
The great 1980s Dungeons and Dragons panic - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105
======
kbutler
> In an era of potent concern over internet pornography, cyber-bullying, and
> drugs, it is hard to imagine a game being controversial.

Really? GTA? Every FPS ever? Video games in general?

This "moral panic" behavior is by no means limited to
conservative/traditionally religious causes.

As an example that will likely challenge many here, try comparing
environmental panics (historical and present) with religious ones. There is a
very similar pattern of catastrophic predictions, frantic hyperbole, disregard
of contradictory data (usually combined with demonizing those pointing it
out), and the inevitable eventual shift to a new topic for panic.

~~~
brazzy
> try comparing environmental panics (historical and present) with religious
> ones.

Care to name some examples? Because the past ones I can think of (acid rain,
ozone hole) do not fit the pattern AT ALL, they were well grounded in reality
and abated because things were done that actually eliminated or mitigated the
causes of the problem.

~~~
kbutler
The easiest, most clearly falsified example is probably Paul Ehrlich's
alarmist population bomb. Already too late to avoid hundreds of millions of
people dying from starvation in the 70s. Didn't happen. Food production
increased. Later editions said 70s and 80s. Didn't happen, food production
increased. Instead of backing off the catastrophic rhetoric, he increased it,
and was ignored by the community. Oh, wait, no, he got a MacArthur genius
grant...

Peak oil (oh, we just mean "conventional oil"). Many resource exhaustion
forecasts (it will happen, just wait). Mass species extinctions (it's
happening! Dozens per day! Which species?)

Each of these is based on an element of truth, extrapolated without allowing
any mitigating factors, and published with forecasts of imminent doom.

Declaring victory over the ozone hole appears premature. Nasa says current
changes are driven by wind and temperature, not changes in chlorine levels.
[http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-results-from-
inside-...](http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-results-from-inside-the-
ozone-hole/#.U0jKh8vnaAg)

------
throwaway13qf85
I never played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid (born in the early 80s, so a bit
too young) but I played a lot of Games Workshop games (Warhammer etc) and I
played D&D-based video games (Baldur's Gate etc) heavily.

I remember poring over rulebooks and probability tables for hours, and writing
computer simulations (in Visual Basic or Excel) to try and find some edge in
the game. I think my parents were pretty worried about me.

I now write stock market simulations and come up with trading strategies for a
living, using essentially the same methods that I used in the mid 1990s to win
at roleplaying games, so I guess it all worked out okay?

~~~
willvarfar
> I now write stock market simulations and come up with trading strategies for
> a living, , so I guess it all worked out okay?

OMG, parents __should __have intervened!

------
maldeh
Moral objections don't just come from biblical incompatibility. Back in high-
school (not-US), I once had an uncomfortable questioning from our principal
because a kid's parent complained after seeing us playing with unfamiliar
dice. They equated the probability-driven game mechanics to _gambling_ , or at
least believed that it led to a slippery slope.

Then again I later majored in statistics, so maybe they had a point ^_^

~~~
aidenn0
I've run into christian groups that ban standard playing card decks (so e.g.
uno or dutch blitz is okay) due to the association with gambling.

~~~
pessimizer
That's the reason for the popularity of Rook:
[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1260/rook](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1260/rook)

Which is basically a standard deck of cards but with four colors for four
suits, and numbered from 1-14. Just getting rid of the standard symbols is
enough for people to pretend that they can't gamble with them. Popular with
Mormons.

~~~
tekalon
I don't know about 'popular with Mormons'. That or my friends and I are
exceptions. I remember fondly having D&D/MTG/card games/board games nights. I
personally love card games and usually have a deck with me. Especial during
youth/single group game nights with the whole congregation. I can see this for
those that are hyper conservative, but this can work for any religion.

------
badsock
I remember this - we had to play D&D in secret because of several of our
friend's parents.

It's interesting to have seen, first hand, part of our long unbroken chain of
freaking out, from rock and roll to instagram; this giant perennial wave of
overreaction that's done nothing but persecute innocents and make the world a
less beautiful, exploratory, and lively place.

Is there an example of a popular fashion that's been of actual concern? The
only example I can think of off-hand is the dancing plague of 1518, and even
that was probably worth the casualities.

It's amazing to me that a mode of thinking that has been so consistently
incorrect for so long seems to be dominant, whereas the "let kids do whatever
it is they're into this week" is considered a fringe hippie thing.

~~~
waterlesscloud
The early rock and roll era was a pretty interesting time.

For the first time, kids had easy access to cars, and thus they could be away
from their parents more often. The cultural construct we have today of
teenagers being so independent from their parents didn't really exist in the
generations prior.

Not only were these teens in their cars, away from parents, they were
listening to the radio in the those cars. Outside of adult supervision. And so
white kids could hear black music for the first time. So they were crossing
racial lines, and eventually the lines became more and more blurred, which is
how rock music grew.

And, of course, those kids were having sex in the back seats of those cars.
Away from parent, and while listening to rock music. Which, in the pre-pill
era, led to a lot of unplanned pregnancies.

So while early rock didn't really cause negative effects, it's not hard to see
how worried parents could make the associations. The kids were indeed
literally out of control.

~~~
kbutler
> For the first time, kids had easy access to cars, and thus they could be
> away from their parents more often. The cultural construct we have today of
> teenagers being so independent from their parents didn't really exist in the
> generations prior.

You have a very distorted and limited view of history (but then, mine is
surely as distorted, just differently!)

My parents were just sharing stories of how, at age 10, a friend would take
the sheep, a horse, and a dog, and literally be alone for the full day, before
returning at night.

I'd characterize the difference more as "large numbers of youth with no
responsibilities", rather than "away from their parents more often".
Industrialized societies with child labor laws tend to keep children more
separate from adult responsibilities, and prevent them from having meaningful
responsibilities.

------
jqm
This brought back some memories..

D&D was great. I was absolutely obsessed with it as an early teenager in the
mid 80's. I carried the rule books around all times and even had a club at the
school lunch table. I remember the vice principal...a bearded guy who was
probably like 28 coming over and congratulating us saying he played D&D also
and he believed only smart people played the game.

I also remember the ridiculous religious hysteria and my parents becoming
concerned after someone at church giving them a cassette of some guy warning
of demonic possession from rock music and D&D. The were reasonable though
eventually let it go after investigating the rule books and my father actually
playing a game (he frankly thought it was dumb which in retrospect is
understandable). It all seems so tame compared to what is around now.

D&D was my great love at that time. Well... that and my TSR 80:)

~~~
gregd
RIGHT in the feels man.

D&D (and the subsequent Arduin rules) were a HUGE part of my teenage years in
the 80s. I had to sell all of my collection to buy tires for my car when I was
about 19. Come to think of it, it was more or less my coming of age moment.

I've since purchased _almost_ every book I had as a young kid on eBay, but
it's incredibly hard to find anyone who still plays with these rules. Kind of
a bummer actually.

------
dekhn
I was introduced to D&D at my local library.

I spent a great deal of time in my youth studying the demons and devils
sections of the Monster Manual.

Only years later did I learn that the devils were all sourced from actual
religions (tiamat, beelzebub, etc). It helped spur my interest in ancient
civilizations.

These days, I get calls from friends- all successful, happily married with
family and kids- to play D&D.

The people who complained about this back then had NO IDEA how powerful games
and myths can be to developing children- in a very positive way.

------
bane
This was really a crazy time, fresh off of a landslide Reagan victory and no
doubt the moral hysteria boosted by it, I remember this situation really well.

My parents (mostly my mother) are very religious and I remember being driven
around town with the local Christian radio station on and it being just wall-
to-wall fear mongering about Satanism, backmasking in rock songs and D&D. Just
endless talk, hour after hour, about how all this will lead your child to
drugs, pornography, satanism and suicide -- numerous "concrete" examples were
included as the local Christian "research team" swept the country (pre-
internet! so most of it was probably just invented whole-cloth) for police
reports and court records for Satanic rituals, Rock music and D&D. All
reported with deep urgency and absolute truthful authority between gentle
praise songs I heard in church every Sunday. Of course they'd never play a
couple seconds of Led Zeppelin back and forth so you could hear the hidden
messages revealed, lest you want to kill yourself during the next commercial
break or continuous praise song power hour.

Terse descriptions of D&D were provided. "A game where players assume the
roles of various characters, demons are involved, sometimes, like _gambling_ ,
dice are used!" without any cultural context about how it's exactly like any
other game where people assume different identities, like Cowboys & Indians,
or super space spy or whatever.

It was a perfect storm of cultural events simultaneously pumped up by various
social moralists who, like most groups like this, take tiny kernels of truth
and wrap them in heaping piles of agendas, fabrications and outright lies and
blanket every form of sensory input to drive the masses into full foaming at
the mouth hysteria.

The publicity eventually leaked out into regular media and I remember seeing
some of these "issues" (which had all been masterfully woven together into a
single moral crisis by the religious media my mother listened to) break into
the regular nightly news my father forced me to sit and watch every evening
(to build culture and character).

My mother was absolutely obsessed with all this and was driven to hysteria.
One time pulling the car over to the side of a busy highway and making me
promise, _promise_ , I'd never roll D&D dice and risk letting Satan into my
heart - tears streaming down her face while she shook like a leaf -- because I
might commit suicide when the game is over. She'd listen to hour after hour of
pronouncements of how the country was going to sin...I'd watch her cleaning
the kitchen while this played on the radio, her scrubbing getting more and
more vigorous as her emotions became more and more upset.

Even at the tender age of...6 or 7, I knew the entire thing was a ridiculous
pile of malarkey. I honestly had no clue what D&D was, had only heard rock
music in passing (my music selection was pretty heavily regulated) and
certainly wasn't involved in Satanism of any kind. I was more concerned with
the severe mental instability this seemed to be drawing out in my mother...who
seemed to be the only person I knew who couldn't separate fantasy from reality
in this situation.

When the D&D cartoon started airing, curious, I'd sneak a few minutes of it
in, titillated that something so dangerous was in cartoon form and on
television before bed time. The show was pretty tame so I usually got bored
and turned it off and did something else with my time. (He-Man was also banned
in my house).

I vaguely remember the acronym BADD from those times and the name Patricia
Pulling, and the claim that players would get so wrapped up in the fantasy of
their characters, with reality and imagination so tangled up, that when your
character died, there was some non-trivial chance you would go out and kill
yourself, with probably a recently listened to Led Zeppelin tape in the boom
box and with some kind of Satanic connection, or sacrificed chickens or
something nearby.

And suddenly, one day, the Christian "news" sources my mother listened to
moved on to something else and it was all over. Rock music was still around,
Led Zeppelin was still for sale, D&D was still a game, but apparently the
moral crusaders had stopped _something_ and had moved on to something else. I
think this was when all the major lawsuits had concluded with BADD losing all
of them.

It was still on my banned list, but the hysteria was over. Like most kids I
just ignored it and played a little D&D over at my friends' houses till I got
bored of it and listened to rock music just the same. Years later, remembering
the hysteria, a friend and I figured out how to reverse a cassette tape and we
experimented listening for hidden messages in Rock Music cassettes to little
success.

The early 1980s were a really weird moment in American history.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothered_About_Dungeons_and_Dr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothered_About_Dungeons_and_Dragons)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Rop4Zt-S0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Rop4Zt-S0)

~~~
marktangotango
Until this moment, it never occurred to me that others were also scarred from
this period (yay internet!). In our house my father was the one who bought
into the hysteria, He Man was also banned, and the D&D cartoon was as well.

We've talked about it since, and he has no memory of telling us (me and my
siblings) that listening to secular music would lead us to the devil. He
wasn't religious before this episode, and hasn't been since. I've always held
resentment toward him from this time, but to find he didn't even remember was
a shock.

My question for you guys is: how did it effect you? How did you recover? For
me the result was, at the time, going to school and spewing this nonsense to
my friends and ostracizing myselft. I had socialization problems anyway an
that just increased my perceived isolation. Took years to work thru all that.

~~~
bane
I personally never bought into it since I could never understand the mechanism
that took somebody from playing a board game (my reference point at the time
was Monopoly and Chutes and Ladders) to all the kinds of terrible things being
discussed. It never made sense to me so I didn't carry that around with me.

Instead I became deeply skeptical of my parent's ability to parse these kinds
of issues out for my well being. Which of course led to all kinds of wonderful
moments as a teenager ;)

Over the years I also discovered that my mother was deeply susceptible to
counter-mainstream, alternative movements. So I also grew up with all kinds of
weird fad diet of the year, carb-load, bran, high citrus, vegetarian, soy,
uncooked veggies, low-carb, acai, quinoa, dozens of others, or a stint where
we all did Chinese medicine and ate lots of ginseng or a brief stint with
homeopathy. No surprise my mother eats gluten free today but I suspect that's
about to change as the next fad diet starts to infiltrate popular culture -
Metabolism B, Dash, Paleo whatever. I usually indulged her at home (after all
some of the diets were pretty tasty) and just ignored it all when I was out on
my own.

More importantly it's made me very skeptical whenever large groups of people
cotton onto something. It seems the more intense the group interest in
something is, the less I'm inclined to go along...whatever it is. I grew up
almost anti-cool - skeptic kind of personality. It saved me from most of the
terrible fashion fads that everybody I grew up with regrets these days.

But in terms of what HN would be interested in, I tend not to really "get"
large scale trends either -- since I've basically been trained to revolt from
them unless there's a clear advantage to following it. So it definitely had an
impact on my thinking in that sense.

------
chiph
I grew up in the same town as Bob Jones University. So they were really
frothing at the mouth over the game (I picked it up just after AD&D came out).
They were into picketing at the time, and protested outside a couple of
bookstores that sold the game (they also protested Monty Python's Life of
Brian, which I am proud of having crossed their picket line into 94 minutes of
sin & depravity).

It was pretty counter-culture for the time. Some of my friends would have been
called "goth" in later years, but this was before all that.

In college I drove down to Jacksonville for GenCon South, and got eliminated
from the tournament pretty quickly (our party wandered the desert, got lost
and died - we never even found the temple. Bah.) But it was amazing how many
other people were into the game, way more than just the 4-5 people who played
that I knew.

~~~
AUmrysh
I grew up in Greer (about 20 minutes down Wade Hampton Blvd from BJU), and my
mother, even in 2005, still believed that D&D was satanic. She had converted
to Judaism, never went to BJU, and still she held that belief because of the
moral panic in the 80s. It's amazing to me how easily some people will accept
a moral position on something they know nothing about simply because someone
else told them they should.

I actually got her to play D&D with me. It was interesting. We sat down and
set up the game, had little tokens for our characters (it was the starter
set), and dice and all of that. We selected our characters, entered the
dungeon, and were promptly killed by the first orcs we came across. We stopped
playing after that, but I think it opened her eyes to the misconceptions she
had of the game.

BJU would go into K-Mart and demand they stop playing certain radio stations
because the students couldn't shop there if they played rock music. They also
caused a shitstorm when they tried to expel some students for holding hands
when walking across campus because one was black and the other white, and this
was in 2001. I even had a guy in my high school get into their weird religious
beliefs trying to tell us in Biology class that the world was 3000 years old
and the devil put dinosaur bones there to test us.

This is similar to the moral panic that happened around pokemon and harry
potter in the 90s, and the daycare rape panic that happened in the 80s. It
seems like moral outrage is a way that some people band together and identify.

It's still happening now, my university I went to is being attacked for giving
a summer reading book that is about a lesbian. People are viciously attacking
faculty and alumni from the university, and the state legislators have even
taken to fining the schools for it.

~~~
chiph
_because the students couldn 't shop there if they played rock music._

In the days when car radios had dial pointers, BJU had a teacher whose job it
was to go through the commuting student parking lot each day and issue
demerits to those whose radio was tuned to the local rock station -- AM 1440.

Yeah, they finally racially integrated about ten, fifteen years ago. The feds
put a lot of pressure on them, and their excuse of "We're integrated - we have
_two_ black students" didn't fly (obviously).

------
ekianjo
In France too there was lots of bad mouthing about role playing games in the
mid to late 80s, when it was really popular (while it was nowhere as popular
as in the US), and fearmongering in newspapers and media. A couple of years
later, (early 90s, basically), video games were targeted, and they made it
sound like people who were playing video games were retarded.

There was a documentary about Eric Chahi as he was finishing his work on
_Another World_ on Amiga (one of the milestones in Gaming!) in 1991-1992, and
the reporters described him almost as being autistic. The media suddenly
changed their stance on video games after Sony's success with the PS1 turned
most young people into gamers and gained mass approval.

~~~
bane
I'm actually curious how this all happened in the French media. In the U.S. it
spread like wildfire through Evangelical media.

~~~
DanBC
UK newspapers are sensationalist, so we had a bit of it over here, although it
did tend to concentrate on music or satanic abuse.

On a slight tangent I remember a Scottish religious group in the 1980s who did
not let children use calculators because "Satan talks through screens" \- they
extended a ban on TVs to include calculators. This is the kind of thing that I
find very hard to get results from a search engine with. So, any advice from
DDG or Googlers about best way to get that info would be lovely!

------
njharman
I grew up in middle class, suburban Kansas. But, did not experience any of
this hysteria. I guess I'm lucky. I've been playing RPGs for 30 years.

Lots of people play today. I strongly encourage anyone even slightly
interested to visit local game shops, look for meetup.com rpg meetup and try
it out. If you happen to be in austin
[http://www.meetup.com/dnd-823/](http://www.meetup.com/dnd-823/)

I'm happy to answer any questions about that meetup (which I organize),
finding / starting a game, or RPGs in general. Here or email
njharman@gmail.com

~~~
jaegerpicker
I continue to play today as well, it's a REALLY great hobby for a software
engineer in particular, since it involves heavy and somewhat complex rulesets,
some minor math, and a great way to socialize with staring at a computer
screen. It really makes it easier to connect and talk to others as there is a
built and fun subject to talk about. Playing RPG's has improved my life quite
a bit since I picked it up again.

------
mercurial
This echoes Jack Thompson's [1] crusade against video games, really.
$NEW_THING will corrupt our children is a powerful meme.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_\(activist\))

~~~
partomniscient
And before him there was Jack Chick [1].

1:
[http://www.chick.com/READING/TRACTS/0046/0046_01.ASP](http://www.chick.com/READING/TRACTS/0046/0046_01.ASP)

~~~
JoshTriplett
The folks behind the Gamers films are currently producing a film version of
that as satire:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk2Pr9jXCr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk2Pr9jXCr8)

------
tellarin
The funny thing is that in the 90s, after the scare was mostly over, when
adults would see me and my friends with rule books and pieces of paper full of
numbers they'd always congratulate us for being 'studying hard'. ;)

------
aidenn0
Ah, we lost our cleric and fighter (they were brothers) to that, since their
mom heard that it was "satanic." Most ironic thing is that they were the only
2 in the group that attended the same church as me.

------
gexla
Case in point. The greatest item ever!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_the_Gods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_the_Gods)

Is it so bad that my cleric is lawful evil and gets his powers from Asmodeus?
Does that make me a devil worshipper? Come on Mom, it's Asmodeus, not Satan.

Edit: Actually, I don't know if a cleric could get powers from a devil rather
than a god. Dungeon Master's Guide check please? Ah, well. It's an RPG. We
could do whatever we wanted as long as the DM approved.

~~~
talmand
From my memories, a devil would be interpreted as a demon so they might be
able to give you limited abilities if they happened to be particularly
powerful. But not the full abilities a god could provide.

I was more into Dragonlance so things might be a tad different for you.

Plus, as you say, whatever the DM decides if there's no specific rule defining
the outcome.

~~~
gexla
> From my memories, a devil would be interpreted as a demon so they might be
> able to give you limited abilities if they happened to be particularly
> powerful. But not the full abilities a god could provide.

That's how I understood it as well. In the base AD&D 1st Edition, you had a
cleric and no other backstory. There wasn't a backstory to go with the game,
it was just the base rules to be applied to any world. Then there were
different worlds which came later in expansion sets.

In Forgotten Realms, I believe your cleric could get certain unique powers
based on which god your priest followed. For example, if you followed the god
of magic, you would gain the ability to cast minor spells as you gained
levels.

I also seem to recall the same info about following a devil. I believe you
could follow certain major devils (probably had to control their own "circle"
of Hell) but that you actually took a hit to your powers. Because these beings
were less powerful than gods, you got less powerful abilities.

I imagine this was much the same no matter what expansion you went with. You
needed the expansions to get a backstory and fill-in for the "lore." It's was
a bit of a strange situation. There were specific gods for each setting, but
each setting had access to the same "planes" with Hell being one of those. The
way I remember this being setup is that each setting had a different world but
they all literally shared the same planes. A Dragonlance player might actually
be able to meet a Forgotten Realms if they bumped into each other in the
planes. I think this was all intentionally left a bit blurry because it wasn't
fully fleshed out.

------
ergoproxy
Gary Gygax was a Christian. In February 1969, he wrote an article in _IFW
Monthly_ explicitly stating he was a Christian and making an argument why
Christians shouldn't celebrate Christmas; he justified his argument with
Biblical sources. See [http://boingboing.net/2012/12/24/gary-gygax-explains-
why-chr...](http://boingboing.net/2012/12/24/gary-gygax-explains-why-
christ.html)

Original D&D included Christian symbolism: Clerics used holy water and a
cross. Gygax's 1975's D&D Supplement I: GREYHAWK (page 34) states:

"All Vampires are affected by the cross, despite any former religious
background, as it is sovereign against them."

Furthermore, the demons and devils in early D&D were presented as
_adversaries_ , not as role models.

I started playing D&D in the early 80s. I went to Catholic grammar school. We
were taught by priests and nuns. We played D&D in the schoolyard. Nobody
discouraged us from playing.

I was also bullied quite a bit in grammar school and high school, and I think
I would have gone nuts if I didn't have D&D as an outlet. D&D also got me
interested in reading books and studying probability. D&D helped improve my
grades from Cs and Ds to straight As. I eventually got a B.S. in math with a
4.0 GPA.

As a grown up, I played in a group DM'd by a fundamentalist Christian, who
didn't see any conflict between his religious beliefs and fantasy role playing
games.

------
filmgirlcw
One of the various crimes that the media tried to tie to D&D was the murder of
Lieth Von Stein. It became the subject of a few books and made-for-TV movies.
Basically the guy's stepson and friends murdered him for insurance
money/inheritance, and although they were really into D&D, the real vector
(other than greed and malice) was LSD and coke.

One of the books about the case is called _Cruel Doubt_ [1] and in 1997, I
listened to the audio book in a road trip with my parents (I was like 14).
It's a really well-done book (skip the made-for-TV movie starring Blythe
Danner and a 16-year old Gwyneth Paltrow), but it focused a lot on the D&D
controversy, because that was so much a part of the D&D narrative.

Anyway, I share all this because a) the book is really good (I got the Kindle
version a few years ago and re-read it for the first time in 15 years) and b),
my own mother still harbors negative feelings about D&D because of how the
book explained the controversy and the supposed associations between the game
and the murder.

She'd missed the whole brouhaha in the 1980s, because she had two daughters
and the only one who could ever be interested in D&D (me) was born in the
early 80s, and thus a toddler during most of the media maelstrom.

Yet the narrative of that book (which again, really isn't against D&D and
doesn't make it out to be a catalyst for the murder, beyond sharing the real
fact that yes, the murderers did lots of LSD and played D&D all day instead of
going to work or school), was enough for my mom to give me a lecture at 17
when I happened to go hang out with my then-boyfriend and his college friends
who happened to be playing a tabletop game.

Anyway. This comment adds nothing to the discussion, I just wanted to plug
_Cruel Doubt_ because it's a really good true crime book. And I associate it
with helping corrupt my otherwise intelligent mother into believing a game was
the product of the devil and evil. Don't worry, I set her straight.

[1]:[http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Doubt-Joe-McGinniss-
ebook/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Doubt-Joe-McGinniss-
ebook/dp/B008H7KH6A/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=)

------
bunderbunder
When I got into Dungeons and Dragons, I remember my mother getting worried
about something she heard on the news about kids going and playing
D&D-inspired make believe in sewers, and lecturing me at length about how I
should never ever that.

We lived really far out in the country at the time. Nothing but wells and
septic systems for 20 miles in any direction.

------
QuantumChaos
While the idea of teenagers literally worshiping Satan was a moral panic, I
suspect many Christians would find D&D incompatible with Christianity, given
its emphasis on violence, personal power, and the occult.

~~~
mercurial
Violence, personal power and the occult? You're going to find a lot more
"violence" and "personal power" by switching on the TV or going to the
library. Anyway, combat is often (depending on who you play with, but it has
been my experience when I played tabletop) a very small part of a scenario.

As for "the occult" in D&D, come on. Throwing a die to check the damage of a
fireball never turned anyone into Aleister Crowley.

~~~
mercurial
The "violence" part is particularly ironic, considering the amount of God-
sanctioned wholesale slaughter in the Bible. Maybe the Bible is incompatible
with Christian beliefs as well ? :)

~~~
Noughmad
A large part of the Bible is incompatible with Christian beliefs. Then again,
"Christian beliefs" isn't a well-defined term; it ranges from "there is some
guy up there" to "gays are causing the hurricanes".

