What was it like growing up through the anti RPG hysteria of the 70s and 80s?


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This is a repost of a thread somebody else posted on Giant in the Playground here. It's too political/religious for Giantitp, but not for Paizo, and it is an interesting question, so let's have at it.

So, for those who played RPGs during the whole "D&D eebul satanic!" scare, what was it like?


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Exactly like playing RPGs now, except less people were into it because crazy rumors kept them from picking up books (and, to a greater extent, there was no internet to provide a way in that didn't involve hitting up a game and hobby shop).

And I suppose it was kinda weird having devils called "fiends" for a while.


Several of my friends during the later days of this period were unfairly persecuted by people in the community, including the principal of our high school, due to the fact that they played D&D. I got a little of that flak, but I've always held the view that people can say what they want, but if their opinions have no facts, they just look like fools. Given they didn't play the game and I did, didn't take much for most of them to leave me alone. My friends weren't so lucky at times.


Now that I think about it, I have run into a little bit of this. At Job Corps, we were allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons, but in the past the rule had been inconsistent as to whether to allow it or not. Some staff were still of the mindset that it was not appropriate to play, even though the residential living head had ruled it okay.


Up in my corner of New England, it was pretty non-existent. I heard about it occasionally on the news or elsewhere, but I never knew anyone who been personally bothered by it. No parents freaked out or protests or anything like that.

Added: I first played D&D at summer camp. It was an actual scheduled event, officially approved. Only one session and I don't think we got much past character creation and maybe finding the dungeon, but I was hooked. Later played in middle school and suffered far more from it being uncool and nerdy than from any worries about "satanic ebul".

This was pretty much the very early 80s


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I grew up in the tail end of it. it was mostly just ignorance of the game. one of my friends was not allowed to play because his mom though it was evil. so we used a hero quest board(it was a dungeon crawl bored game) the and pretend to play hero's quest. eventual we convinced her that it was just a game so she agreed to let him play if she could sit I. on a game. so we played the most boring game we could all think of for an hour and then she said it was fine if he wanted to play that game.

there was some trickery in there but it was all for Rpg justice.


What summer camp that's awesome.


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We were once playing on the concrete platform of a storm drain. A few blocks up a couple of kids heard us and yelled down

"What are you doing

"Dungeons and dragons.

"Isn't that devil worship?

Someone starts to go onto their spiel about how its just a role playing game , I cut them off and sent the voice of doom down the tunnel Denstabula Punculabium , in quinitum draconis BRING ON THE VIRGIN

Liberty's Edge

I was lucky to live in Chicago, so there was less pressure here than elsewhere. My high school had a club and the local library supported us, as we checked out books.

My friends and I got some materials to counter the hate, and we had few problems at my high school.


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I started playing the game when I was 9 in 79, and the only concern was that I was younger than the recommended age range. My mother was quickly convinced when my vocabularly increased dramaticly from all the reading I was doing. To this day, this hobby of mine continually introduces me to words I've never heard of before. Just one of the many things I love about this game.

Lantern Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I started playing just after the boogity-boogity years, in the early '90s. The area I lived in, though was (and kinda still is) a bit behind the times. My parents were fine with it - I actually got one of the beginner's boxed sets for my birthday and my kind-of-a-jock dad even played with me.

Sadly, a few of my friends had parents who still thought there was something fishy about the game. We also used the ol' Heroquest board trick. One mom took until the early 2000's to get to be okay with it.

I did catch a little hell bringing some of my materials to a Wednesday-evening church meeting. Such is the habit of the Southern Baptist sect.

Of course, I grew into geekdom right as Magic was coming out and POGs were fading from popularity. That soaked up a lot of allowance money.


I started playing in the late 70's on our front porch. Explained to my parents what the game was about, told them both what we do (sit around laugh and joke and roll dice), and invited them to sit and watch us play. Took all of 15 minutes before they both left the room, bored to tears of hearing a table full of young boys shouting and laughing at each other.

Good times...


My parents were cool with it, but then again I had the parents all my friends thought were cool. They were open minded, which I've always appreciated.

Some of my friends weren't so lucky. One invited the rest of us to his house once, to have a game (he had just gotten the Psionics book, and was stoked to play one... a Metapsionicist of course), when his mother saw what we were doing, she yelled at us and told us we couldn't do that in her house. We played the rest of the game at the picnic table.

Then again, people around there called me a satanist for having tarot cards.


At school it was added to the list of excuses to punch me in the face and/or ostracise me, fat, red hair, nerd, not good at sport, plays that psycho game where people kill themselves.

My mum and dad were very cool with it.

I had friends that would play Starwars, Mechwarrior, and Startrek RPGs but not D&D because of their god botherer parents.


I took a lot of crap at school before they found out about me playing D&D so i just got more hassle and bullying
That all stopped when in the course of one week i punched the lights out of one of the main bullys then a couple of days later i flattened one of the biggest guys in the school while playing rugby


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I grew up in southern Maine and started playing in 1980. My middle school and my high school both had D&D clubs--no problems here, least of all from parents or teachers.

It's like what a couple of the posts at Giant in the Playground stated: it was just about a loud, vocal minority getting all the media attention. The only ones who seem to take it more seriously than anyone was TSR themselves (bateezu and tanar'ri, indeed).


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Being born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area (hotbed of liberals and atheists) and starting non-seriously in 1974 in Berkeley, and more seriously in 1976, I have to say, "Not at all. Not one whit."

Everyone in our area felt the game was a fantastic way to encourage kids' imagination and reading and math skills. The news reports that D&D caused Satan worship made the adults in our area sigh and roll their eyes.

So as you've seen so far, it's a regional thing.


Some parents wouldn't let their kids hang with you, churches used to have guest preachers cone and tell stories of the evils of dungeons and dragons. I've personally seen a guy misquote ozzy lyrics and say the greatful dead had no rhythm to a congregation of snickering people.

Been banned from camps after volunteering to go as a guide because of my open defense of the game.

Had one mother tell her son he couldnt be my friend because of an ozzy patch i had on the back of my jean jacket.

And ive been told i could not be a christian because i had long hair. By a preachers wife, in front of the rest of the youth group.

Good times. Really dislike baptists.


While gaming in the dorm one night in 1985 someone slid the Chick tract "Dark Dungeons" under the door and took off running. We never knew who did it or if it was meant as a joke. We got a good laugh, anyway.

Liberty's Edge

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I started playing in '82. I remember the stigma that some media groups presented (like 700 club. he picks up the 1e PHB with the demon statue on the front and starts with "now... (pause)". That's when he lost me). I never encountered any specific protest against my interest in playing it, though. My psychology professor once playfully pressed me on whether or not the game affected me, but he didn't seem convinced he had to show concern. If anything, the largest complaint was the time I spent prepping the game and writing adventures instead of doing other things I should have been doing.

The games I played didn't feel demonic. They felt tactical, explorative, story-based, even brilliant (Castle Amber was the most fun I had losing a PC in almost every room we visited).

Also, since we didn't have the internet, we felt like our worlds were our own and we could present things exactly as we wanted without someone trying to present an overqualified opinion of what things should and shouldn't be like - except for a fixated ex-Marine that complained about the layout of a castle map I designed.

Even the modules that dealt with demons (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) portrayed the PCs as planar heroes dealing with an evil force left unchecked.

Granted, there were... behavorial oddities that occurred. One of my players said after finishing Temple of Elemental Evil, especially after the encounter with Iuz and St. Cuthbert, he would wake up from nightmares, running into the hallway and hitting the wall. I'm not sure what to say about that, except that I myself became a bit fixated on how long the PCs I built would survive. I hated losing them, not getting to that point of 'success' that I saw other characters achieving. And there just wasn't any way other than DnD of experiencing that. After I finally got to the higher levels and reached superhero status with all the magic items I had, I had gotten my fill of that.

Probably the biggest epiphany I had was that the GM really determines the quality of the game. When the ex-Marine GM'd, it was a merciless struggle to survive. With another guy that GM'd, it was playing against his whims (which I didn't enjoy). With the guy that ran into hallways after a nightmare, the games felt heroic and rewarding. That was the DnD I fell in love with.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Belazoar wrote:
And ive been told i could not be a christian because i had long hair. By a preachers wife, in front of the rest of the youth group.

I guess you're in good company?


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Belazoar wrote:
And ive been told i could not be a christian because i had long hair. By a preachers wife, in front of the rest of the youth group.
I guess you're in good company?

"My hair like Jesus wore.

Hallelujah I adore it..."

Dark Archive

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I had several of my books destroyed by my aunt. When you have little to no money as a kid this is devastating.

Frequent interrogations by my mother and aunt. Got to the point that I just hid my gaming books to prevent them from being put in a burning trashcan (where they were supposed to scream as they died in the flames -that was the legend of the day).

Things didn't really calm down till I got older and the mid 80's rolled around.

I remember that 700 club featuring the phb cover - the Demon Idol on the front was supposed to be Moloch. And it was Moloch.

What numbnutz on the show couldn't figure out was what was going on in the foreground of that picture - Moloch's lizardmen servants: slain, Moloch's temple: being sacked.

Ah well

Oh yeah
Mazes and Monsters - boy oh boy did the phone calls fly around when that was going to be on. I hated Tom Hanks for a very long time.

At least until he was on Bosom Buddies. Then he was ok

This was all in So Cal, not exactly the hotbed of conservatism. Wasn't so much the religion aspect (it was for several of my friends) as it was the cult/suicide/murder concerns. So I heard it from all sides.

Shadow Lodge

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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

In small-town Northeast Texas in the early 80s, it meant you didn't talk about it in public.

It meant the player base was limited to people who either didn't believe in hell, or figured they were already going there. (So, you know, the intersection of people who would admit to reading godless science fiction with high school Thespians.)

It meant that most people around thought the Chick Track "Dark Dungeons" was an accurate depiction of gaming.

I knew people who bought extra copies of the PHB so that they could burn one as camouflage -- but I didn't go to that church.

But it didn't feel like special persecution against gaming because there were similar witch hunts against communism, sexuality, science fiction and fantasy, drugs, rock and roll, fashion, science (especially evolution, astronomy, and geology), Hollywood, and dancing. Plus ones I'm sure I don't remember. Everyone "knew" these things were anti-Christian, but most people only thought a few of them were serious problems -- and they disagreed about which ones those were. (Except Communism. It was always the worst.)


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You young people of today...

When I was eight years old, I moved from Oxford, to a gold mining town (Carletonville) in apartheid South Africa. My brother was eight years older than me. He went to university and came back with the red box. At the time, I was a wreck. I had gone through a series of traumas, with the worst two being my difficulty adapting to living in a fascist, racist, fundamentalist state, and surviving sexual abuse by an older boy. I had almost nothing to live for, but that red box gave me a sudden escape. I had already read The Hobbit, and I knew some mythology, but the ability to re-invent myself through D&D hit me with a force that I can still recall. I read the basic and expert rules under the covers with a flashlight, and even a candle, which singed the page with the third level cleric spells on it. It became the best thing in my life, and I naturally wanted to share my discovery with my peers.
Within short order, I was being punched in the gut by children who didn't even know me, spat on from balconies. I had my nine year old head flushed in a used toilet. A teacher confiscated my dice, as evil.
Three older boys grabbed me from the corridoor, into an empty classroom, held me down, and tried to perform an exorcism on me, using latin they probably got from a horror movie. I was sent by the school to a psychiatrist, for atheism, after my notebook was stolen, and handed to the guidance counsellor. I was told by well-meaning adults that I was going to go to hell, and that I had invited Satan into my life. I had one friend. He was also from England, and had the Greyhawk setting, box set. I endured.

In fairness, there was a lot of goofy stuff about my school life. My biology teacher handed out leaflets titled "Is the Kaffir an Ape, or Just a Sub-human?" We had more hours of religious teaching in a week, in my state school, than we had English lessons. We had regular canings and punishment by exercise. My history teacher took pains to explain to the class that carbon dating is a lie from the pit of Hell. Terror of the adversary was mixed in with a stew of white paranoia and the insularity due to sanctions. The panic against D&D was part of wider trends. We had school assemblies about back masking in music, and dire warnings against seeing the James Bond movie "A View to a Kill" because of its immoral and indecent content. (READ kiss between Roger Moore and Grace Jones). D&D was not well known. There were only two kids in the whole town who played it, and we were both Soutpiele

When I was sixteen, I got a break in my circumstances. I was accepted into the drama department of an art school, in the financial capital, Johannesburg. I became a boarder in the hostel, and finally was among people who liked and respected me. The only wrinkle was the Calvinist headmaster. A Mr. Darrell Campbell. He discovered my second edition PHB and DMG in my room. Despite being the edition to neuter the planes and call Devils and Demons Baatezu, and Tanari, he found the game sufficiently objectionable to threaten me with expulsion. Here is a piece of dialogue I still remember:

DC: You are a satanist, then Hoyle? Who else is in this sick cult with you?
TH: Sir, with respect, I am not a satanist. I don't believe in the devil. The devil is a part of Judeo-Christian...
DC: Don't expound your sick philosophies on me boy!
TH: Sir, I am defending myself against an unjust accusation. I am not a satanist.
DC: Then how do you explain THIS! (Produces Dungeon Master's Guide)

I was given my books back two years later. The front cover of the PHB was missing, and there were underlinings in red.

I thought I was in the clear when I left school. Years later, in 2000, my landlord burned my Vampire the Masquerade books, and had the locks changed. He was a police officer. Out of compassion, I didn't press charges, because of his profession, but I took him to small claims court. He lied in court. He said he had not burned my books, and that I was a drug dealer with a grudge. Ironically, I was the only person my age that I knew, in the whole town, who did not smoke dope. I get my kicks from roleplaying.

In the courtroom, I asked him if he was familiar with the commandment to not bear false witness against your neighbour. His reply: "You are not my neighbour"

I think that addresses the OP.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Didn't matter one iota.

Most people, including my parents (devout Christians, all), saw how ridiculous it was, so it didn't matter.


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Taliesin Hoyle wrote:

You young people of today...

When I was eight years old, I moved from Oxford, to a gold mining town (Carletonville) in apartheid South Africa. My brother was eight years older than me. He went to university and came back with the red box. At the time, I was a wreck. I had gone through a series of traumas, with the worst two being my difficulty adapting to living in a fascist, racist, fundamentalist state, and surviving sexual abuse by an older boy. I had almost nothing to live for, but that red box gave me a sudden escape. I had already read The Hobbit, and I knew some mythology, but the ability to re-invent myself through D&D hit me with a force that I can still recall. I read the basic and expert rules under the covers with a flashlight, and even a candle, which singed the page with the third level cleric spells on it. It became the best thing in my life, and I naturally wanted to share my discovery with my peers.
Within short order, I was being punched in the gut by children who didn't even know me, spat on from balconies. I had my nine year old head flushed in a used toilet. A teacher confiscated my dice, as evil.
Three older boys grabbed me from the corridoor, into an empty classroom, held me down, and tried to perform an exorcism on me, using latin they probably got from a horror movie. I was sent by the school to a psychiatrist, for atheism, after my notebook was stolen, and handed to the guidance counsellor. I was told by well-meaning adults that I was going to go to hell, and that I had invited Satan into my life. I had one friend. He was also from England, and had the Greyhawk setting, box set. I endured.

In fairness, there was a lot of goofy stuff about my school life. My biology teacher handed out leaflets titled "Is the Kaffir an Ape, or Just a Sub-human?" We had more hours of religious teaching in a week, in my state school, than we had English lessons. We had regular canings and punishment by exercise. My history teacher took pains to explain to the class that carbon dating is a lie...

You deserve both justice and vengeance on every level. Disgusting things you had to go through.


Taliesin Hoyle wrote:

You young people of today...

When I was eight years old, I moved from Oxford, to a gold mining town (Carletonville) in apartheid South Africa. My brother was eight years older than me. He went to university and came back with the red box. At the time, I was a wreck. I had gone through a series of traumas, with the worst two being my difficulty adapting to living in a fascist, racist, fundamentalist state, and surviving sexual abuse by an older boy. I had almost nothing to live for, but that red box gave me a sudden escape. I had already read The Hobbit, and I knew some mythology, but the ability to re-invent myself through D&D hit me with a force that I can still recall. I read the basic and expert rules under the covers with a flashlight, and even a candle, which singed the page with the third level cleric spells on it. It became the best thing in my life, and I naturally wanted to share my discovery with my peers.
Within short order, I was being punched in the gut by children who didn't even know me, spat on from balconies. I had my nine year old head flushed in a used toilet. A teacher confiscated my dice, as evil.
Three older boys grabbed me from the corridoor, into an empty classroom, held me down, and tried to perform an exorcism on me, using latin they probably got from a horror movie. I was sent by the school to a psychiatrist, for atheism, after my notebook was stolen, and handed to the guidance counsellor. I was told by well-meaning adults that I was going to go to hell, and that I had invited Satan into my life. I had one friend. He was also from England, and had the Greyhawk setting, box set. I endured.

In fairness, there was a lot of goofy stuff about my school life. My biology teacher handed out leaflets titled "Is the Kaffir an Ape, or Just a Sub-human?" We had more hours of religious teaching in a week, in my state school, than we had English lessons. We had regular canings and punishment by exercise. My history teacher took pains to explain to the class that carbon dating is a lie...

So sorry you've had to deal with that kind of crap.

Sovereign Court

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Taliesin Hoyle wrote:

You young people of today...

When I was eight years old, I moved from Oxford, to a gold mining town (Carletonville) in apartheid South Africa. My brother was eight years older than me. He went to university and came back with the red box. At the time, I was a wreck. I had gone through a series of traumas, with the worst two being my difficulty adapting to living in a fascist, racist, fundamentalist state, and surviving sexual abuse by an older boy. I had almost nothing to live for, but that red box gave me a sudden escape. I had already read The Hobbit, and I knew some mythology, but the ability to re-invent myself through D&D hit me with a force that I can still recall. I read the basic and expert rules under the covers with a flashlight, and even a candle, which singed the page with the third level cleric spells on it. It became the best thing in my life, and I naturally wanted to share my discovery with my peers.
Within short order, I was being punched in the gut by children who didn't even know me, spat on from balconies. I had my nine year old head flushed in a used toilet. A teacher confiscated my dice, as evil.
Three older boys grabbed me from the corridoor, into an empty classroom, held me down, and tried to perform an exorcism on me, using latin they probably got from a horror movie. I was sent by the school to a psychiatrist, for atheism, after my notebook was stolen, and handed to the guidance counsellor. I was told by well-meaning adults that I was going to go to hell, and that I had invited Satan into my life. I had one friend. He was also from England, and had the Greyhawk setting, box set. I endured.

In fairness, there was a lot of goofy stuff about my school life. My biology teacher handed out leaflets titled "Is the Kaffir an Ape, or Just a Sub-human?" We had more hours of religious teaching in a week, in my state school, than we had English lessons. We had regular canings and punishment by exercise. My history teacher took pains to explain to the class that carbon dating is a lie...

Blimey!

I hope you've come back to blighty: in the UK you can play in quiet pubs and the most you get is someone mooching over to say, "What are you playing? Looks like dnd, I used to play that when I was a kid."

Sovereign Court

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pH unbalanced wrote:

In small-town Northeast Texas in the early 80s, it meant you didn't talk about it in public.

But it didn't feel like special persecution against gaming because there were similar witch hunts against ........dancing.

Footloose?


Grew up in the 70's and 80's and never ran into this in real life. Closest I came was a neighbor giving me his copy of Deities and Demigods because his mom didn't like him playing.


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It wasn't just the 70's and 80's... down in Southern USA there are still people who claim you're a Satanist if you play D&D. I'm like, "Excuse me? You're the one that cheated on his wife, says GD every 5 words, stole from the church offering plate, beats on his wife and kids, and you have the nerve to tell ME I'm evil because I play a game?! I, on the other hand, do not do those things and I even abide by Biblical Kosher dude, so don't drop that holy-roller crap on me!". Biblical Kosher, in case no one knows, is an OT prohibition on pork, shellfish, and stuff of that nature, just as a side note. Seriously, some people who are close-minded about RPGs just need to throw themselves in a pit of PO'd honeybadgers lol!


I got the red box at about 7 or 8 as a gift from my parents, so no issues on that front. Growing up in a very liberal part of Australia, I didn't really know anyone who was more than nominally religious, although I heard rumours that there were people in America who hated D&D because it was 'satanic' (without the internet it was hard to verify such rumours, although we took the change from devils and demons to baatezu and tanar'ri as tacit confirmation of them).

I did watch Mazes and Monsters on TV (with only two stations to choose from, I watched whatever happened to be on) but I must have been too young to really understand its message - it was more "wow, there's a movie about my game!"

The first real trouble I encountered was when, in my mid-teens, I went on exchange to a state in the Deep South of the US. I was warned that I may not fit in because I was: (a) non-religious, and indeed ignorant of religion; (b) a rabid feminist who wore only jeans and refused to wear make-up; (c) completely uninterested in team sports. Warnings on most of those fronts turned out to be ill-conceived and everyone was really welcoming and tolerant ... Until my host parent found a Dragon magazine on my bed (the one with the half-naked tiger woman on the front), and then went through my bags and found more proof of my 'demon worshipping'. she freaked out and I had to be moved to another family in another town!


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My parents, while despairing at my taste in literature (Michael Moorcock, etc), were never bothered about it and didn't have a problem with D&D , either. My mother did make me throw my Black Sabbath albums away, though.


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Limeylongears wrote:
My parents, while despairing at my taste in literature (Michael Moorcock, etc), were never bothered about it and didn't have a problem with D&D , either. My mother did make me throw my Black Sabbath albums away, though.

Were these albums with Ozzy or Dio singing? It makes a difference!

I played from the early-80s onward and never experienced anything of this kind. A nun in my cousin's Catholic junior high school saw a rule book and told him "real Christians don't believe in that", or something to that effect. That is the closest anyone I know came to this stuff.


I started playing in 1978. During the Satanic Panic of the 80s-90s, I only ran into one person who bought into the 'D&D causes suicide, drug use, ingrown toenails, International Communism, etc.'

Funny, in 2006 I started a new job, and when he learned of my interest in role-playing games, I had a supervisor ask if I worshipped the devil. I told him I had been doing that before I got into gaming.


Bill Lumberg wrote:
Limeylongears wrote:
My parents, while despairing at my taste in literature (Michael Moorcock, etc), were never bothered about it and didn't have a problem with D&D , either. My mother did make me throw my Black Sabbath albums away, though.

Were these albums with Ozzy or Dio singing? It makes a difference!

One was 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', so Ozzy; can't remember what the others were...

Dark Archive

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I forgot to mention the Satan Seller incident.

Went to a new middle school, made some new friends and we started gaming in the school library during lunch break (yes, nerds). One of the older librarians saw my Greyhawk maps (1st ed boxed set, had that and the earlier gazette - crown jewels in my gaming collection) and the rest of my meager gaming stuff and she expressed her concern and disapproval of gaming and she gave me a book to read call the Satan Seller, which wasn't about gaming per se - but about a guy who got into drugs and rock n' roll and eventually became a high priest of a powerful cult. At one point he gets out, gives his life to Christ and tells people the horror of human sacrifice. This was a few years before the Satanic Panic hit full swing.

Suffice to say, years later I found out that Mike Warnke made it all up for the greater good of making sure people were not seduced by Satan. Ah well, and those cults sounded so interesting....

On the upside, the other librarian (who was more reserved and quiet) pulled me aside to complement me on the beauty of the Greyhawk maps. She liked them so much that she felt I should protect them and she had them both laminated for me at the school - secretly mind you, so the other librarian wouldn't know. For a kid without money or resources or even the notion to get them laminated in the first place this was a very nice gesture and I cherished those maps for a very long time.

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Pan wrote:
pH unbalanced wrote:

In small-town Northeast Texas in the early 80s, it meant you didn't talk about it in public.

But it didn't feel like special persecution against gaming because there were similar witch hunts against ........dancing.

Footloose?

Exactly. It sounds silly now, but it was very real then. (And still real some places.)


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I started playing D&D at Christmas of '81 when my parents bought me the Tom Moldvay Basic boxed set. I was unaware of the controversy until Mazes and Monsters came on. At first it didn't bother me because it seemed—from my perspective—that Tom Hanks' character's mental problems were shown to be the cause of his breakdown; RPGs just aggravated what was already there.

On second perusal, I realized they were saying this emotionally troubled kid would have worked out his problems just fine if not for his fantasy roleplaying. It was pathetic.

There were positive presentations, but they were muted. 1982's E.T. showed a bunch of sixteen year old kids playing the game, but they never actually said what they were playing and the unknowing masses didn't really even blink at it.

We had a bunch of proselytisers come through and convince many school board officials that the game "damaged kids' concept of reality." It ended up being banned outright in many schools where it had been a popular pastime with a number of kids in lunchrooms and school libraries.

Some people I know got away with other games—like Call of Cthulhu and Top Secret—as they weren't D&D. The ignorant admins had no clue what they were doing or even what they had banned. If it wasn't called D&D, it was fine.

A number of law enforcement officials and prosecutors tried to blame D&D for some suicides and crimes. Over 200 cases came to trial in the eighties in the U.S. and Canada in which D&D was implicated as a contributing factor (the exact number escapes me as it was mentioned in a radio news documentary on the CBC over 20 years ago, but it wasn't much above 200).

Of all the cases brought forward, every judge and jury presented with this rejected it. Not one case succeeded. By the end of the eighties the writing was on the wall: religious persecutors were resorting to easy to disprove lies while the law enforcement and pseudo psychologists had their "evidence" shredded very easily.

It has never fully gone away (this sort of thing rarely does) but as the generations that grew up with it began, well, growing up the fear in the adult population waned. It was always fear of the unknown. As it became known, the fear began to die.

Not a great time, but I lived in a university town with rational parents so I had few problems other than a rare scheduling issue due to limits on where we could play—and those were very few.


pH unbalanced wrote:
Pan wrote:
pH unbalanced wrote:

In small-town Northeast Texas in the early 80s, it meant you didn't talk about it in public.

But it didn't feel like special persecution against gaming because there were similar witch hunts against ........dancing.

Footloose?
Exactly. It sounds silly now, but it was very real then. (And still real some places.)

I can speak for this one, my own churches prohibit it except between spouses. Most also heavily suggest not doing so in public even with your spouse.


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Some couples of these denominations will not have sex while standing because they are afraid someone will see them and think they are dancing.


My hetero life partner, The Black Goblin, played D&D in a middle school and had great fun until some busy-body demented Christian maniac intervened and made the school revoke the club's charter.

Worst part was, it was The Black Goblin's mother.

He's got subscriptions to every one of the game-material related subscriptions, so I think he's trying to make up for lost time.


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Limeylongears wrote:
My parents, while despairing at my taste in literature (Michael Moorcock, etc), were never bothered about it and didn't have a problem with D&D , either. My mother did make me throw my Black Sabbath albums away, though.

I lent a kid in my neighborhood a copy of the classic book Saga of Old City by Gary Gygax and his mother found it and threw it away! Later, I found his older brother had squirrelled it out of the trash and hidden it away with his porno mags.

Down with mothers!!!


Jean-Paul Sartre, Intrnet Troll wrote:

Down with mothers!!!

Well, that's a scary concept.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
pH unbalanced wrote:
Pan wrote:
pH unbalanced wrote:

In small-town Northeast Texas in the early 80s, it meant you didn't talk about it in public.

But it didn't feel like special persecution against gaming because there were similar witch hunts against ........dancing.

Footloose?
Exactly. It sounds silly now, but it was very real then. (And still real some places.)

I used to DJ dances and proms. I can verify that many schools in small town Arkansas forbade dancing and the kids would have to go rent a space in a different town for their proms and homecomings.

Scarab Sages

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The church I used to go to was convinced D&D was devil worship, they had more than one sermon on the subject, all of which I was forced to attend. I was also banned from purchasing new AD&D material.

Shadowrun, Rolemaster, Gammaworld, Traveler: none of them happened to say D&D on the cover and I never explained to my mom that they were essentially the same thing.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Kelsey MacAilbert wrote:

This is a repost of a thread somebody else posted on Giant in the Playground here. It's too political/religious for Giantitp, but not for Paizo, and it is an interesting question, so let's have at it.

So, for those who played RPGs during the whole "D&D eebul satanic!" scare, what was it like?

It's a bit of an exaggeration to say that there was an Anti-RPG Hysteria during the early decades of gaming. It's more accurate to say that there were people who were hysteric, and there were others who either over-reacted to that hysteria, (like TSR), and those who tried to profit from it. (the infamous Mazes and Monsters movie). I've had one college campus preacher call me a devil incarnate when he learned that I was GMing one of his group who was turning down one of his activities for one of mine.

The fact of the matter is..... that for all of the "hysteria", the market was larger than it is today. RPGA clubs were a major thing and people were paying membership fees yearly to subscribe to Polyhedron, they were buying gaming materials by the truckload. Compleat Strategist for instance had 4 stores in the NY-NJ area during that time as opposed to being down to one store now.

For the most part, while there were the occasional wing nuts and the slings and arrows, it was a good time for gaming. It never got near to the point that the comic book industry did, where things became so desperate they started regulating themselves with the Comic Code Authority to prevent the government from imposing it's own rules.


I don't know if the market was larger or just limited. This was before MMO, cept for MUDs, but when I was in high school I remember internet time was charged by the minute, and computers werent things most people had.


I always thought the market was bigger because of internet.

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