Days of High Adventure: Satanic Panic
- Thread starter Allen Varney
- Start date
Great article. I'd heard about half of it before, nice to see it in a coherent whole with a bunch of stuff I didn't know.
And twenty years later, someone saw this and made FATAL....Pat Pulling (in 1982) said:
Carlston said:
Yeah, and notice how the anti-videogame campaigners are basically using the EXACT same arguments that the anti-DND brigades used?
Probably the same dumb-asses too.
I was thinking that as well when I first read that line. I agree with everyone else who pointed out that a lot of people have a tendancy to blame things other then the people who are responsible for these things happening (eg: I know Columbine was linked to Doom at one point due to the press somehow ignoring the fact that playing a game like that is completely different to killing people in real life).Formica Archonis said:
My fiance lived through the time of the craze, and both of his parents truly did believe that the movie Monsters and Mazes was real. Whenever he went out to play rpgs with his friends, he always told them he was going out to a hobby shop (think like, model airplanes. Cept the store was really, the local gaming shop), so they wouldn't get worried. Only near the end of his father life, did his father ask him what it was actually like, and he sat down and explained what dnd was actually like.
My life was completly different. Both of my parents plaed dnd in college, and were geeks. Growing up, I was actually taken as a treat to the local gaming store, and grew up being told dnd is awesome, and people that play it are nice.
Twenty years difference in growing up does make a difference, I gotta say...
My life was completly different. Both of my parents plaed dnd in college, and were geeks. Growing up, I was actually taken as a treat to the local gaming store, and grew up being told dnd is awesome, and people that play it are nice.
Twenty years difference in growing up does make a difference, I gotta say...
I never understand why every second crime-related news article doesn't say "Sports fan murders five, escapes" or "DIY man turns skills learnt in shed to slaughter". Surely more criminals are fans of say football( Soccer on the otherside)...of NFL or whatever...
These fundamentalist crusader types are going about it totally the wrong way. Linking D&D to Satanism, black magic etc only makes kids more keen to buck authority and try them. The exact same thing has happened with prohibition of drugs, alcohol and sex.
I have never played D&D, even though (being quite a big RPG fan) I probably would have enjoyed it. You know why? Because D&D is for nerds. As a kid that was pretty much all I knew of it, learned from American high school shows; people who play D&D are total losers. As a result, nobody I knew ever played, and I was never exposed to it. All I had was a vague idea that it was the province of sad, spotty teenagers.
It seems to me that if these reactionary fearmongers would wise up a little and promote that image, they could do a lot more damage. After all, when the local brigade of boring, conservative-minded middle-aged people start condemning something it insantly gains a sort of dark glamour that teens find attractive. If those same people put the word around the D&D was only for sexless geeks hiding in a basement, you can bet it would have a different effect...
EDIT: Before anyone flames me, I'm not saying all D&D players are losers. Just that this is the impression I had of it as a child.
I have never played D&D, even though (being quite a big RPG fan) I probably would have enjoyed it. You know why? Because D&D is for nerds. As a kid that was pretty much all I knew of it, learned from American high school shows; people who play D&D are total losers. As a result, nobody I knew ever played, and I was never exposed to it. All I had was a vague idea that it was the province of sad, spotty teenagers.
It seems to me that if these reactionary fearmongers would wise up a little and promote that image, they could do a lot more damage. After all, when the local brigade of boring, conservative-minded middle-aged people start condemning something it insantly gains a sort of dark glamour that teens find attractive. If those same people put the word around the D&D was only for sexless geeks hiding in a basement, you can bet it would have a different effect...
EDIT: Before anyone flames me, I'm not saying all D&D players are losers. Just that this is the impression I had of it as a child.
I am so happy that my parents didn't behave like idiotic lemmings when this happened - DnD was very good for me and the fact that my parents saw through this crap made me respect them a whole lot more. Of course, even the teachers at my Catholic school knew it was a crock and allowed us to form an after-school group so I think the source of this problem (like so many others in the United States) was specifically the conservative fundamentalist cultists.
Don't think this stupidity is done with or limited exclusively to video games, though - my son's friend who lives next door was banned from watching Mystic Force Power Rangers and Harry Potter/LOTR movies. I truly believe that some people never develop the mental acuity to understand the concept of fiction - and I believe that group overlaps quite a bit with those that endorse a literal interpretation of the bible.
Don't think this stupidity is done with or limited exclusively to video games, though - my son's friend who lives next door was banned from watching Mystic Force Power Rangers and Harry Potter/LOTR movies. I truly believe that some people never develop the mental acuity to understand the concept of fiction - and I believe that group overlaps quite a bit with those that endorse a literal interpretation of the bible.
Having started AD&D in the tail end of the article's 'bad ol' days' as well as being Utah, those perceptions of satanic, evil cult, black magic, backwards played heavy metal music of people were spot on. Double it with the fact that D&D is a nerd hobby. I felt kinda like I was in a secret society just to play it back then. Because if you were caught you either were picked on by bullies or had a long talk with a parent, religious figure, or psychiatrist. I think it has become slightly more accepted by the nerdifcation of society in general combined with the company that puts out D&D (Wizards of the Coast) is now a multimillion dollar business that has the money (and will) to fight back against such lies. Sure there are those crazies that still think D&D is satanically evil, but they don't command public sway like they used to. This combined with World of Worldcraft, most people know that my hobby is simply nerdy and not evil.
Wait....these D&D games are satanic? OH HELL! MY POOR SOUL!
So does that mean the more D&D books/manuals you have the more evil you are? Because I have almost every one in some form or another. Im going strait to hell.
See y'all there!
So does that mean the more D&D books/manuals you have the more evil you are? Because I have almost every one in some form or another. Im going strait to hell.
See y'all there!
Great article, well researched. I remember living through the "scare" in the mid 80s as a D&D player - it's nice to have a comprehensive look back.
People are always going to lash out at things they don't understand, which to me defies all common sense and logic.
What if some yahoo finds a new type of animal never seen before? He wouldn't attack it, it might have diamond skin and be more venomous then a black widow. (Take that metaphorically)
What if some yahoo finds a new type of animal never seen before? He wouldn't attack it, it might have diamond skin and be more venomous then a black widow. (Take that metaphorically)
People need something to blame for the ills of the world. And if videogame players think it's bad now, they have no conception of what some of us went through.
Having walked through picket lines to go to a gaming convention as a young teen in the early 80s, this article stirs up some sickening memories. Seriously, for a few years there, you needed to hide your game-playing or you'd be taken down to the counselor for a mental evaluation... which I always found horribly ironic considering that I learned the game from my mother's fellow teachers.
Even later on when I wrote and published my own role-playing games, I needed to be careful about who I mentioned it to... mostly because of the Live-Action Scare in the 90s.
Having walked through picket lines to go to a gaming convention as a young teen in the early 80s, this article stirs up some sickening memories. Seriously, for a few years there, you needed to hide your game-playing or you'd be taken down to the counselor for a mental evaluation... which I always found horribly ironic considering that I learned the game from my mother's fellow teachers.
Even later on when I wrote and published my own role-playing games, I needed to be careful about who I mentioned it to... mostly because of the Live-Action Scare in the 90s.
I started playing D&D in late 89 and my dad freaked the fuck out afraid of the panic. So my mother and father made me and my cousin (the DM) go to talk to our church's priest, Father Paul, about godliness. When we had our meeting with him and told him what it was about he said "Oh that, well there's nothing linking those two things together." Father Paul was actually a highly educated man (he went to an Ivy league Seminary or some such thing) He called my parents, aunt and uncle in and we had a long discussion about creative outlets and he showed them some copies of the game he had (apparently this came up a lot) the parts people deem demonic and explained that typically you FIGHT demons and so on. I don't remember all of it.
So thanks Father Paul, may he rest in peace. If it weren't for him I would've never gotten to start my lifelong love of pen and paper roleplaying, and by extension probably wouldn't have been able to woo my wife.
So thanks Father Paul, may he rest in peace. If it weren't for him I would've never gotten to start my lifelong love of pen and paper roleplaying, and by extension probably wouldn't have been able to woo my wife.