to the top of this
column and they realize that it isjust fifty feet off the ground flat column.
They've just run to the top ofit, and in any direction they
look, they can see an archwaythat leads to some sort of a doorway,
but there's one hundred and twenty feetor more of open space between them,
(19:08):
as if a floor had been completelyeliminated. And I remember that I
had put in some sort of amechanism that in real time they had to
figure out what was going on.So in game time, they probably had
less than a minute in twenty seconds, and I told them, Okay,
we're going to give you a twelveminute window to deconflict what's happening here.
(19:33):
So they start tossing things back andforth and discussing how they're going to do
things, and everybody has different opinionson what they should do. And I
happen to know, because I hadthe module in front of me, that
certain archways had an invisible bridge thatled towards them, and that there were
on some of them, a straightshot directly to the archway, on others
(19:55):
there was a turn or a missingsection. And I remember reading through this
and seeing them struggling and thinking tomyself, this feels like it's ripped off
straight out of a movie. Whatwhat movie was that? Oh? Wait,
those Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones andthe Crusade. So now when you
(20:17):
describe that, I'm like, becausethat's the scene where you has to throw
the pebbles and I am sitting there. The party is still they are They're
descending into chaos. It is turninginto you know, the Lord of the
flies. I have the conch youhave to listen to my plan because I
have given them this time frame thatthey are rapidly losing time on. They've
(20:40):
wasted it for going out and gettingdrinks and somebody took a bathroom break,
and they spent four minutes berating thecharacter because the type of character that he'd
written up, so they don't realizethis is coming apart. And I'm just
looking at the clock and I'm thinking, how does that theme song go?
And without even realizing I was doingit, I starts humming, don't and
(21:08):
I have probably gotten three bars intoit, and my friend immediately to my
right, his head snaps at meand his eyes open up wide and he's
like, are you shooting me?And he grabs a bag of copper coins
and helicopters them over his head.As the coins go flying everywhere, I'm
(21:29):
like, oh, man, Igave this one away. And we rolled
to figure out how the coins aregoing to react, and they fall on
the invisible walkways and he chooses one, and he proceeds to keep tearing bags
of coins off of the cleric thatthey have in the party and using these
coins to lead their path to theescape. And I just remember very clearly
(21:52):
the surprise in myself that, youknow, three lines from a song had
given the whole stick a way.My friend's reaction to the realization of what
was going on and just the wholeexperience around it. I can still see
every element as though I was Iwas captured there. To draw this all
(22:12):
back to Masonic experience, I cantell you absolutely everything down to a fraction
of an inch that was on thattrestle when I was first brought to light.
You know, I remember that experienceso vividly to this day. I
can even still smell the bizarre airconditioning humidity that the room provided in the
(22:40):
darkness with a single column of lightcoming down upon me. There's so much
about it that is vivid that thosetwo memories clearly share the same sort of
crystallized moment in my mind of whatthat experience was. So you had me
at Indiana Jones, Yes, yes, Well we've mentioned this several times on
(23:02):
the podcast, and the aim offreemasonry is making good men better. So
I wanted to close out our timetogether with this last question on D and
D and how has it impacted yourlife outside of the game or like freemasonry.
Were there any skills or lessons thatyou know continue to be a part
of your everyday life. D andD was a very helpful part of my
(23:26):
pandemic survival plant. I got involvedwith several different virtual groups. I actually
purchased a virtual tabletop role playing gameenvironment and ran games for my friends who
were living in Colorado. Myself inWashington, DC at the time but unable
(23:51):
to actually visit my friends who arejust down the road, so we were
able to get into We were usingDiscord and you know, run this game
pretty smoothly in a virtual environment.I also got involved through another friend.
He brought me into a separate groupwhere I was a player, and I
got to really in that eighteen monthsthat I was involved with that group,
(24:18):
I got to play more as aplayer character than I had probably in thirty
years previously, just because someone elsewas the DM and he took a lot
of enjoyment to that. And Ihave friends from that that, you know,
I've never met in person, butI know them well enough now from
(24:41):
having spent so much time virtually withthem and just discussing with them in the
downtime and hanging out virtually that Iwould have zero issue inviting them over to
my house and have gone out ofmy way to visit some of them when
they have visited post pandemic. Soin the same way that masonry has expanded
(25:03):
my circle of friends and acquaintances.Very recently. I actually just met here
in Germany a German police chief whowas wearing a Masonic ring, and I
ambushed him in the hallway and shovedmy mit into his and all of a
sudden we were immediately having a conversationabout masonry just because of our handshake.
(25:26):
So the connection that can be there, because of the shared language and the
shared experiences, extremely valuable as faras ways of moving forward. You know,
for me, I am an extrovert. I've never met a microphone I
was afraid of, and I've neverfound a silence I wasn't prepared to fill.
(25:48):
So, you know, the thelessons for me have really been in
watching other people expand and how tohelp and how to foster them, and
how to create that safe space.And right now in the the new normal
that we have and the reality thatwe're looking at, you know, as
(26:11):
as we're recording this, you know, there's turmoil in Russia, everything is
still going on in Ukraine. I'mliving in Germany, my friends are all
in the United States. We haveso much going on around us that it
doesn't hurt for us to try tointentionally make safe spaces for ourselves and for
(26:33):
our friends, and there is zeroshame in any of that that anyone should
feel. And anyone who who triesto villainize that effort is really missing out.
They're missing out an opportunity for themselvesand for those around them, because
really it is just invaluable to havethat, you know. I remember when
(26:59):
I first became a Mason. Oneof the things that an old Masonic friend
of mine had mentioned is that thereal value that he took from masonry was
it was an environment for men tobe with men, and that he felt
that in his life. He hadat the time three daughters, he was
surrounded by women in his life becauseof work. He was a medical doctor.
(27:25):
He had six nurses underneath him,all of them were female. And
he said that really, if hedidn't have masonry, he felt very isolated
in gender and his was an extremelyextreme representation of that. But that was
for him, what masonry created wasthat safe space for him to be with
(27:49):
other men and to have those sharedexperiences that really men have. When you
talk about safe space, I haveto keep the laughing because we use the
discord server one of our brothers forLodge for us to have meetings at the
pillar officer level. And I noticedone time that there was the D and
D discord room channel whatever. I'mnot really a gamer, so I don't
(28:14):
know. And I went in thereand I had avoided going in there because
I thought D and dmon do notdisturb. So when I went in there,
that's when one of the brothers waslike, hey, are you into
D and D? And I'm like, well, I took a wrong turn.
I don't know how to answer thisquestion I had. Are you talking
about Dune? Yeah? Is thisa challenge? Abort? Abort? You
(28:37):
guys, we're in our forties,we still play this like wow. You
know, I think I think thatone of the things that my father in
particular, has had a lot ofdifficulty understanding as he has aged and witnessed
the world around him, and nowbeing in my forties and having children,
the the changing expectation of things.We don't stop enjoying something just because we're
(29:04):
older, the nature of which weenjoy it changes. You know. I
read very very little when I wasa teenager because I had a learning disability,
and it took me a long timeto understand why once I read something
I had it memorized, but itwas really hard for me to read.
And once I learned those skills,you know, I stopped reading the books
(29:29):
that helped me learn to read properlythat might as well be you know,
psychological study guides, and started readingthe books that I enjoy. I still
read. It didn't stop reading becauseI got older. But I also still
play video games. I still watchtelevision, I still play Dungeons and Dragons.
(29:53):
I just curate it in a differentway, and it is a much
more mature way than it was whenI was a child. And for my
father, he has recognized that heneeds to grab onto some of those things
that he had let go because hehad been trained as you know, the
child of the greatest silent generation thatyou know, you are an adult.
(30:18):
Now you leave all those childish thingsbehind you, and you go to work.
You make your money and support yourfamily. And now he and my
mother are retired, and they're like, what do we do with all the
free time? Hey, dad,you want to roll the six sided dice?
Well, this is my least favoritepart of the podcast, because I
honestly feel like I could talk withyou forever and always have been one of
(30:42):
the most engaging and fun brothers.But I do want to let you go
because I know we have that timedifference and some of us have to get
up tomorrow. You want to rollfor it. Yeah. If you've enjoyed
this episode, you can hear moreby telling Siri or Alexa to play The
Craftsman online podcasts or available on allshreaming platforms with new episodes every Monday morning,
and you can also listen to futureepisodes early and ad free with our
(31:04):
subscriber offer. Get the link inthe show notes to start your seven day
free trial. Until next time,Let peace and Harmony prevail.
Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast,the only five star rated Masonic podcast endorsed
by the Grand Lodge in New York. Any opinions, thoughts, or viewpoint
shared during this program are that ofthe individual and do not reflect the official
position of any Grand Lodge appendant orconcordinate body from which that member may hail.
I'm your host, Brother Michael Arsay, co founder of Craftsman Online dot
com. A quick reminder, youcan now listen to this episode early and
(00:36):
add free with our new subscription offer. Click on the link in the show
notes for this episode to start yourfree seven day trial. On this round,
we welcome back my pastmaster, WorshipfulBrother Jason Lee, Pastmaster of Saint
John's Lodge, here at my lodgein Washington, DC. Welcome back to
the Craftsman Online Podcast, Brother Jason, Pleasure be here. Thank you.
(00:58):
I'm excited, and now I saythis for every episode, but I really
am because we go in so manydifferent places, and on this one we're
gonna be talking dungeons and dragons,and I know some of the stereotypes that
come. I'm sorry what my notesare completely wrong. Then I misunderstood the
promise I know that sometimes Dungeons andDragons has the stereotype or sometimes even a
(01:23):
stigma, And I found it interestinghere at my lodge in DC to come
across brothers that still play this onour adult age. I thought it was
just something that we did in theeighties as kids down in our parents base
room. So let's start there.How did you first get into D and
D and what made you interested inplaying? So for me, it started
around twelve or thirteen years old anda friend of mine received what I believe
(01:48):
is colloquially called the Red Box AdvancedAdvanced Dungeons and Dragons starter set for Christmas.
And this was, you know,something that we both were extremely excited
that he had received, and itwas immediately taken away from him while his
parents, who were both very veryreligious his father was a deacon at our
(02:09):
church and his mother was a youthteacher of Sunday School at our church,
while they could explore this a littlebit more. He'd received it from an
uncle who hadn't quite given the greenlight on this gift, and eventually it
was brought back to us, andincidentally, in a case of the old
man shakes his fist at the Cloud. We didn't really understand the investment that
(02:32):
we've been given because that red boxset is now selling on eBay for like
one hundred and fifty dollars. Backwhen I was about twelve, we started
in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Ithen moved on to what is colloquially known
as third Edition. I'm blessed tosay that I skipped three point five and
four, and I've recently been backin fifth edition, specifically during the pandemic
(02:59):
when Virtue Tabletop really took off fora lot of people. And yeah,
it has strangely been a lifetime ofinvolvement for me and on again, off
again, really surprisingly rewarding game forme. I'm a lot like your friend.
(03:19):
My parents forbade us from playing Dungeonsand Dragons, and basically our circle
of friends nobody really got into iteither. And I guess that's one of
this I mentioned. There's somewhat ofa stigma. I think the polite way
to call it is moral panic thatis around Dungeons and Dragons. And well,
I actually I want to interrupt youand say that the actual historic term
(03:40):
is called the satanic panic. Jeez, well that's what it was that my
parents thought that possession would take place, or that there's some some form of
devil worshiping, and I was likeout of a board game. It was
a gateway drug to satanic worship andsacrifice and all of the things. So
(04:01):
Rock and Roll, dungeons and dragons, and I'm sure to some people,
freemasonry all share that same connection ofthe evil triad of lizard people who are
coming to steal our children. Andonce you meet the people that are involved
with these things, you're like,they're just as normal as everybody else.
They're they're not exactly Yeah, it'sjust astonishingly enough. When we did finally
(04:24):
receive the box set back, thecomment that my friend's mother had was that
really the only evil thing that shecould find was that you roll three six
sided dice in order to create yourcharacter, So six six six was the
only connection she could find, whichtells me that she didn't really do a
(04:45):
very deep search, because there's actuallya lot of the like spells and stuff
that you can do. This arcaicgoing to that world. Now, there's
nothing that's written into that, butit draws from so wide a range of
our cake and our cane storylines.That it sort of accidentally hoovers up things
in the background. Well, andto me, people are probably wondering,
(05:09):
how does this even begin to connectwith freemasonry. But here's where it starts,
is that it doesn't so throw tomid reel. Well, there aren't
direct connections to the ritual or ButI think when you talk about the person
that's into dungeons and dragon, whenyou start to describe them and what their
(05:29):
makeup is, you also are beginningto describe a man who would be interested
in freemasonry, which is an openthinker, somebody who's interested in exploring new
ideas or new possibilities, that doesn'tmind being a part of a group that
seems like it's a cult or it'soff the beaten path. That they're an
independent person. They're an individual that'sseeking others just like them and doesn't mind
(05:50):
getting into traditional ways of meeting.What really fascinates me with this is that
it's a board game from my childhoodthat I never really ever got to play
with. But people are still playingthis the same way. I'm sure there's
digital or computer versions of it,but to see guys still get together and
roll the dice and do this tome, I would love to just watch
(06:13):
this as somebody in an audience.I think it would be extremely entertaining.
Because of the widespread availability of YouTube, that is literally a thing that you
can do now. You can actuallywatch real play podcasts of people going through
an actual adventure, either pre writtenor something from the Dungeon Masters imagination,
(06:34):
and they are telling the story infront of the podcast and you are experiencing
that. I believe Vin Diesel hada short where he was doing a couple
of live action recordings of his actualgames and they were textbook random encounter charts
dice. Everything was determined on thetable by how you rolled, So there's
(06:58):
the whole gamut of that. Thereare a lot of similarities in what people
can take out of the game.There are no parallels, accidental or intentional,
which is kind of funny for howmuch D and D did hoover up
in its creative process. They didn'taccidentally pull anything in from freemasonry that I've
ever been able to find. Wherethe parallels are is it is an outlet
(07:25):
for people to find an experience thatthey may not have ever had. So
in freemasonry, I have witnessed peoplewho would be debilitated by anxiety and stuttering
and stammering. Over the course ofthree years, become a chaplain and start
(07:47):
giving lodge prayer, and start movingthrough the places and stations at the lodge.
And I've seen them truly open upas transformed introverts. They didn't stop
being reverts, but they could suddenlycommunicate because they had been brought into a
community of people that created a safespace for them. We didn't care that
(08:09):
they brought an eight and a halfby eleven sheet of paper with letters that
were kindergarten big for the prayer.We cared that they said it, and
we cared that this is a personwho was putting effort into changing the way
that they handled things. We havehad a worseful master who in his own
words said that he was absolutely petrifiedof a leadership position and ultimately became worseful
(08:33):
master of the lodge and eyewitnessed amazinggrowth of activities that we did because he
had broken out of this mold ofbeing an introvert. Examples could go on
and on and on, But inthe same way, I have seen people
come to the table whom it wasobvious that it was a deep effort for
(08:56):
them to even walk up to mewhen they found out that I ran a
game of Dungeons and Dragons and askto come and participate. Like we had
more words exchanged in the process ofcoordinating when they would come over to my
house and play than we had exchangedin two years of our acquaintanceship. And
sitting down at the table and beinggiven a character, whether it was made
(09:20):
for them or they made it forthe game, and being thrown into a
situation where it's not you, MichaelRsay who's speaking, it's your character.
So you need to think about whatwould your character say in this situation.
And there's a lot of tropes aboutoh, it's what my character would do
that have some negative contexts, butfor the foundation of what it does to
(09:46):
the individual. For a lot ofpeople, this is their first exposure to
an environment where there's no consequence forwhat happens other than people might laugh and
everybody has a good time. There'sno risk of anything going wrong, and
everything that does go wrong they canblame on the dice or the character or
(10:07):
the big bad, evil guy inthey came. So I've seen people just
bloom in this process. And aftersix or seven months of playing, I've
seen them really a changed person,and I know that that is part of
a bigger process. It wasn't theysat down at my table and I made
(10:28):
them a better person. It wasan element in this process of their exploration
of how they could change things intheir life. This was someone who had
taken all of their efforts to justget out of the house and start going
to a running club where I metthem, and then got up the courage
(10:48):
to ask to come over to effectivelya stranger's house and play a board game
that they've never played before. Soit was a step in the evolution.
I like to say that when friendsand acquaintances find out that I'm involved,
the speed with which the question howcan I join? Is asked is staggering.
(11:09):
This statement is equally accurate from myexperience as a mason and as a
DM. I actually am a lotmore a lot more open about the fact
that I'm a mason than I amas a dungeon master, because like,
as soon as you say that yourun a d and d agam like,
oh, we should get a gametogether. When can I come over?
Right? Well, that's the funny. You as soon as you say you're
(11:33):
a freemason, you either get pepperedwith a thousand questions or it just soars
and nobody responds at all and there'sno attention made. But I think if
you said, oh, I'm stillinto dungeons and Dragons, I'm I'm a
dungeon master, people be like,how old are you? Like? Who
do you hang out with and dothis? You must be running out for
your kids, right I can.And I'm also thinking, you know,
(11:56):
as someone that was into D andD to hear the words ancient mysteries,
chamber of reflection, inner, sanctum, sanctorum, heremic legend, you know,
the things that are associated with masonry, those buzzwords. When you were
going through your initiatic experience, waslike twelve year old Jason that was just
discovering that red box series of Dand D. Was did he have a
(12:18):
part that night? Was he inyour mind there in a strange way?
Yes. So I had been originallydrawn to masonry because the History Channel special
on masonry were better for worse,it brought a lot of people in.
You know, I went through along ordeal of asking several people before I
(12:43):
found the lodge that I eventually entered, and that first night, I remember
sort of chuckling at oh, sothis this has a little bit more live
action cosplay than I expected, right, And even as a tabletop gamer,
(13:03):
you know, you have you havehierarchies of what to break it down into,
the classic high school stereotypes. Youknow, the jocks looked down at
the nerds, and the nerds lookdown at the tabletop gamers, and well,
the tabletop gamers definitely kind of lookeddown on the live action role players
and the LARPers, and the dividebetween you know, you're you're making a
(13:26):
little bit too much of a seriousendeavor out of something that's clearly supposed to
be a game. You know,how do you eat cheetos when you have
vampire fingers on? That kind ofthing? So I sort of chuckled to
myself as I was dawning the costumeand trying desperately to listen to the lecture,
(13:48):
as I was just generally hoodwinked aboutthe experience and and trying to understand
what was being said to me,and in the darkness, just having these
these images flashed through my mind thatreally sort of paralleled the creative imagery that
(14:11):
comes from tabletop gaming. You know. We did not have expensive props.
We rarely even had any type ofa map that was laid out. We
usually just had grid grid squares thatwere big enough for markers that we used
to move pieces around. The dragonfrom one quest often became a cobalt in
(14:33):
the next one, and it wasshaped like G I Joe figuring the whole
time. So we used a lotof creativity there to look at the space
we were in and see more ofit. So in that respect, yes,
there was a little bit of mychildhood that came rushing back in creativity
(14:56):
as I went through that process.Imagine we spent a lot of time,
I feel this season talking about theHaramic legend, but just that experience again
with being hoodwing for a majority ofit and really basically hearing the play that's
going around and this murderer and thismystery and all of these things. And
you know, and I can onlyimagine how much more vivid your experience was
(15:18):
and your imagination than mine, whichwas like, is this like an episode
of CSI. It's like, Idon't know what's going on right now?
When did I end in a bitbabyl Loot what Yeah, And to that
respect, I I feel like brotherJohn Nagi probably has an answer to this
(15:39):
question. I've always kind of beencurious about, is there like a fourth
or a fifth person perspective on theritual that we go through that looks at
things from a different angle. Youknow, the story that we experienced in
(16:00):
the first person as the candidate,and the story that we experience in the
third person in the audience, andthen the story that we experience as the
the cast members. All of thoseare telling the exact same story. And
I've always been curious, you know, what would the guard who turns the
(16:26):
fellow crafts away, what would hisexperience have been in that storytelling other than
the moment that we touched them.It's one of the things that we had
talked about was the recent Dungeons andDragon movie that came out, and what
I like about it is a nonD and D tabletop gamer, is that
I found it extremely entertaining. Itreally shed a light onto the story and
kind of the fantasy of Dungeons andDragons and did give you some clues a
(16:51):
little learning on some of the termsand what it means. And my thought
was was that a typical experience thatyou would have was that like a story
that you could purchase. So myquestion, Jason, is what would have
been one of your favorite D andD adventures in Why are you still so
attached to it? You can,in fact purchase adventures pre written. You
(17:15):
can run a game that is entirelyborn out of the imagination of the DM.
You can run something that's in themiddle. That's really one of the
things that drew me to D andD is that it is all things that
you want to try are possible,and the DM is really just there as
the arbiter of chance and understanding whatis going to succeed and fail and if
(17:40):
you do succeed, what is theevent of that and if you fail,
what are the consequences. For me, the most memorable experiences were when a
story was coming together in such away that I knew elements about the environment
that for obvious reasons, I wasn'tgiving away, and my party was desperately
(18:02):
trying to figure out a solution.And I can't tell you what campaign it's
in. I can't tell you ifit's pre written, it must have been
because of the nature of it.I can't tell you what they were doing
before. And I can't tell youwhat happened afterwards. I could tell you
everybody who's sitting around that table,and I can tell you every character that
(18:22):
they had, and that through aseries of events, they had a woken
an army of the undead ghosts,skeletons, zombies were all shambling, shambling
after them, and the party ranup a spiral column stairs on the outside
of the columns as opposed to onthe inside, and they were running and
(18:45):
running and fighting, the fighting retreatand they get to the top of this
column and they realize that it isjust fifty feet off the ground flat column.
They've just run to the top ofit, and in any direction they
look, they can see an archwaythat leads to some sort of a doorway,
but there's one hundred and twenty feetor more of open space between them,
(19:08):
as if a floor had been completelyeliminated. And I remember that I
had put in some sort of amechanism that in real time they had to
figure out what was going on.So in game time, they probably had
less than a minute in twenty seconds, and I told them, Okay,
we're going to give you a twelveminute window to deconflict what's happening here.
(19:33):
So they start tossing things back andforth and discussing how they're going to do
things, and everybody has different opinionson what they should do. And I
happen to know, because I hadthe module in front of me, that
certain archways had an invisible bridge thatled towards them, and that there were
on some of them, a straightshot directly to the archway, on others
(19:55):
there was a turn or a missingsection. And I remember reading through this
and seeing them struggling and thinking tomyself, this feels like it's ripped off
straight out of a movie. Whatwhat movie was that? Oh? Wait,
those Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones andthe Crusade. So now when you
(20:17):
describe that, I'm like, becausethat's the scene where you has to throw
the pebbles and I am sitting there. The party is still they are They're
descending into chaos. It is turninginto you know, the Lord of the
flies. I have the conch youhave to listen to my plan because I
have given them this time frame thatthey are rapidly losing time on. They've
(20:40):
wasted it for going out and gettingdrinks and somebody took a bathroom break,
and they spent four minutes berating thecharacter because the type of character that he'd
written up, so they don't realizethis is coming apart. And I'm just
looking at the clock and I'm thinking, how does that theme song go?
And without even realizing I was doingit, I starts humming, don't and
(21:08):
I have probably gotten three bars intoit, and my friend immediately to my
right, his head snaps at meand his eyes open up wide and he's
like, are you shooting me?And he grabs a bag of copper coins
and helicopters them over his head.As the coins go flying everywhere, I'm
(21:29):
like, oh, man, Igave this one away. And we rolled
to figure out how the coins aregoing to react, and they fall on
the invisible walkways and he chooses one, and he proceeds to keep tearing bags
of coins off of the cleric thatthey have in the party and using these
coins to lead their path to theescape. And I just remember very clearly
(21:52):
the surprise in myself that, youknow, three lines from a song had
given the whole stick a way.My friend's reaction to the realization of what
was going on and just the wholeexperience around it. I can still see
every element as though I was Iwas captured there. To draw this all
(22:12):
back to Masonic experience, I cantell you absolutely everything down to a fraction
of an inch that was on thattrestle when I was first brought to light.
You know, I remember that experienceso vividly to this day. I
can even still smell the bizarre airconditioning humidity that the room provided in the
(22:40):
darkness with a single column of lightcoming down upon me. There's so much
about it that is vivid that thosetwo memories clearly share the same sort of
crystallized moment in my mind of whatthat experience was. So you had me
at Indiana Jones, Yes, yes, Well we've mentioned this several times on
(23:02):
the podcast, and the aim offreemasonry is making good men better. So
I wanted to close out our timetogether with this last question on D and
D and how has it impacted yourlife outside of the game or like freemasonry.
Were there any skills or lessons thatyou know continue to be a part
of your everyday life. D andD was a very helpful part of my
(23:26):
pandemic survival plant. I got involvedwith several different virtual groups. I actually
purchased a virtual tabletop role playing gameenvironment and ran games for my friends who
were living in Colorado. Myself inWashington, DC at the time but unable
(23:51):
to actually visit my friends who arejust down the road, so we were
able to get into We were usingDiscord and you know, run this game
pretty smoothly in a virtual environment.I also got involved through another friend.
He brought me into a separate groupwhere I was a player, and I
got to really in that eighteen monthsthat I was involved with that group,
(24:18):
I got to play more as aplayer character than I had probably in thirty
years previously, just because someone elsewas the DM and he took a lot
of enjoyment to that. And Ihave friends from that that, you know,
I've never met in person, butI know them well enough now from
(24:41):
having spent so much time virtually withthem and just discussing with them in the
downtime and hanging out virtually that Iwould have zero issue inviting them over to
my house and have gone out ofmy way to visit some of them when
they have visited post pandemic. Soin the same way that masonry has expanded
(25:03):
my circle of friends and acquaintances.Very recently. I actually just met here
in Germany a German police chief whowas wearing a Masonic ring, and I
ambushed him in the hallway and shovedmy mit into his and all of a
sudden we were immediately having a conversationabout masonry just because of our handshake.
(25:26):
So the connection that can be there, because of the shared language and the
shared experiences, extremely valuable as faras ways of moving forward. You know,
for me, I am an extrovert. I've never met a microphone I
was afraid of, and I've neverfound a silence I wasn't prepared to fill.
(25:48):
So, you know, the thelessons for me have really been in
watching other people expand and how tohelp and how to foster them, and
how to create that safe space.And right now in the the new normal
that we have and the reality thatwe're looking at, you know, as
(26:11):
as we're recording this, you know, there's turmoil in Russia, everything is
still going on in Ukraine. I'mliving in Germany, my friends are all
in the United States. We haveso much going on around us that it
doesn't hurt for us to try tointentionally make safe spaces for ourselves and for
(26:33):
our friends, and there is zeroshame in any of that that anyone should
feel. And anyone who who triesto villainize that effort is really missing out.
They're missing out an opportunity for themselvesand for those around them, because
really it is just invaluable to havethat, you know. I remember when
(26:59):
I first became a Mason. Oneof the things that an old Masonic friend
of mine had mentioned is that thereal value that he took from masonry was
it was an environment for men tobe with men, and that he felt
that in his life. He hadat the time three daughters, he was
surrounded by women in his life becauseof work. He was a medical doctor.
(27:25):
He had six nurses underneath him,all of them were female. And
he said that really, if hedidn't have masonry, he felt very isolated
in gender and his was an extremelyextreme representation of that. But that was
for him, what masonry created wasthat safe space for him to be with
(27:49):
other men and to have those sharedexperiences that really men have. When you
talk about safe space, I haveto keep the laughing because we use the
discord server one of our brothers forLodge for us to have meetings at the
pillar officer level. And I noticedone time that there was the D and
D discord room channel whatever. I'mnot really a gamer, so I don't
(28:14):
know. And I went in thereand I had avoided going in there because
I thought D and dmon do notdisturb. So when I went in there,
that's when one of the brothers waslike, hey, are you into
D and D? And I'm like, well, I took a wrong turn.
I don't know how to answer thisquestion I had. Are you talking
about Dune? Yeah? Is thisa challenge? Abort? Abort? You
(28:37):
guys, we're in our forties,we still play this like wow. You
know, I think I think thatone of the things that my father in
particular, has had a lot ofdifficulty understanding as he has aged and witnessed
the world around him, and nowbeing in my forties and having children,
the the changing expectation of things.We don't stop enjoying something just because we're
(29:04):
older, the nature of which weenjoy it changes. You know. I
read very very little when I wasa teenager because I had a learning disability,
and it took me a long timeto understand why once I read something
I had it memorized, but itwas really hard for me to read.
And once I learned those skills,you know, I stopped reading the books
(29:29):
that helped me learn to read properlythat might as well be you know,
psychological study guides, and started readingthe books that I enjoy. I still
read. It didn't stop reading becauseI got older. But I also still
play video games. I still watchtelevision, I still play Dungeons and Dragons.
(29:53):
I just curate it in a differentway, and it is a much
more mature way than it was whenI was a child. And for my
father, he has recognized that heneeds to grab onto some of those things
that he had let go because hehad been trained as you know, the
child of the greatest silent generation thatyou know, you are an adult.
(30:18):
Now you leave all those childish thingsbehind you, and you go to work.
You make your money and support yourfamily. And now he and my
mother are retired, and they're like, what do we do with all the
free time? Hey, dad,you want to roll the six sided dice?
Well, this is my least favoritepart of the podcast, because I
honestly feel like I could talk withyou forever and always have been one of
(30:42):
the most engaging and fun brothers.But I do want to let you go
because I know we have that timedifference and some of us have to get
up tomorrow. You want to rollfor it. Yeah. If you've enjoyed
this episode, you can hear moreby telling Siri or Alexa to play The
Craftsman online podcasts or available on allshreaming platforms with new episodes every Monday morning,
and you can also listen to futureepisodes early and ad free with our
(31:04):
subscriber offer. Get the link inthe show notes to start your seven day
free trial. Until next time,Let peace and Harmony prevail.
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