Talent Tree

It has been a long hard road to get here—and I recognize that my journey is far from over—but the house is finally sold.  Our things have been successfully stored, no thanks to Merlin, by the way.  I finally have some time to spare for blogging again, so here we go!

I've been pondering the Parable of the Talents, and even I am almost surprised at how well it can be framed in geeky language.  If you're a language geek, you might be interested in the etymology of the word, "talent."  Originally, the word referred to a unit of money, so when Jesus begins a story with the setup, "...a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability," what he's talking about is silver.  In fact, when Jesus was speaking a talent of silver was about 130 pounds.  Can you imagine the kind of wealth the man in the story was tossing around?  A hundred and thirty, two hundred and sixty, six hundred and fifty pounds of silver!!  In any case, it was the parable of the talents—and its most common interpretation—that changed the meaning of the word "talent" from a unit of measurement to today's meaning of a natural ability or aptitude.  How cool is that?

The other thing that immediately popped into my head, of course, was the rpg version of "talents."  Those special, heroic abilities that you earn for your character through gameplay.  A new talent is a goal worth working for when you're gaming.  And for a good gamer, choosing a new talent is usually a carefully considered process.

That's when it hit me that the Parable of the Talents could be retold in gamer terms:

When the word ends and we have to answer for the way we've lived our lives, it'll be kind of like the end of a tabletop gaming session.  The GM decided to give out new Talents based on the quality of the RP and the combat skill of each of the players.  The GM gave the Rogue five talents, the Warrior received two, and the Mage received one.

And then the players all went home until it was time for the next week's session.

And the GM asked each of the players in turn what they decided to do with their talents?  The Rogue had done of a lot research, not only into how each Rogue talent interacts with each other, but also into how they might interact with each of the other party members.  The result was beautiful example of min-maxing for the sake of the party.  The Warrior decided to focus on her own damage output, linking together her Talents in a clever way that would allow her to solo foes greater than her level.  But the Mage hadn't chosen a new talent.  He was afraid of choosing the wrong one and came to the table unprepared.  And the GM was ticked and took away the Mage's one Talent and gave it to the Rogue.  "You can't play tonight.  Go home."

 The Parable of the Talents, you see, is kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The Mage would have been better off picking anything rather than coming to the table empty-handed.  But he was so afraid of making the GM angry by picking the wrong thing that he did nothing.  And that made the GM more angry than anything else could have!  It's better to be prepared poorly than completely unprepared.

What does it mean to be prepared though?  What Talents should we chose?  I believe that we can never go wrong choosing those Talents that align with the Rule of Love. Or put another way...

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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The scripture lessons for November 16th—Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A—are:
Judges 4:1-7—Psalm 123—1 Thessalonians 5:1-11—Matthew 25:14-30