Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic

Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:37 pm The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic

You old timers you remember those days? I do.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105 Evil

Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:52 pm

Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:07 pm

Back in the mid-80s, after my friends and I had been playing D&D for a few years, my parents and my friends' parents had us gather at a home and game while they watched for about an hour. The parents then all went into the living room and discussed it while we continued our game.

The end result was that they agreed that we were not being influenced to worship satan or to do any other evil thing, so we were free to continue. Of course, we purposely didn't mention that PC classes like the Assassin were available to be played. Razz

SirXaris
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Fri Apr 11, 2014 3:22 am

Leave it to the incorrigible rasgon to post a pic of Satan in this thread. Laughing

Oh, and here's one of my GENCON 91' souvenirs (a shirt):

Suck it, 80's fear mongers! Razz

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Fri Apr 11, 2014 5:14 am

That's part of the joke, yeah. He looks like the Devil, he's the host of a 1980s nostalgia show, and he has the voice of Uni the Unicorn from the D&D cartoon.

Fri Apr 11, 2014 9:58 am

Yeah, I remember those days well, and not with any degree of fondness. My grandparents really got worried when I started playing the game, and it somewhat bled over to my parents (who tried to defend me, and the game, but it was obvious they didn't approve) who did their best to dissuade me from continuing RPGs. Later in high school I challenged the position that RPGs, and ADnD in particular, was stigmatized because it was not a 'socially approved' activity in the same vein that athletics and sports are. This somewhat backed down my parents, and I dodged the subject with my grandparents growing up. Nowadays, my parents don't bother me with the fact, and my grandparents are all dead, so only my wife gives me any trouble (only partially serious mind you) about playing a 'teenage kid's game.' Nonetheless, the game has become a lightning rod for all sorts of people who have the wrong impression about it. I could go on with a diatribe, but I think I've made my point.

-Lanthorn

Fri Apr 11, 2014 1:05 pm

Even though I was only about 8-12 years old at the time, I was already reading and playing AD&D (thanks to my uncle) and I thought all the talk about devil worship involved with the game was absolutely stupid. Everyone I played with was a good or neutral character and we spent adventures fighting demons and devils, not worshipping them. When I saw these people against the game on TV I immediately thought they were idiots. Now as I look back it reminds me of the fight against music and video games that would come later, which is in turn similar to the fight to ban certain books over the last decades. I guess small minded and poorly educated people will always fight against things they don't understand.

Fri Apr 11, 2014 1:39 pm

Well said xo.

Fri Apr 11, 2014 2:53 pm

I scribbled the word "demon" out of my D&D books because I was genuinely concerned about that sort of thing. The advent of the word "tanar'ri" was a huge relief for me.

Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:18 pm

Most of the people I played D&D with at that time were in my Boy Scout troop, and we had one Scout Master who went off on the whole devil-worship thing one camping trip when he overheard the DM describing one of the scenes in the Tomb of Horrors. I just mustered as much 13-year old contempt as I could pack into my voice and said, "We're fighting AGAINST evil monsters, devils, and wizards," then went back to playing. That was the last we heard of it. Years later I heard his hot wife who was out of his league (at least us Boy Scouts thought she was hot ... okay, she was hot, and definitely out of his league) divorced him when he cheated on her. So much for Mr. Morality.

Sat Apr 12, 2014 8:39 am

Sat Apr 12, 2014 4:17 pm

When this started I was living in NJ where I was known to be a crazy redneck kid that punched Yankees for little or no reason, thus I got very little trouble from other kids (a situation not always shared by other gamers in the area). Adults were the problem every single time. Crazy religious people that didn't know me or any other gamer complaining to the school (D&D club was run by a very well respected science teacher), library (where we gamed in a meeting room), and stores (to the point the only local source for game books was the comic store at the flea market). All because their imaginary friend, whose rules most of them couldn't live up to, was gonna be mad if I spent time pretending to kill evil monsters.
On a side note- gaming is actually why read the bible in middle school. As cool as those old bible movies with Charlton Heston were (for their time) I thought there might be good ideas in there I could use for games. And while there is good plot material there to be mined it's also very likely the main reason I'm an atheist.

Sat Apr 26, 2014 8:49 am

Sat Apr 26, 2014 9:10 am

Sat Apr 26, 2014 9:20 am

Sat Apr 26, 2014 10:42 am