The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic

The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26328105


"The view of roleplaying games has changed over time," says Smith, "mostly because the predicted 'streets awash with the blood of innocents as a horde of demonically-possessed roleplayers laid waste to the country' simply never materialised."

 

Oh my... I know it worse than most. I was always into D&D, Fantasy, that sort of stuff. My mom was very religious, she wouldn't even let me watch the D&D cartoon, or play any games that involved magic, or read fantasy books. So I had to hide my Xanth and Dragonlance books that I was reading at 12. Once she saw Dragon Warrior involved casting spells I nearly got it taken away... Had to explain it's just healing like a doctor (that was the spell she saw me use)... When I was 13 I moved in with my dad so it was all the d&d, magic: the gathering, video games casting magic I wanted Whenever I visited her though I couldn't bring my magic: the gathering cards.


here is something funny I found out years later though(in 2005), in 1978 she played D&D, before it became evil... we found her character sheet at our family friends house where they used to play games all the time. It was a first edition, reading the directions, I found it amusing that a recommended character name for a female elf was Zelda... must have been where Nintendo got the name?

 

There were definitely people on that bandwagon, but the degree to which it was a "full-on moral panic" (as the BBC News writer says) is exaggerated. Patricia Pulling was obviously not a normal person, believing the curse in the game was a real curse on her son.

 

Rather than preaching against D&D these groups should have spent their energy preaching the Gospel. The gospel can change a person not D&D. Problem is many of these "groups" don't believe the gospel otherwise they would preach it rather than the fear tactics of their "religions".

I've been in so many midweek bible studies whose focus is about trying to get your act together rather than on the power of Christ. The truth is we all need the grace of God. It's only by grace, anything else is just wood, hay, and stubble... all of which has no eternal place, it is all consumed by fire.

 

My parents were told in Church that a demon had been summoned by a game of D&D and killed some kids. They had also been told that we were required to chant magic words to cast spells in D&D, which were secretly brainwashing us to cast real Satanic magic!

This Chick Tract didn't help: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.ASP

This box cover probably didn't go over well in many homes.

 

I had to play D&D behind my mom's back as well. We would say we were going to play some AE&W (that's advance engines and wagons ).

Also, when I was little, I had to stop watching He-man because they said: "Praise the Sorceress!" Meaning "Good job Sorceress!" My mom walked past at just that point and said: "You don't praise anyone but GOD!" and banned He-Man. Sigh.

 

Tell me about it, though honestly that was a pretty dumb move on RG's or Origin's part in my opinion. We all know it didnt mean what people thought it did, but parading that box art was soooooo unnecessary. IIRC I think I wrote an open letter to them about it at the time.

 

If anybody reads the bible Jesus didn't get angry with so called pagans or any other religion. The only people he got angry at was the legalistic and hypocritical teachers of the law, Pharisees, and Sadducees. The so called power of the devil or demons was never an issue with Jesus because he healed everybody and set them free with a word.

Now Jesus already died on the cross for sins. The biggest issue left is our psyche (soul). Believing the gospel sets us free free from self-sufficiency, and going our own way without God. Religion on the other hand is a return to bondage.

 

Sometimes frustration is nessisary to help people reach the end of themselves. Some religious people probably came unglued by that box. BUT I PROMISE YOU THIS... if they came apart because of a little box, they come unglued at everything! For the pure all things are pure, for the corrupted nothing is pure.

 

Sadly in Spain was something similar after 1994. Two crazy guys killed someone and they said that they were playing role, so everyone started to call it "the crime of the role players". At that time if you told game "Im a role player" they looked at you like If you were an assassin or if you were in a sect. Sadly still some people thing weird things about D&D and even Magic. :S

Sadly in 2000 another crazy guy killed his family, and he said that he was inspired by "Final Fantasy"...

 

Meh, "evil" exists in D&D to provide a moral justification for killing. The players are generally on the same side and need to fight something...rather than have an interesting moral dilemma (like Ultima did) they just made the bad guys evil. Religious people should embrace this sort of black and white. Contrast this with say Game of Thrones where everyone has human weaknesses but isn't particularly evil (and certainly isn't good).

D&D was more or less Dead Poet's Society. A bunch of kids getting together and using their imagination.

 

If you want to have a laugh check out the old Tom Hanks movie "Mazes and Monsters" It's not a comedy
but a drama, but it is still funny because they obviously attempted to cash in on the "Dungeons & Dragons is evil"
Trend in those days.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

It was largely about misinformation, I think.

Of course, I wasn't raised in an evangelical family, so I'm looking at this as an outsider. But religious people are responsible for a lot of fantasy writing and fairy tales. Tolkien was a religious Christian, his books were promoted at book faires everywhere, and nobody mistook the fact that the evil Sauron was meant as a foil for the good characters. But there was some kind of idea floating around that D&D involved some kind of New Age beliefs, and this is when New Age was becoming really popular. The advocacy group that was making this issue popular, BADD, was led by a woman -- Patricia Pulling -- who thought curses were real and a curse placed on her son caused him to commit suicide. Her group managed to get exposure in certain circles where there was ignorance of what D&D actually was. And that got out of hand.

 

And a year later (1983), the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon started airing on CBS.

 

pagan++


Etienne Navarre

 

I played AD&D in the 80s and never had to hide it from my parents -- despite all the pushback from the fruitcakes of society -- because my parents "got" that is was a game (and they also couldn't stand the fruitcakes).

 

I remember it well. I watched it with my parents and the comment was made, "You wouldn't be that bloody stupid about a game, would you?" I replied, "Of course not..." and that was the end of the discussion.

Yep, my parents were (and still are), pretty awesome.

 

I think we were reminded that the characters we'd like to root for in GoT are in fact, evil after this last episode.

 

SSSSSHHHH!!! Some of us dont get HBO and have to wait for either the blu-ray or iTunes release.

 

"neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so."

Or read books?