I haven't seen many posts about this period of RPG's history.
I'm sure than some of you guys were already players at that time.
So how did it felt ? the fact that your innocent hobby could get you into serious troubles just because some idiots claimed it was satanic ?
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It actually never happened. It was liberal media trolling people into believing conservatives are retards yet again. Only Chick and three other assholes ever gave a quantum of a fuck about rpgs.
Yeah, it mostly wasn't a thing. Some churches encouraged their members to confiscate and destroy the books where they could find them, but it was mostly rumors. Someone heard that a someone's cousin's friend went crazy playing D&D. Nobody ever had any proof.
>T. People not from the Bible belt or religious houses
No, plenty of otherwise very reasonable people believed that d&d, magic the gathering, and other assorted autism was literally the work of the devil. Has everyone forgotten the harry Potter protests, or am I just that old?
No but then I'm probably just as old.
No, they didn't.
Nobody cares about this meme or about how butthurt you are your Mom requisited your dnd 3,5 hand book when you were ten because you weren't doing your homework. It's called growing up not mass hysteria.
I've seen several. They generally revolve around how shit or awesome someones parents were/are.
It must feel nice living in a world where you can believe that the majority of humans aren't sheep. Of course you're right when talking about one person. But a group of people can do some stupid and messed up shit.
I am not this user
But it does seem like you're a bit sheltered in your outlook
Also for the record I did great on school like 90% of the huge fucking nerds here so thanks for asking.
People just get dumb when rumors start to spread. There was a genuine moral outrage about D&D for a bit. Darkest dungeons was not tongue in cheek like you think it was
Granted it wasn't as bad as what comic books got, but it was there.
There was a fantastic book published last year called "Dangerous Games" by Joseph Laycock, and I strongly recommend it. It's the best summary anyone has ever done of the whole phenomenon. He goes over a lot of the old dramas, re-investigating the supposed suicides (James Egbert etc) and well as contextualizing it all so you can get a sensible angle on the whole thing. It was a fascinating read.
Because it's a historic artifact. here's the book B.A.D.D. published at the height of the panic. It makes for amusing reading today, but personally I find it really sad. A lot of kids supposedly killed by D&D were actually fucked over by the same shitty parents who were now literally demonizing the only thing they enjoyed.
it was real.
but personally it taught me a valuable lesson at a key point in my life...
that being that the media and other authority figures can be and are often liars who spread crap to serve their own, usually ignorant, agendas....
>the media and other authority figures can be and are often liars who spread crap to serve their own, usually ignorant, agendas....
It's the fucking common knowledge, somewhere near the knowledge "how to breathe"
Well it's fucking common knowledge now but it wasn't back in the 80s
Moral panics are best panics desu.
>16th century witch hunts
>red scare
>dnd panic
>satanist pedophile abuse rings
>vidya turns people into misogynistic murders
The red scare was more of an imperialist propaganda thing than a moral thing
Well. Here it was 90's but as with everything in the 80'/90's things from US shore here bit later. Therefore also did the Satanist scare.
It taught me to investigate things before taking what other people say at face value. Things never are as they seem on the surface. It prepared me for the internet before it was as widely available as it is now.
But in practise. My parents were very sceptic about me playing ADD or Rune Quest. They let us play but they did pay attention to it. Also my father red through those few books I had and thought it was just an interesting way to play a game. He wasn't interested in it more than that.
Nerd from bumpkinville in the bible belt.
No one gave a shit as long as you were not gay.
Bitch I literally KNOW PEOPLE whose parents refused to let them play DnD because it was Satan's game.
Sounds pretty tame, around here hardcore jesusfags view things like dancing, TV, pre-marital kissing, and computers as one way ticket to hell.
One of my friends in High School lost their 3.5 collection to their parents when their local Church of God decided to hold a book burning.
You're very sheltered.
Bitch people being assholes are not a mass hysteria.
Non-americans can't imagine how retarded people are here
I see "sheltered" is a new shorthand to dismiss people's opinion. I could talk about my life and let you decide how sheltered I've been but you allready made up your mind, so good day to you.
Irony of ironies, here's the add I'm seeing on this thread.
All it takes for people to realize that is to take one look at you when the election season is rolling around. Let's just say that all American elections that I've followed have been extremely amusing in the watching two retards wrestling in mud-kind of sense.
Baguette detected ?
>Even in the early 2000s half my friends weren't allowed to join my high school D&D game because their parents were concerned they might catch a whiff of The Satan.
Yeah, it was more than just three people. A good portion of the american south was caught up in that crap for decades. There are still tons of people to this day who won't let their kids watch the magic schoolbus because it's too occult.
I wasn't around for most of the 80s, and what amount I was I wasn't old enough to remember it.
That said I got into actually playing tabletops around the year 1999 (though my uncle had fostered an interest in them for most of my life, from giving me his Ral Partha pewter minis and old AD&D books to getting me hooked on fantasy vidya/books/etc) and have lived my whole life in New England, which has helped me out by keeping me away from a lot of the more horrendous parts of this country. If the stain of "D&D = Satanism and Suicide" ever really got widespread up here it was long dead by the time I got my hands on the hobby.
The only couple of experiences I've had with it were from a friend's mom (they moved here from Florida) who had drunk the kool-aid on D&D being how Satan got to kids and my Aunt (well, my mom's friend, but you get the idea) who had "seen some things on facebook" after finding out her son was into RPGs.
Both of these matters got happily settled pretty quick and quiet, though. Nothing explosive or dramatic to storytime.
Thanks for the PDF, imo it's a great example of pulling stuff out of context for your own benefit
Funny, I went to Catholic school in Florida and our community gave a damn if you were going to church and Mott on drugs.
Then again, Baptist communities are shit holes full of cave people so no wonder you fell for moronic horse shit.
James Dallas Egbert III was a child prodigy who was attending college at the age of 16, had incredible amounts of pressure to succeed from his family, and was secretly gay and a drug addict. His suicide attempts were not connected to D&D, but the private investigator who took his case did not reveal this for several years after his death, once the book about the case was released, in order to protect Egbert's family from a tarnished reputation. When he finally succeeded in killing himself, he had not played D&D for about a year, which hardly qualifies him as being 'heavily involved' in the game. This is the case that began the entire controversy over D&D.
Michael P. Dempsey committed suicide with a handgun in his bedroom on May 19th, 1981. Few details about the circumstances surrounding his death are available, as the only source of information is Dempsey's father, who is strongly against the game. His father claims to have seen Michael summoning actual D&D demons into his room before his death, and described the odors of sulfur and garlic (which he claims are part of a demon summoning ritual) after his death.
Irving Lee ('Bink') Pulling III was BADD founder Patricia Pulling's son. Bink was known for having a few emotional problems - he used to run around the back yard, howling at the moon, and right before his suicide, it is believed he viciously killed several family pets. After his suicide, a police investigator asked Pulling if her family worshipped the devil, and showed her the Dungeons & Dragons books and notes in Bink's collection, which she knew nothing about. (So much for being 'heavily involved' in D&D!) This was very likely the seed that was planted in Pulling's mind and began to grow into a vast Satanic conspiracy of secret murders and suicides. Pulling would later claim that a curse put on Bink's character in a school D&Dgame drove him to kill himself, but when questioned, none of the members of the school group knew of such a curse.
1/2
Harold T. Collins did not commit suicide, he died in a failed attempt at auto-erotic asphyxiation. Dungeons & Dragons does not condone or even mention this type of activity. Therefore, this death is not connected with D&D at all.
Daniel E. and Stephen (Steven) R. Erwin (sources on this case never seem to agree on the spelling of the younger brother's name) were brothers who carried out a suicide pact together. Daniel, the older brother, was facing sentencing for auto theft, and was extremely afraid of the criminal justice system. The Erwin parents have always maintained that D&D had nothing to do with the death of their sons, and were enraged when a 60 Minutes story connecting the two was aired in September of 1985.
2/2
And the one that really galls me: on pg 4 it quotes on Kelly Jean Popperton, found dead "two days later", essentially blaming drugs and D&D for her death - when in fact she was a victim of the still-unknown Alameda County serial killer. Something about that pisses me off.
Oh and incidentally, none of those deaths occurred on a full moon
It's something you learn growing up, and an unsettingly large portion of people never do
Jep, that is what i expected.
>And the one that really galls me: on pg 4 it quotes on Kelly Jean Popperton, found dead "two days later", essentially blaming drugs and D&D for her death - when in fact she was a victim of the still-unknown Alameda County serial killer. Something about that pisses me off.
That is the only one i would connect to DnD as she probably was killed by a Murderhobo
Not just the American bible belt, this spread to Brazil to a degree where a guy used D&D books as evidence in a girl's murder case and the thing spiralled into a lot of suspicious over RPGs and stuff by the guillible segment of the people. I actually seem a magic the gathering set being set alight by an angry mom.
For fucks sake, it's 2016.
You weren't probably even born in the 80s.
Why the fuck you are making thread like this then?
>I haven't seen many posts about this period of RPG's history.
Idiots like you keep making roughtly 2 threads about it per fucking day.
Get lost
>T. Americans convinced the world ends on American borders
It never happend outside your country. And it barely happend IN your country, with very short lived hysteria, the same way how there was equally short lived hysteria about heavy metal music, lasting entire one "drought season" for media.
It's just a meme that kids in the late 90s perpetuated out of any proportion. The real "hunt" never even happend outside few of newspapers on n-th page of the Saturday edition.
From the sound of axe-grinding, I'm guessing this revisionist garbage is some kind of conservatard reaction to criticism of all that retarded Reagan-era culture?
>equally short lived hysteria about heavy metal music
There are still people who freak out about metal music. Whole churches have sermons about "the devil's music"
Some people are really, really dumb and do not let go of beliefs unless god himself parts the clouds and tells them they're being stupid shits
Are they talking about metal, rock, jazz or classical?
Kpop
>Buzzword buzzword buzzword
Buzzword
I'm not sure you understand what's the difference between mass hysteria and few people being ass-blasted
Or that there is world outside the state you live in
>Some people are really, really dumb
Yeah, I've notice, reading the nth thread like this
>Some people are really, really dumb and do not let go of beliefs unless god himself parts the clouds and tells them they're being stupid shits
I personally know of one that was pretty fucked up and isn't on that list. Google "romeo juliet act 1986" if you want to know more.
Girl was my gf up until about 2 months before this. Guy was just an acquaintance.
At the time, there were lots of tv shows in NYC area - mainly tabloid news shows - using this story and describing D&D as "the medieval death game" (quoting Jeraldo Rivera, himself!)
It wasn't mass hysteria but it wasn't nothing, by far. I know people who weren't allowed to play. Someone, to this day, refuses to play because of a promise made to a relative on her death bed whom was convinced it was a sure ticket to hell.
Fortunately, my parents saw it as a way to know where me and all my friends usually were, where they could watch us, and be sure we weren't getting into trouble. My mother (who forbade me watching Batman on tv because it was to violent) didn't like that all the problem solving involved killing things but saw the cooperative nature and our rapidly expanding vocabularies (what 12 year old is using words like barbican, portcullis, crenelation and bec de corbin?) as beneficial enough that she took the time to realize the "killing" was simply rolling enough pips on dice... which, in turn, was also making us better at math.
But, then the neighborhood flipped it's shit when we got caught playing hide & seek in a graveyard at night. Being city kids where every street was lit, we picked it because it was dark at night. It took a lot of convincing (and the fact that no pentagrams or dead goats were found) to ensure everyone that we weren't there to do some unholy ritual...
Source: I'm a 50 year old oldfag... live it.
It expanded beyond the US by shared media.
France never knew things to the extent of the US (and I've heard stories from people kiving there... very reminiscent of how the pre-comic book code period heavily contributed in killing some shops), but the outreach of the negative, undocumented media of the time made it so that even in the 00s, I would get weird looks and comments when I'd say I managed a local RPG club.
Like I was some sect guru or something.
Here's that (you) you wanted.
You are getting strange looks, because you are running a RPG club. This alone is enough to get strange looks, you fucking basement dweller. Maybe it never occured to you, but RPG never really caught up in France as a trend.
You are basically looked strange for being considered yet another hipster, not because your imaginary status of being prosecuted occultist
Surprise, surprise, fucker - normies don't consider RPG normal, regardless of what you believe. You are treated strange, because your hobby is strange and very niche for average person.
Bonus points for France, where TTRPG had a very, very shortlived life in early 90s and then pretty much disappeared from the scope of everyone.
But hey, that must be all because of the imaginary witch hunt taking place in States 30 years ago, right?
>or am I just that old?
Going by this thread it's exactly that. This shit was so dumb that it's hard to believe unless you actually lived through it. Which means the better question is are people on this board really so young?
What exactly is a few people? just 500 people going along with it is enough to qualify as mass hysteria
Average Veeky Forums user is high schooler or college freshman, so why are you surprised?
>hipster
Nice anachronistic analysis.
>not because your imaginary status of being prosecuted occultist
Not what I said, thank you for your reading comprehension.
>This alone is enough to get strange looks, you fucking basement dweller.
Which is enough to prove what I was saying: there is (was) a stigma attached. I never got the same looks when I say I manage a local sport team, you miscarriage waste.
Yes, id say the average Veeky Forums user is a 15 year old American.
500 people compared with what?
Fucksville, Kansas population of 501?
Or entire US of A with 235 mill back then?
Stay mad about being imaginary prosecuted.
>T-that stigma
>I'm a sorceror!
There is a difference between being considered socially-inept overweight basement dweller with no social skills and imaginary adventures to feel special and, say, being considered satanistic occultist
But whatever makes you feel special, I guess.
Veeky Forums has one of the youngest audience, barely scrapping above 19 on average.
For your mind to comprehend - average user was born in late 90s.
>hipster
>anachronistic
I guess you should look around, rather than sitting in that club of yours.
That's my point, it's not a percentage thing. It's simply about a mass of people believing in an imagined threat. It could be 500 in bumfuck kansas and it's still mass hysteria. If anything a concentration of them in one place makes it even more notable
>15
Personally I think that thanks to /b/ 12 or 11 would probably be more accurate guess.
>Thread about nation-wide hysteria
>Uses localised outburst as an example
I'm not sure you understand how scale works
The point was that the thing was real in the US as far as my second-hand tales can confirm, and having lived through it, there *was* a distinct change in the attitude of people here because of the media treatment that spilled over.
Before it, people at worse didn't care. Hell, playing the hardcore military strategy board games was often even seen positively as it was done most of the time by students in higher eduction (and whatever the cool aid you drank made you believe being a so called "nerd" was seen positively).
So that being the consensus is it safe to say kids are just little shits that refuse to believe anything bad ever happened unless it also involved them? Because that's what it seems like.
Find me a reference to "hipster" in France in the 80s/90s that isn't a throwback to the original 40s use.
More or less, and that tendency follows them into adulthood.
>as far as my second-hand tales can confirm
Brace yourself, because this will shock you
Those are tall tales.
This shit never happend aside very localised cases that died within few months. What is now hauled by neo/tg/ as "witch hunt" lasted for single summer season, with bunch of newspapers of local range blasting biased, unresearched articles trying to connect anything at all together, because it was summer and they had nothing else to write about.
And word of advice - nobody gives a shit about your personal life and experiences, this is anonymous imageboard.
two bumfuck nowhere towns across the US is nationwide
But user, no witch hunt happend, so why are you trying to pretend the meme-tier status of satanistic D&D was real and serious? I get it, you were born in '88 and your mom didn't allow you to buy overpriced ADD set in mid-90s, but come on!
I wouldn't get to any consensus from data gathered around here. From all we know, those people could be 70 year old trolls (now that's a depressing thought).
On average I do find the younger generation is a lot more conservative.
...
Last time I've checked we were talking about recent times, but hey, nice dodge, Gary
This entire thread so far
Not in the 80s. I was too young in the 80s.
I was typing this out but breached the 2000 character limit. Better to greentext.
>Parents both chemists
>Mother a control freak with possible misandry issues spawned from prior abusive relationships, Father has depression, so just takes it. No second opinions to counter her.
>No Simpsons. No TV sports. No Nintendo. Nothing that I would need to relate with my peers when I get into ES. Never learned to catch/kick a ball, just how to fish and boot C64/Dos games.
>Lots of TNG, C64, TMNT. Sci-fi tastes set in hard from an early age.
>Doomed to be a social outcast from the day the condom broke.
>2nd grade. Mother converts to Baptist Christianity.
>Mother Upgrades Browbeat with Christian Rhetoric. It's super-effective.
>Mostly nothing changes for me because SCIENCE!
>Desperately try to jump on every fad at school because literally nothing else to relate with other kids about.
>M:tG Fad
>MOM I WANT MTG
>Ha no fag
>K I'll just make my own cards. Construction paper. Make shit from memory. OP-as-fuck, edgy to my sheltered 3rd-grader self.
>Mom reads it. "That's SATANIC".
>SparlockTheWarriorWizard.avi
>The crusade continued as she hunted for more things to decry in order to gain more Jesus points around the house.
>Pic related was my first Veeky Forums.
Luckily, Science fiction seemed to dodge the bullet, and since I was well in that camp, missing out on MtG was just like missing out on Pogs or Devil Sticks...
Actually I was allowed to, but a lot of my friends parents were dead against it. It was also banned from my school along with Harry Potter and mtg, and a bunch of other stuff, later on because the PTA insisted it promoted Satanism and "moral degeneracy".
Tall tales of people explaining me how the period changed the ways local communities saw their commerce and how it contributed in them closing shop?
My god, such horrible tall tales. Unbelievable! Who could have spun that marvel?
Yeah, there was witch hunt in the sense that no on got burned to the stake. Was there a change in the general social climate. Which is what we're discussing. Things don't have to go all the way down to murder before their impact can be felt and considered worth discussing, however much you seem unable to process it.
And word of advice: I'll tell whatever the shit I want if I feel it's contextually significant, but you're free to ignore it. This is an anonymous board.
>D&D
>HP
>MtG
user, that was the system just telling you your taste is shit and you shouldn't spread it to other kids
Wellm you checked wrong thank you for your reading incomprehension.
>I'll tell whatever the shit I want if I feel it's contextually significant
Shouldn't you be then on reddit then? Or running your blog?
So you are running your club in the 80s, when RPG wasn't even a thing in France?
Because that's what you right now stated
For context :Rêve de Dragon was published in 1985. You might want to reconsider your timeline.
Kek, possibly, but it wasn't really my taste. Just clubs my school had that got banned. Except HP that was just generally popular at the time.
Thinking back I think my school just hated fun. They also banned football, red rover, tag, Pokemon, and Scary Stories.
Damn, what kind of shithole school did you go to? The worst thing i had to deal with at mine was their asinine dress code.
A suburb one. Lots of bored suburban housewives on the PTA.
>housewives
Why it is that housewives tend to be complete and utter cunts?
Remeber reading of guy on Brazil who was arrested because he lived close to a murder victim's house and had RPG books.
D&D books were accepted by the judge as proof that the guy was satanist. They believed he sacrified the woman in satanic rituals.
Years later it was discovered that the girl had been murdered by her boyfriend (a drug dealer IIRC) and they released the RPG-player.
daemon.com.br
(in portuguese)
Because they are not loved by their husbands, who earn enogh for them to stay at home and have too much free time. Add to that frustration from demanding kids, husbands having romance with cute secretary (or so they think) and a bunch of other shitty reasons and you end up with a person that is just frustration incarnated.
Could be a funny stereotype, if I didn't have to deal with half of the neighbourhood of those when working in local deli.
>Actually arrested for owning rpg books
Brazil must be a complete shithole
>zombie drugs
>jungle viruses everywhere
>most cities make detroit look like a bastion of civilization
>shitting bays
It's a classic 3rd world country, what do you expect?
Daily reminder Yuropeans were naive enough to grant them Olympics, because everyone was sure that in 12 years Brazil will turn from developing shithole to normal country
M8, Brazil ain't got shit compared to Qatar to whom we gave rights to have football championships in 2022.
Compared to Brazil, Qatar has enough fuel for their airplanes to reach their destinations, too.
Sorry... too soon?
>M8, Brazil ain't got shit compared to Qatar to whom Blatter sold rights to have football championships in 2022.
Here, FTFY
I thought that was electrical failure?
Since when crude is fuel?
Qatar barely has any infrastructure to produce fuel and like most of oil-exporting countries, they import fuel.
Because who needs investing in the infrastructure of your own country when you can buy golden Ferrarri or spend half a mil for a night in a hotel.
I liked the times when the people had mass burnings held for Monster Manuals.
I also liked the times when FBI confiscated all the materials frome SJGames, because they thought they were preparing a cyberterrorist attack when they were researching stuf for their GURPS Cyberpunk book.
I also liked that one time when FBI launched a raid on nutjob survivalists which turned out to be LARPers, and they ended up breaking down the doors and confiscating foam swords from people.
America, not even once.
Qatar is the classic case of bribery going again everything, common sense included.
Summer temperatures are around 40 Celcius. Try running for 90 minutes and not die due to heat stroke.
Don't worry, they've figured out by late 90s they can blame everything on international muslim terrorism and put entire focus on that.
That is literally part of being a child.
Who could had guessed that supporting guys who hate the west almost as much as they did hate communism would backfire?
Definetely not Amerifat.
But this is what you get for the "better dead than red" being turned into official foreign policy.