Atlanta, USA - Wholesale slaughter of innocents is nothing new in games — board or online — where players adopt godlike figures to whack others along their way to victory.
But a new board game replaces ancient gods or invented goddesses with game characters from major religions of the modern world.
Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination bills itself as "the world's first satirical board game of religious warfare."
Three-inch plastic figurines include Jesus bashing people with a cross, Moses slugging away with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Buddha with a machine gun, and a turbaned fellow with a bomb and a dagger vaguely hinting at Mohammed, all to be set loose to "force the people of the world to worship you."
The game was introduced in September at DragonCom, the annual pop culture, fantasy and science fiction convention in Atlanta, where it caught on with "religious folks with a sense of humor" as well as skeptics, says its creator, Ben Radford, 38, of Rio Rancho, N.M., managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
Radford says "much of the world's violence is rooted in religion," so he thought directly mocking various images of God and religious followers would "make more social commentary" and "pierce the pretensions of extremist religious zealotry with humor."
Players can choose among the five figurines or make one for themselves with stickers for a "god" who resembles Oprah, a stein of beer or Satan or add a word label such as Islam, technology, even "the Almighty Dollar."
Says Radford, "I didn't want to leave out a Muslim figure just because it might be offensive. The game is satire. But I went out of my way to be innocuous. The figure is not named. It could be any Muslim leader.
The figurines move across a global game board drawing cards that promise wrath with natural disasters or woo converts with kindness or cleverness. Colored chips represent each god's sects or followers.
A typical steely grey wrath card would "Bring down the Darkness: Kill two sects," while a sunny yellow conversion card recalls Elijah's showdown with a priest of Baal in the Bible (1 Kings 18:38). "Another god's follower challenges you to prove you exist; you fry him with lightening in front of a crowd. Gain one sect."
But just like sexy magazines on a family news stand, the most potentially offensive cards come in a separate wrapper.
"Overemphasis on guilt drives millions to depression and suicide. Kill three Christian sects," it says under the image of the wrathful Jesus.
"Endless 'War on Terror' provides terrorist job stability. Gain three Muslim sects," says a card with the Middle Eastern bomb thrower image.
Still, Radford argues, Playing Gods is a statement of peace, "not anti-religion. It's anti-zealot, anti- people who kill for their beliefs, whatever those are."
The way to win the game, however, is by a combination of killing and conversion.
"I have to be honest with you: Killing is very popular. When people become Gods, they like laying down the locusts and the other Old Testament plagues," says Radford.
In that respect, Playing Gods resembles the video game tradition it emulates — fantasy violence for entertainment, says Carl Raschke, professor of religious studies at University of Denver.
The game's perspective "has no basis in historical reality and doesn't actually represent any religion. It just appeals to people who hate religion to begin with — the hip subculture of militant popular atheists," says Raschke.
"These people are fanatics, for the most part, themselves. Their thinking is rigid and hostile and not much different from jihadists who don't use their minds or study what they are dealing with. They start from their own dogmatic perspective."
Offensive? Says Raschke, "Of course it is. But it sounds too stupid to go far."
The $39.99 game is available online and in independent game stores but, Radford acknowledges, "the big chain stores aren't going to touch a game like this."