WAY OFF-TOPIC - A long overdue answer to fighter-thief

[Cloudbringer]

Absynthe: Sorry I didn't answer you right off, I have been having trouble with this thread. It wants to load in shifts (very slowly!) and I missed your post the last two times I waited around for it to come up on my monitor.

I'm sorry to hear about your dad, that's a rough situation even without the misunderstandings. I can't say as I've ever heard of a "stable" person going off the deep end from gaming, but I'm no expert, by any means. I wonder if there might me a newsgroup out there that could offer some resources for you? Maybe do a search under psychology/games?

For what it's worth, my own (very traditional) priest plays computer games, albeit not the D&D games, to my knowledge. (I know he plays Heroes of Might and Magic, as we got into a discussion of cheat codes once- HE was giving the cheat codes to *me*!) He's an X-files fanatic too. And I imagine if he believed it was going to send him to Hell, he'd not be doing this as his calling is a very strong one.

I'll be thinking of you, if it helps.

Cloudbringer,
Thanks for the info, I'll start looking about and see what I can come up with. Somebody somewhere must have looked into this in depth already...
And yes, your consideration does help, kind thoughts are always appreciated.
Thank you.

[Lord of Alcohol]

Hello Morraine, while I'm not into the religious discussion I have some thoughts on why our countries are having trouble in the Balkans/Former Yugoslavia. I think we are leary of getting ourselves into a situation where nobody is in charge of the countries in question. When things stabalise a bit I'm sure European and American diplomats will make a more concerted effort to help. Its like trying to break up a fight between two brothers. They both tend to turn on you. A good example of this was our excursion into Somalia, with all the various "Warlords" fighting each other and us trying to help but losing men instead. We tried to help straighten things out but there was just too much chaos. The same could be said when we went into Lebanon in 1982 and 246 of my fellow Marines paid the price in one day. What we tried to do didnt help. So what I guess I'm saying is that both our countries dont want to lose good men for nothing. And as Fighter/Thief said we are trying to get along with Russia and landing a Marine division or the 82nd Airborne in the area would likely put us right back up to Cold War tensions, which is better left in the past. Along with the other problems I previously pointed out. I know you have good intentions but I dont think anyone really knows for sure what to do so they wait. I think I may catch some hell for this post so in advance I'm sorry if somebody takes any offense to what I've said

[Cloudbringer]

Absynthe,

You are most welcome. Wish I had more to offer. You might want to cross reference terms like occult, mutilation and even Dungeons/Dragons in your searches.

Some of the big schools (universities) Minnesota, Cornell etc have online databases that can be searched ( I do some gardening and have found great stuff there).

I work at a University so I think along those lines, but you might also check the Psychology dept pages for colleges/universities. Who knows what you might find, possibly even some courses/descriptions that would help.