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It's been well over 30 years since I first played an RPG. Those demons that are supposed to possess me are sure taking their sweet time.
^ Want me to pop in your game and give everyone else a double take? Lol!
I remember that movie well. It wasn't shown as a movie but more of as a warning.
^ Want me to pop in your game and give everyone else a double take? Lol!
LOL that would be awesome.. lol What's even funnier is if someone mentions his name everyone sings it a la "Joboooooo! Jobooooo! Jobooooo!"
Check out this... fully authorized by Jack Chick himself (which that in and of itself is hilarious, because the guy who asked for the rights is a frickin' writer for THE ONION!)
http://www.darkdungeonsthemovie.com/
Jon I grew up in the Boro - were you anywhere near there?I grew up in a small town in the north of the UK. None of the adults around me or my friends cared too much. Some of the other kids tried to use it as an excuse to bully me, but they tried that with pretty much everything from the colour of my hair (auburn with a fair amount of ginger) to the style of my hair (long), so it was hardly a shock, and it worked about as well as any of there bullying did - not at all. It always seems to depress bullies when you tower a half foot or more over them as they try to pick on you.
Honestly, I suspect one of the reasons I enjoyed the games so much was because it annoyed other people. Much like my long hair, chest long beard and utter contempt for Newcastle Brown Ale.
But yeah, by the 1990's my school had D&D fiction in the library and a painting club for Warhammer. It was surprising geek friendly.
Middlesbrough? No, I was further North than that. A little town called Amble, 30 miles South of Scotland. Horrible place, even today - I still get crap there, 12 years after leaving.
When I finally get around to writing a novel, I must remember to have it be a smoking crater.
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I think the only negative experience I had was with a coworker's wife, who apparently took Jack Chick's description of a secret cabal of 'uber players' to heart and was convinced that if I played too much I'd be indoctrinated into their cult.
I was in the uber cabal for a little while but it was too much hassle. You had to wash your robes by hand or the colour would run, and I spent a small fortune on chalk for the drawing of pentragrams. I drifted away and the rest of them went into politics.
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Born and raised in Italy, you know, the province of the Vatican, never had any such issues with playing DnD or the likes, not once, even in the late 80's / early 90's! Reading these posts makes my head spin and my eyes spindle. It's honestly unbelievable how much horse manure can spread from bigotry coupled with downright ignorance... or is it a burst?
I grew up in Massachusetts and started playing in '81. No hysteria around where I lived or from anyone I knew. My parents thought it was a good match for my interests in the Middle Ages and mythology and got me hanging out with friends for hours in ways that didn't get us in trouble.
In Junior High one of my friends got the school to approve an RPG club as one of the elective period activities and we played GURPS and TMNT in school, as a regular class like photography and indoor soccer.
I was one of those old farts as well who thought that way, until someone committed suicide by throwing himself off one of the high dorms at my alma mater Rutgers following a Facebook bullying arranged by his scumbag of a roommate. If anything cyber-bullying may be more insidiously dangerous than any kind of bullying I went through.
Maybe. At the very least, it has the potential to take a victim's humiliation from local to global in reach. Plus, people forget many of the things they witness directly, putting it on the internet means it's out there effectively forever. Both issues are somewhat abstract but may have an impact.
I worry that kids are more vulnerable to bullying because changes in how bullies are dealt with (or prevented from being dealt with) leave their victims without the hardscrabble coping methods of earlier decades. And I also worry that some of the social changes we've been experiencing since the 1960 have put more kids in vulnerable positions while society's protections for them are slow to catch up or facing intensifying backlash.
But that's probably a topic for another conversation.
To answer the OP, expensive. My parents threw out an awful lot of my gaming books.
My dad threatened to burn them once. Not because of any religious objection, but because my grades were terrible and gaming was distracting me from schoolwork. He told me to have all my books sitting on the kitchen table when he came home from work.
I put all the rulebooks there, yes. Then I sneaked out of the house with all my maps, characters, NPCs, homemade adventures and monsters, etc, and stashed them at friends' houses (and, for some reason, in a sealed Ziploc bag in the hollow of a cinder block wall in a vacant lot...maybe that was stuff I didn't want my friends' reading...can't remember) to get back later when everything blew over.
In the end, my dad just couldn't let that big of a financial investment go up in smoke, so he locked them away for a month or so until my grades improved.
You mean this one? :DCheck out this... fully authorized by Jack Chick himself (which that in and of itself is hilarious, because the guy who asked for the rights is a frickin' writer for THE ONION!)
http://www.darkdungeonsthemovie.com/
Nice, you are selling the DVD! That rocks, I am actually getting the digital download from the official website the 14th, but I might get the DVD sometime too. :D
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That seems... unproductive. Though probably really satisfying. Especially if they were really irreplaceable.
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Unproductive? Well, she probably thought several times before doing such a thing again.
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It felt good watching it burn. Especially when the cathode tube made a loud pop, and the phosphorous inside caught fire.
Also, my grandmother's reaction was priceless. Especially when my mom (the one who bought me the books and hunted them down) told her :"Serves you right".
=)
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It felt good watching it burn. Especially when the cathode tube made a loud pop, and the phosphorous inside caught fire.
Also, my grandmother's reaction was priceless. Especially when my mom (the one who bought me the books and hunted them down) told her :"Serves you right".
I would never have gotten away with that.
I would never have gotten away with that.It felt good watching it burn. Especially when the cathode tube made a loud pop, and the phosphorous inside caught fire.
Also, my grandmother's reaction was priceless. Especially when my mom (the one who bought me the books and hunted them down) told her :"Serves you right".
EDIT: Just to be clear, I realise that this thread was about growing up in the 70s and 80s, just wanted to point out that in some places there hasn't really been much of a shift in attitude since then.
Thankfully I never had to. Hell, my uncle got me into D&D when 3rd Ed came around, and he'd grown up playing 2nd edition with his friends, Nan never cared. I think he got a bit of teasing from his siblings, but what do you expect from 4 brothers and 5 sisters. My parents were pretty cool with it too, the biggest issue they had was having to drive me around 45 minutes to get to a friends place to play, or on the odd occasion when we played at my place, the fact that they had to deal with a couple of my friends who were, in all honesty, unbelievably irritating kids. I tried not to play at home because of that, since my mother was our Year Advisor at school and taught a few of our classes, I thought it was a bit unfair to inflict some of her least favourite students on her outside of school hours.
We never copped much flak for it at school either, or rather, there were other things people wanted to make fun of me for... I liked metal, I had long hair, I didn't play sport, I was good in class, I liked to read, my mother was a teacher, I never had a girlfriend at the school - to be fair that last one was at least partially because I had a rule that I didn't date local girls, since with the way my family was ingrained into the town there was a fair chance that I was related to any given girl born there. That rule just got cemented when my little brother told me he was going to ask out a girl in his class... got him to point her out. Cousin. So he pointed out a few others. Cousin, cousin, cousin. I feel that I was justified in my caution there.
So yeah, my experience of it were probably pretty similar to the 8th Dwarf's, even if I was dealing with it years later. Small country towns in Australia don't seem to change that much, there's always going to be bullies, and if you're going to be a target, you're always going to be one. Was never a religious thing here, was just a "you're different, and we don't take kindly to different folk round here" attitude.
Ha a mate of mine was from Dunedoo, he said all the old ladies in town kept an eye on who was a courting who, to make sure there was no cousins or second cousins getting frisky.
His nickname was Datsun he was a bit of an AJ but he was ok.
Hah, yeah, that sounds like a small town thing. Good ol' 'Straya huh?
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I would never have gotten away with that.It felt good watching it burn. Especially when the cathode tube made a loud pop, and the phosphorous inside caught fire.
Also, my grandmother's reaction was priceless. Especially when my mom (the one who bought me the books and hunted them down) told her :"Serves you right".
Oh, she never spoke to me again after that. Not that I could care less.
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I'm a little late to this conversation... My brother and I received the red box on 80 or 81 for Christmas from my dad. He was cool with allowing us to play, thought it was a great way to hone our imaginations and foster creativity. Well, as soon as that happened, my Grandmother and Great Aunt Catherine started pummeling my brother and I with Catholicism, terrified we were going to end up becoming satanic. They even went so far as to burn the red box in the fireplace and made us watch. That put the breaks on regular gaming until 2E came out in 88 or 89. My mother didn't mind it. Once again my grandmother and aunt started in about it being satanic. I countered with that it was based on real world myths and fantasy, such King Arthur, Merlin, Norse and Greek Mythology. They didn't talk to me for a year and then gave up trying to save my soul.
I would not know. I never grew up.
Thread winner.
I would not know. I never grew up.Thread winner.
Seconded.
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Like a lot of other gamers, D&D was a escape for me. I grew up a foster kid, and in 5th grade I was introduced to D&D. I never really played, it was more like a pBp, but my friend at the time would come and tell me what the game was and I said what I wanted to do. From there I was hooked. Finding ways to trade my transformers for a player's handbook.
Hiding my AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook from my foster parents and teachers, my brother and I would play when we were suppose to sleep. We didn't have character sheets, but just my memory. Instead of rolling dice, I would randomly say numbers in my head, and have my brother tell me to stop. I would game elements from Legend of Zelda II Adventures of Link, Final Fantasy, and Wonder Boy in Monster World. I never got to play these games, but had to watch my foster parents biological kids play, never getting to touch the controller. A friend at school brought a Final Fantasy Player Guide, and I read it from front to back, and grabbed info from the bestiary in the back, with Kraken being a final monster.
I remember watching on TV the news about a teenager in Wisconsin I believe who killed someone blame D&D for him doing so, and stated that it lead him to satanism. I was scared that if my foster parents were to find out, I would get my ass beat, which wouldn't make a difference since my brother and I were abused.
TL:DR: Anti-D&D propaganda (lol) was some weird shit. D&D allowed me to escape my own shitstorm.
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If anyone were to take my stuff to burn it for religious reasons, and this was someone I cared about, I would give them one chance to make full restitution twice over and a written and verbal apology before witnesses, along with written promises it would never happen again. I would also take the extra money and donate that to an atheist organization. Otherwise it would become a police matter with no further questions asked. Theft is bad, and doing it for religious reasons needs to be stamped out hard.
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If anyone were to take my stuff to burn it for religious reasons, and this was someone I cared about, I would give them one chance to make full restitution twice over and a written and verbal apology before witnesses, along with written promises it would never happen again. I would also take the extra money and donate that to an atheist organization. Otherwise it would become a police matter with no further questions asked. Theft is bad, and doing it for religious reasons needs to be stamped out hard.
Big talk - I wish I had that level of control and influence when I was 12 and my books were periodically purged (until I got wise and hid them). In the real world burning an adults tv or any other property in response would result in a beating, a visit by the cops or being put out the house for the night.
I am not 12 years old today. It certainly isn't big talk.
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His point is that the majority of people who experienced this had it happen to them when they were young minors and physically and legally incapable of preventing it from happening.
Of course if you're an adult you have better options. But most adults won't have their parents barge into their house and gather up their stuff. (Yes I know there are exceptions. Not the point.) Most people recounting stories here did not have those options at the time the story occurred. And it's a bit disingenuous to suggest/demand an adult-age solution for a childhood-age problem.
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No, it doesn't. And why? Because while religious people can justify to themselves stealing from a child on religious grounds, their religion is not important enough to make it worth doing to someone able to fight back. At least that is the only explanation I can see.
It's more that they have the authority to do as they please with their children's belongings, but not with those of others. As far as I'm aware, in most places children don't possess any legal ownership over anything (with the obvious exception of their own lives) until they come of age. Thus their possessions are, legally, the parents' (or other appropriate caretaker, if such exists) to decide what to do with. Whereas taking things from people you are not the legal guardian(s) of, or who are no longer under such authority due to being of age, is a completely different situation entirely.
The reason behind it - religious or otherwise - is irrelevant. You're comparing two very very different situations. Or trying to anyway.
You are actually saying that these people would cop out with "since I LEGALLY own that stuff, taking something he cares about and burning it is not stealing, and so must be okay from a religious standpoint"? Really? If so, those people are far worse than I ever thought. Note also that many of the accounts above tell of OTHER people than the parents stealing the stuff and destroying it, so it is not even a coherent argument.
I tried once to pull the "You can't take that, it's mine, that's stealing" bit when I was a kid and something (probably a video game system, knowing me) was being taken away from me as a punishment. I very quickly got educated on the "Technically nothing belongs to you in this house, it is legally all our belongings, because you're still a child". And multiple times my parents threatened to take something away and throw it in the trash due to it being considered a cause or a contributor toward bad behavior - for example, things like "playing video games instead of doing chores or homework". Thankfully we were not completely stupid kids and we would back off and behave usually at that point so the threat never had to be followed through with, but I have no doubt it would have been if we'd pressed.
So yes, I can very easily see, and understand, a parent who believes - for religious reasons, or for other reasons - that something is going to do harm to or have a bad influence on their child confiscating it, removing it, disposing of it, and having no reason to expect or respect an attempt at legal recourse over something that they have every reason to believe is their own personal property, simply allowed to be kept in the child's possession and for their use, an allowance they have decided to rescind.
Which, as stated, is an extremely different situation than trying to do the same to an adult, who has legal right of ownership to those things and the parents/disapproving persons with or without other connections do not.
Also, my grandmother's reaction was priceless. Especially when my mom (the one who bought me the books and hunted them down) told her :"Serves you right".
So his grandma felt SHE owned the stuff she burned, or was okay with stealing it. See? Legal technicalities only go so far.
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As for Sissyl's comment, it was actually somewhat common for a parent to discipline their children by confiscating video games, favorite toys, etc.
Granted, this typically meant as disciplining bad behavior with the understanding the objects will be returned once the period of probation is over.
It leaves the precedent for religious or fearful minded parents the excuse to destroy RPG games of their children. This of course was very extreme, yet did happen. I find it funny that I was banned from fantasy RPGs as a young child (mostly as grandparent influence), yet could own all the Sci-fi or superhero RPGs I wanted. My early RPG memories included Traveler, Star Frontiers, DC Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes, FASA Star Trek, and Gamma World.
Was and still is.