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My first encounter with D&D was back in 1998 on a church youth group ski trip. One of the guys that went with us had several of the books but was more into the story telling side instead of the dice rolling. We acted out a snowy forest scene with him as a fighter basically going up against some cave creatures. It sparked an interest but no one in my area at home did D&D that I knew of. My mom was furious though because she was under the mind set that D&D is devil worship.
It wasn't until 2008 that I was able to find a group of people to play with. I now play pfs and GM a home game for pf. As a Christian, I can see how some would argue that one should not partake in rpg games, but this is the only thing I got.
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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.
Does that mean that devil worship makes your hair grow? I may have to try that out.
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I started in 1980 or so, and, yeah, we caught the whole "D&D is Satanism" thing. We all had to watch Mazes and Monsters, as if it was some kind of documentary; we were quite scornful that the movie seemed to involve LARPing, which wasn't a thing yet and we (a bunch of elementary school kids) considered it totally immature -- one played baseball outside, not D&D, just like you didn't play baseball indoors. Duh!
One day the principal called in maybe three or four of us who were known to play the game, and interrogated us on it; evidently our answers made sense, because I didn't get any more flack until I moved to a nearby town.
The important thing to remember, though, is that the whole country was caught up in a massive Satanism scare at the time, and it made the Red Scare in the 50s seem normal. It affected everything around us, not just D&D. Even people who were otherwise sane were convinced that there were millions of Satanists running around everywhere conducting evil rituals and sacrificing infants, and that they were constantly recruiting through a variety of nefarious means. So we were told that playing D&D would make us kill our parents and commit suicide, and that listening to Ozzy or KISS ("Knights In Satan's Service!") would make us kill our parents and commit suicide, and that doing drugs would make us kill our parents and commit suicide. (We once played D&D while listening to Black Sabbath, and were almost disappointed when no murders nor suicides ever occurred.)
But it wasn't just entertainment media, which actually got off easy compared to everything else. For instance, any number of day care centers in our area were shut down under allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse, and although the people were eventually exonerated of charges when no one could actually find a sacrificed baby (or even a single missing kid, for that matter), those peoples' livelihoods were pretty much destroyed.
Thankfully, by the late 80s the panic was pretty much over. We even had a D&D after-school club (although we had to call it the "Gaming and Hobbies Club" because the name D&D was still persona non grata).
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remember, though, is that the whole country was caught up in a massive Satanism scare at the time, and it made the Red Scare in the 50s seem normal.
Not sure I'd go that far, but, yeah, it was pretty bizarre.
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OK, all of you talking about Mazes and Monsters makes me need to see it. I'm going to Netflix it.
How much alcohol will I need to survive it?
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A lot; cases, not bottles. :P
remember, though, is that the whole country was caught up in a massive Satanism scare at the time, and it made the Red Scare in the 50s seem normal.Not sure I'd go that far, but, yeah, it was pretty bizarre.
No; this was shortly after Charles Manson and the Zodiac killer. People are easy to panic, and they figured there had to be ritual murderers out there everywhere. Jonestown certainly didn't help this impression.
So it was the usual: A few isolated incidents became worldwide phenomenae thanks to a ratings-driven media, and paranoid and terrified religious leaders sought to place blame on anything and everything.
In short, business as usual...
"No" what?
Falsely prosecuting day care workers for using killer robots to sodomize toddlers is pretty bizarre.
In case I was misreading Comrade Kirth's post, I will agree that persecuting people for their allegiance to a foreign power, or workers revolution, is more normal than persecuting people for sodomizing toddlers with killer robots, especially when they didn't do it.
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"No" what?
Falsely prosecuting day care workers for using killer robots to sodomize toddlers is pretty bizarre.
thejeff clarified; when I first looked at your post it looked like you were saying there was no Satanism scare of the 1970's. I was contradicting that. But you were saying that the Satanism scare wasn't as bad as McCarthyism.
I wasn't around for McCarthy, but as far as I know you and thejeff are correct, it was far worse.
Which is scary, because I still remember the strong vibe that every family had at least one teenage daughter who'd joined a brainwashing cult and needed rescue. McCarthyism had to be out-and-out terrifying to beat that.
And the false accusation of teachers goes on to this day -- you have policies where you MUST keep your door open whenever meeting with students, or have a second adult present. Because one kid who decides to yell "Child molester" because he or she got a B instead of an A is enough to end your career even now.
a) I really don't remember the Satanism scare as being that big a deal on a personal/local level.
No stats or nothing, but I don't think that it was.
I met a guy during Occupy who was raised in some Southern evangelical church that spoke in tongues and all that. He told me that when he first came to New Hampshire, he did some missionary work and the consensus among his brethren was that New Englanders were the worst bunch of irreligious heretical apostates in the country. According to his brethren, we are "too practical."
The Black Goblin's mother excepted, of course.
EDIT: Of course, this is assuming you were raised in New England.
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My area (near NYC at the time) may have gotten a disproportionate amount of hype. This is what that great rag of the Plutocracy, the Wall Street Journal had to say:
From my perspective, the U.S. appears to be witnessing its third great wave of hysteria. The first, the Salem Witch Trials, in 1692, lasted only a few months. Nineteen people were hanged before it became apparent that the accusations were suspect. In the 1950s, at the time of the McCarthy hearings, hysteria over the communist threat resulted in the destruction of many careers. Our current hysteria [the so-called "Satanic Panic"], which began in the early 1980s, is by far the worst with regard to the number of lives that have been destroyed and families that have disintegrated.
Granted, the dude may be exaggerating somewhat, but the scare was no little thing (supposedly, Geraldo's TV special on Satanic activity was the most widely-viewed documentary ever aired on NBC).
So, yeah, pretty sure it wasn't as big as McCarthy, but as Comrade Doodle points out, far more bizarre: as far as I know, no one accused Communist sympathizers of flushing kids down the toilet into an underground Satanic abuse cavern, forcing them to watch giraffes being beheaded before raping them with knives, and then magically healing them and cleaning them up so that it appeared nothing happened -- and have people actually take those allegations seriously.
For more posts on the topic, you may want to check out the following thread:
Oh, hey, that's weird. I was just reading about this the other day.
I'm too young to remember, but I understand that it wasn't all that bad where I live. I seem to recall that the then-pastor at my church actually sat down for a few sessions and then delivered two sermons where he basically said "You know this Satanist panic? When I was a young lad, we had this guy by the name of McCarthy..."
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Wow, I grew up during those times and played the gamer then. But I guess like the Jeff being from New England Massachusetts I did not run into any of these types of incidents. While at school and camps we and our friends played. While at school (boarding school) there were many opportunities to play. One of my teachers actually ran a campaign which was a lot of fun. At camp it was different, many times we played without books and dice since it was hard to bring those things with us on over night hikes. Made for a lot of interesting story telling abilities as I was making a lot of stuff up on the fly.
Maybe because of where I was people may have thought it was not cool or something or not understand what it was but never had the religious persecution others seem to have come up against. Then again Episcopal churches are a lot more progressive than some of the other religions I have experienced.
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I grew up in Odessa and Midland TX (the buckle of the bible belt some would say) in the 70's and 80's. I started playing in '79 and graduated in '85. It was pretty common for folks to believe that D&D and rock and roll equaled satanism, but while school authorities looked sideways at D&D I just don't recall any horror stories. The worst I can recall is the occasional fight and the school calling parents to "express concern". Fights were common and fairly trivial back in those days, and if the only thing my folks got a call from school about in any given week was me sneaking D&D books to school they basically took that as a pretty good week. :)
Being a nerd or metal head wasn't popular, but being told by popular kids and authority figures that what we liked wasn't cool just made it more awesome to us. This may shock some of you, but I don't respond well to authority. ;)
The thing that stands out in my memory was the shocking ignorance and utterly false statements that folks used to fear monger the topics like D&D and music. The sheer magnitude of the ignorance about D&D that the critics demonstrated made me wonder how anyone could grant these people a shred of credibility. The decades have sadly taught me that fear works to motivate people, and many different kinds of authority won't let something as trivial as truth slow down good old fashioned fear mongering.
I started at age 10 back in 1980. In my teenage years, I got caught up in several "is this a Devil thing?" conversations. I was confronted with two types of people. First, the ones that listened to my rational explanations about the game and what it was about. Second, the ones that had already made up their minds and just wanted me to admit playing it so they could either pray over my endangered soul or tell me I was hellbound if I didn't repent. Luckily, my parents were the former. Still, between playing D&D and listening to heavy metal, I could hardly catch a break.
I did my homework though. I read The Dungeon Master, written by the P.I that was hired to find James Dallas Egbert III. I read LaVey's Satanic Bible (well, as much as I could get through...too Ayn Randish for me). Watched Decline and Fall of Civilization: The Metal Years. Never did figure out what all the fuss was about, unless it was indeed related to the whole secret Satanist thing like Kirth mentioned. Also, I believe that was the time of the rise in hypnotic regression therapy to bring repressed memories to the surface. Leading questions would inevitably bring up the ritual abuse story from a susceptible mind.
And I still hold a grudge against Tom Hanks.
Ah...the 80's...
I did not actually have to deal with anything like this in the 80's.
The 90's however....two things..
1) I ran into a priest who was talking to kids I was hanging out with (I am guess it was some kinda of youth group thing). Anyway we had a pleasant conversation about it. He was a nice guy trying to save my soul...he was wrong...but me.
2) I had a friend whose father was a priest(or something) of a church from the south. We sometime played in the churches basement. We could not do it one night because one the church elders (I think that is what it was) was very much against the game...though more to the use of dice to determine outcome...though there was probably a little of the "That Satan's Game' involved.
Wait... are you saying the reason groups of people in my town, during the
early 1980's, would chase after me shouting Witch! is because I was a
known D&D player?
Huh.
.
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My dad was a devout Catholic and banned it in our house. My brother and I just hid our game stuff or kept it at friends' houses. My mom recognized the harmlessness and benefits of it (reading, vocabulary, math skills, etc.), so she'd let us buy stuff without telling him.
The last words I ever spoke to my father were a lie because of this hysteria. I was on the way out the door and I told him I was going to a friends house to play Starfire when I was really going to a D&D game. He died early the next day in an accident. This was in the mid-80's.
What is Starfire?
What is Starfire?
It was a table top tactical spaceship combat game. In the late 70's and early 80's, there was a series of pocket games, including Starfire and its expansions. They came in a plastic bag about half the size of a sheet of paper. They had a sheet of counters, a folded hex map and a small rule book. I believe that is how Car Wars got its start, too.
Edit: Link.
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We grew up just north of Lake Geneva, WI so no issues here. One of my friend's parents had an issue with it, but the rest of us were welcomed into each other's homes (basements) and we played regularly with mom bringing us snacks. Our local library even had D&D books. It was more hype than anything else and our crowd was better educated and more tolerant than the typical anti- crowd.
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I discovered D&D in sometime in the mid-80s, as an awkward, shy teenager, even around family. Very much trapped within my shell. One summer, during my family reunion, my cousins were playing and I would listen to them play from the next room, being too shy (and a little younger) to ask right out what they were doing. I think one of my aunts realized the game had caught my attention, and asked the cousin who was DM'ing to try to draw me in. He did, and my very first character, a wizard, was born. He gave me far more power and magic items than I should have had, but I was suddenly part of the group, and it was FUN. To this day, I have fond memories of the Castle Amber module.
After the reunion, I couldn't wait to get my hands on my own red box and show it to my friends. My parents were just grateful to see me connecting with my cousins, I think, and didn't seem to bat an eyelash at the game itself.
I only drew my immediate friends into the game, though, once I returned home (NJ), and was already an outsider at school, so it wasn't particularly obvious to those outside of my immediate circle that I played D&D. So, no, I never ran into any problems.
Gaming in college in Cleveland, OH, in the late 80s, early 90s, involved things like Fantasy Hero and Shadowrun, more than strictly D&D, and we had our own happy little group. No, I never had any problems there, either.
I remember hearing the bad press about D&D and just not understanding it. I thought it was pretty obvious that the media had the cause and effect backwards, and that the kids that took the game too far had started out with a weak grasp on reality before they ever even found D&D.
The worst problem I had, which is different but related, was when, after reading Anne McCaffrey's Pern series in 11th grade, I got into dragons big time. My dad took me aside one day and expressed his concern about my obsession with these dark and demonic dragons, and was I getting into satanism? I couldn't help but laugh. I assured him that MY dragons were nothing like that, handed him Dragonflight, and asked him to please read the book before passing judgment. He did, and he read every subsequent Pern book out there. My dad is pretty cool.
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Very cool story Wendy.
Funny, my dad never understood gaming or that I was really into it, my mom knew and her sisters knew, my dad was clueless. We never gamed inside my house, he just saw me reading books all the time and he never really was the type to interrogate. When I was a kid with the aid of my friends I cleared out a disused and cluttered garage and converted it to a game room, prior to that we would play in the library, at a friends house or even at a park (that kinda sucked).
My dad is too old to be cool in the conventional sense - but he is a voracious reader - mostly espionage/thriller/anything with a Nazi plot. I got into Lovecraft in the mid 80's - prior to getting into Call of Cthulhu rpg or buying my first CoC rulebook (I was reading his work as homework for Chill) - and there were several times I'd find him reading my HPL anthologies if I left one lying around.
Generally my family was never into fantasy, sci-fi or horror related entertainment when I was young, though that same aunt who destroyed my books and crusaded against D&D is now heavily into the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones and my older jock brother who used to ridicule me about D&D is also into GoT - go figure. Newbs
Anyway - its funny to think back on my dad reading all my horror books, in fact he's read more on the Mythos than my core group of CoC/Chill players - combined.
Dads can be funny that way.
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I started playing D&D around 1981 or so, and the schools that I attended were fine with the game, I even had a Jr. High math teacher that ran games after school...
I do however, have a friend whose parents thought D&D was an evil game, and did not allow him to play, although he still did (and to this day, almost 30 years later, his mother thinks I was a bad influence on her son).
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So, for those who played RPGs during the whole "D&D eebul satanic!" scare, what was it like?
It immediately made me question religion.
If the various religious leaders were denouncing it as Satanic, and it clearly isn't, then how could I then take anything they said at face value? If they were wrong here, where else were they wrong? They were claiming the same crud about KISS as well... KISS??! Really!? Gene Simmons is a money grabbing opportunist who would sell his granny for a handful of dimes, but that's not the Devil, thats a Capitalist.
You repeat yourself, Comrade Shifty.
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Comrade Anklebiter, your observation is rather astute but a Capitalist is a devil, but not necessarily THE Devil. There is only one Devil, but we are beset with devils who oppose our most glorious Peoples revolution.
Yours in solidarity.
Vive le Galt!
Apologies, rest of thread, for the continuous derail. I shall try to think of more anti-mother stories for Jean-Paul to relate.
My parents were against D&D (although never to the point of a ban), but not from a religious point of view, but instead from a secular anti-SF/fantasy point of view. Of course, we were also aware of the religion-based anti-D&D hysteria, but they did not give this much credence, since they (especially my dad) were also against religion (as I.am), so at least they were consistent.
What I found really weird were the parents (especially the dad) of the kids who introduced me to D&D: Initially they were accepting and even encouraging, but then turned against it allegedly over the time spent on it, but then even on the same DAY as imposing his "moratorium" the dad of my friends took us on a trip to a gaming store where he spent considerable time shopping to get more of his war-gaming miniatures. Go figure. . . .
Let's see, SE Michigan graduated in '85. So we were playing D&D before that. I know we played in high school during lunch hour. There wasn't any problems with our principal. I think he had more issues with the 'burn-outs' than us geeks.
I remember playing a lot earlier with the box with the two books (ones red and one's blue, don't have the box anymore). I just remember playing in someone's basement.
Later I remember playing AD&D 1st ED. in town. First we played in the Pizza parlor and then we played in the VET hall. I remember playing there on week ends for several years.
After high school I went to college at CMU and played all sorts of games including D&D. I did the worst thing I can think of, I sold all of my 1st Ed. AD&D books. But nothing crazy (related to the game) went down at the campus.
BTW, CMU had tunnels but we never tried to use them....
I took the red pill got the blue box um, maybe 1980 or so, which would have made me 10, on the mean streets of Northern NJ. It torqued off my folks something bad, not because of any of the alleged Satanic nonsense, but just b/c I was blowing off my schoolwork; impulse control, not a strength. :)
-Ghorrin Redblade
And I still hold a grudge against Tom Hanks.
If you're as mature and sane as you claim gamers are... you really should get over it. He was a young unknown actor hired to play a part. You don't refuse work when you're an unknown. He was an actor in the film, not an author. And considering what he has given us..... it's time to move on and rejoin the 21st century.
LeVey's Satanic Bible was intended to be satire, as was the Church of Satan itself. The church was an act of rebellion against the people Heinlien would collectively call "Miss Grundy", not actual worship.
1. The grudge thing was facetious.
2. Yes, I know.
3. Stop being so pedantic.
The important thing to remember, though, is that the whole country was caught up in a massive Satanism scare at the time
Hm, I don't remember that at all. Of course, I didn't really play in the 70s and 80s, I only got my eyes up for roleplaying games when I inherited my sister's red-box in, like, 1990 or something so if anyone grew up with that it'd be her.
Still, it wasn't really a thing at all, as far as I recall. Those who knew what roleplaying games were at all (read: parents of roleplayers who cared what their kids got up to) saw it mostly as a craze that prompted their kids to learn English and spend all day pouring over dictionaries and discuss what the heck a "hobgoblin" is (hint: An oxford's dictionary is exceedingly unhelpful with D&D terms :p), so generally not a bad thing.
For everyone else, I don't think they were even aware of what it was or that it might be an "issue". There was the occasional thing on TV, but I don't remember details. It was probably just foreigners being crazy foreigners. ;)
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3. Stop being so pedantic.
Don't get your hopes up ;)
I live in the south, so the D&D iz eebul thing is alive and well. While RPGs are more popular than ever, there are still those who will purse their lips and look at me with apprehension or pity when they find out that I play them (I'm 50 years old. It shouldn't get to me by now but it still does).
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3. Stop being so pedantic.
Pardon me, but pedantic is an adjective. One either is or is not pedantic, rendering your qualifier "so" superfluous. In the future I expect you'll be more cautious with your grammar, Shadowborn.
*Adjusts monocle and smooths creases in smoking jacket*
I started playing B/X D&D in 1981 then moved onto 1E AD&D less than a year later. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio in a VERY religious family but never experienced any flak from my parents about my gaming (I don't think anyone at church was even aware that I played D&D) as they knew perfectly well that it was a game of "make believe." However, I suspect if they had seen the picture of the succubus in the 1E Monster Manual they might have had a conniption. ;)
I live in the south, so the D&D iz eebul thing is alive and well. While RPGs are more popular than ever, there are still those who will purse their lips and look at me with apprehension or pity when they find out that I play them (I'm 50 years old. It shouldn't get to me by now but it still does).
It's possible that they just think it odd that someone would still play a "fantasy" game at 50 years of age. I wasn't uncomfortable telling people I was a gamer when I was young but I would be somewhat self-conscious doing so now at 42 years of age.
Obviously, I am not saying that because I think it is odd to game as an adult, but I suspect that there are plenty of people who feel that way.
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In 2002, I was living in South Carolina and the landlord came in to fix the toilet. He left a note pinned to my D&D books on the shelf:
"You need to renounce Satan and look to the Lord for guidance!
Yours in Christ,
[Redacted]."
Even my wife, who is from SC, had a good laugh at that one.
i got kicked out of 3 sunday school classes, all before the age of 10 (i turned 10 in '86) all because i brought in my DnD books to show them how they weren't Satanic or Evil!*. my parents always stood by my side, then when we found a local group of Quakers, their sunday school had DnD day twice a month!
Best Religion Ever!
(it should be noted sunday school varies from quaker group to quaker group, this one had all DnD players in its sunday school:)
*Big Ups to Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy...er i mean Barnacle Man:)
Edit: also we lived in Wisconsin at the time, the Birthplace of DnD!
Cheeseheads Rule!
as long as ruling isn't dependent on a weight limit or passing a Breathalyzer, Cheeseheads are a Husky bunch that are fond of their Beer and Cheese after all:D (yes, in that order)
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...
So, for those who played RPGs during the whole "D&D eebul satanic!" scare, what was it like?
It was kinda weird actually. Some of the reactions I received from people were so bizarre that I was shocked into a lack of response.
*My grandmother had prayer vigils at her church group to save me.
*One of the congregation elders (but not the pastor) at my church actually screamed at me. Practically hysterical.
*One time I actually couldn’t get out of the game shop since the doors were blocked by some group picketing the game store to denounce us.
I found it amusing how much vitriol there was for something that they didn’t know anything about. If you didn’t use Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, or show them the books (some will also recognize and associate role-playing-game); you could talk to them all day about it and they just got bored with the conversation. As soon as you used one of those terms or they saw the book cover, you were evil incarnate.
Even today a friend of mine gets a lot of grief from his church and in-laws about it. I keep telling him he is making it worse for himself. Stop talking about DnD and especially the Book of Vile Darkness. Say you play Pathfinder and you are designing an evil fort for the heroic players to destroy. Instantly acceptable. He can’t seem to learn that lesson.
When people ask me about my hobby, “I play PF or PFS. It’s a lot like some of the internet games involving thousands of people all over the world. But we do it in person with only about a half dozen people. I like the more personal interaction of being in the same room with someone. Plus we aren’t as constrained by what someone thought to program into the software for options.” If they ask for more details I give them. (But the really closed minded folks never ask for more details because they aren’t really interested.) Until I know the person pretty well, I won’t say the game is the continuation of one of the versions of D&D.
Has not been a problem even a single time. I’ve had plenty of people say it seems frivolous, silly, childish, and a waste of time. Well, yeah. Most amusement hobbies are.
Just in the last year or so one guy even said, “Well as long as it’s not that hell-spawned Dragon Dungeon bull &%!#, then I don’t give a crap what silly thing you spend your time on!”
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and don't even think about the Disney movie Bed Knobs and Broomsticks, Yay for fantasy and imagination! Go Paizo!
You were lucky! Julie Andrews movies were Required watching in our house! in high school i dated this girl for a few dates until she said "the sound of music is my favorite movie!" my exact response was "we need to break up, this isn't working out" my number one rule of dating, never, ever date someone with the same taste in movies as your Mom:)