I grew up in a household that didn't go to church. My mother was raised in a Calvary(sp) Baptist church and my father attented both Mormon and Baptist churches. I didn't start playing till my freshman year of High School with 3rd Ed. I later found out that my parents had played way back when they were dating.
I did have a confrontation at school once. They did random locker searches and found my books. They started accusing me of writing all kinds of satanic stuff on the bathroom stalls and even tried to put the blame on me for a hitlist that was making its way around school. I couldn't believe it. I had just moved there earlier that year and they were accusing me of wanting to kill half the school based on my playing D&D. I was outraged.
After I graduated I spent some time working in a warehouse at a factory and on my breaks I'd whip out my books and work a little bit on my next quest. I had a run in with a devout Southern Baptist (funny because that's what I consider myself!) who claimed that I was going to Hell and that the books nauseated him with their evilness. I respected his wishes and spent my time reading at my workstation instead of the breakroom. Didn't have much trouble after that.
A bit from my Hoarde
Admittedly I have not had too much trouble with the game. I was raised Roman Catholic in Philadelphia, PA and my parents initially would not get me any of the D&D books I wanted probably for the same reasons. They would get me the novels but not the game books. Eventually I purchased the 2nd Edition games for myself and began playing with various groups. It's only then that I started to get some support as I was getting into my creative habit. The books and issues of Dragon inspire my writing more and more but while the game did not cause it, or at least I don't think it did. I eventually heard Wolf's call and turned to Neo-Paganism/Wicca. The only possible connection is through the classes I like to play in Rangers and Druids. Although there is also a big wooded park in my area that I like to walk through every now and again which actually maybe the source of both. The park is almost a small wooded area in the big city situated around Pennypack Creek. Within is a small population of deer and I have seen a red tailed hawk once or twice. Plus the fact that I started having problems with bits of Church doctrine and some of the messages I was hearing in chuch. Did D&D make me Pagan? I'd like to think not, I'm sure my father who goes to church daily will probably postulate this when I come out of the broom closet so to speak but like I said earlier, I heard a calling and I answered the call like my Catholic training said I should. It was just that my calling was to the Ancient ways of Wicca and not to become a Catholic Priest.
I had no problems at all from my Parents. I had real issues with reading when I was very young. I actually failed grade one essentially because I had not learned enough of basic reading. Anyway my mother freaked as reading was extremely important to her and I was going to learn to read if it killed her. Meanwhile the school put me in a remedial reading class to try and help with my reading.
So I was forced by my mother to read for an hour a day after school (I'm seven going on eight at this point) but what of course happened was I read for maybe 10 minutes of some crummy book for kids and then stopped - she checked on me and then yelled at me and I read for another three minutes then stopped - at which point she had to spend the rest of the hour basically going slowly insane while she watched me read and I spent the entire time trying to fake it so she had to read parts of what I was reading and play twenty questions.
So for about 6 months she went quietly insane trying to make me read. Then one day I came back from a friends house and I had a D&D book - I read it for hours as I had just played my first adventure and I wanted to play more. When I gave it back the next day I found that I had the same book as a treat from my mother like a day later. So I read it and pestered her to tell me what hard words like 'Opaque' meant. Well I soon finished that one and lo and behold another D&D book appeared.
Well it just went on like that - I'd read one of them pester her to tell me what hard words meant and when I finished another D&D book just appeared. Soon I had everything and my mother was ecstatic when the teacher of my remedial reading class called her trying to figure out how it was that I had gone from basically not being able to read at all to reading with an unusually good comprehension of hard words in some insane period of time like 4 months - they wanted to see if they could copy the system.
After that the books did not simply appear but if I indicated I wanted one I would get it before too long. At the time I was actually stumped on what was happening since she would buy me all the D&D I seemed to want but I had to wait until my birthday or Christmas to get Star Wars figures. Personally I could not figure out the difference a toy being a toy after all - but D&D I got lots of and Star Wars figures where nowhere in evidence.
I had real issues with reading when I was very young.... and my mother was ecstatic when the teacher of my remedial reading class called her trying to figure out how it was that I had gone from basically not being able to read at all to reading with an unusually good comprehension of hard words in some insane period of time like 4 months - they wanted to see if they could copy the system.
Jeremy, your post should be on every school principals' desk in North America. The problem wasn't your reading; It was the content of what you were reading. I think I hated school for the same reasons you had problems reading. Because it was boring!
Ultradan
This is an awesome story. My friends and I came to the same conclusion - William Faulkner I could nap through and get pounding headaches from, but gimme the Monstrous Compendium, Complete Psionics Handbook, etc etc etc, I'm all over that.
I had real issues with reading when I was very young.... and my mother was ecstatic when the teacher of my remedial reading class called her trying to figure out how it was that I had gone from basically not being able to read at all to reading with an unusually good comprehension of hard words in some insane period of time like 4 months - they wanted to see if they could copy the system.
Jeremy, your post should be on every school principals' desk in North America. The problem wasn't your reading; It was the content of what you were reading. I think I hated school for the same reasons you had problems reading. Because it was boring!
Ultradan
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I had no problems at all from my Parents. I had real issues with reading when I was very young. I actually failed grade one essentially because I had not learned enough of basic reading. Anyway my mother freaked as reading was extremely important to her and I was going to learn to read if it killed her. Meanwhile the school put me in a remedial reading class to try and help with my reading.
So I was forced by my mother to read for an hour a day after school (I'm seven going on eight at this point) but what of course happened was I read for maybe 10 minutes of some crummy book for kids and then stopped - she checked on me and then yelled at me and I read for another three minutes then stopped - at which point she had to spend the rest of the hour basically going slowly insane while she watched me read and I spent the entire time trying to fake it so she had to read parts of what I was reading and play twenty questions.
So for about 6 months she went quietly insane trying to make me read. Then one day I came back from a friends house and I had a D&D book - I read it for hours as I had just played my first adventure and I wanted to play more. When I gave it back the next day I found that I had the same book as a treat from my mother like a day later. So I read it and pestered her to tell me what hard words like 'Opaque' meant. Well I soon finished that one and lo and behold another D&D book appeared.
Well it just went on like that - I'd read one of them pester her to tell me what hard words meant and when I finished another D&D book just appeared. Soon I had everything and my mother was ecstatic when the teacher of my remedial reading class called her trying to figure out how it was that I had gone from basically not being able to read at all to reading with an unusually good comprehension of hard words in some insane period of time like 4 months - they wanted to see if they could copy the system.
After that the books did not simply appear but if I indicated I wanted one I would get it...
Very cool story.
Thoth-Amon the Atlantian Mindflayerian
That was a very cool story.
Anyhoo. I began playing as a middle school kid in and around 1978 in Wheaton, Illinois; the home of Billy Graham and the "city of Churches".
My poor Mom was totally snowballed by the church into thinking that D&D was somehow "Satanic". As if Satan himself was going to waltz right off of the pages and lead me to hell.
Well. At the time I was too young to win any sort of debate with her. She gathered up all the books I'd purchased with my lawn mowing money and threw them into the trash. An hour later they were out of the trash and safely stowed in a waterproof backpack hidden in a recess under my bedroom window where some thick bushes kept those books out of view and out of the worst of the rain and weather.
A few years later when I was a little older and wiser I sat down with my Mom and we had a long discussion about how she, as a college graduate, a chemist no less, who believed in evolution and SCIENCE could think that a game book could "Magically" transform her son into Satan's spawn by rolling dice to battle Orcs and Goblins.
She grudgingly agreed that she'd allowed herself to act irrationally and after that point I no longer had to hide my D&D hobby from her.
It still boggles my mind to see so very many people in the USA thinking like people from the 16th century and believing that the boogeyman hides around every corner. Sometimes I think it is a miracle that we don't still have witch trails in this country.
All this crazyness in the nation that put men on the moon.
Wierd.
Ed
It never has ... if it had, I'd have quit playing. If there's a conflict between things I deeply believe and a game, the game is going. I started playing in 1981. I don't remember where I'd heard about the game, but I bought the Basic Set and started playing - with my Dad first and then later with friends. My father, a Southern Baptist missionary, had no problem with the game, and in fact rather liked it. (Of course, he was the one who'd introduced my to Tolkien and had 10 years' worth of F&SF magazine on his shelf...) Basically, he and my mother saw that the game wasn't harmful in any way, and so never had a problem with me playing.
COOL, I just found out that my church youth leader plays D and D!!!
How lucky is that!