# D&D in the 80s, Fads, and the Satanic Panic



## Snarf Zagyg (Jul 8, 2022)

TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!

Wait, no, that's not it. ...._Today is a good day to be alive!_ That's better! If you are into the history of our hobby, the last few years have seen an unprecedented explosion of material and research about the early days. Now, soon to be release, is _Slaying the Dragon _by Ben Riggs. Along with the release of this book, we have seen Ben release numerous sales figures from the TSR era. This, combined with Jon Peterson's earlier book _Game Wizards _(about the history of TSR until the ouster of Gygax and the Gygax/Arneson feud) has provided amazing insight into the earliest days of the hobby.

That said, I thought it would be interesting to go into a specific issue brought up by @Parmandur in the other thread. If you look at the sales charts, you will see that there is a massive dropoff in the sales of both AD&D (the PHB+DMG) and Basic D&D from 1983 to 1984, with a continuing decline until the number disappear around the release of 2e (with a brief spike for Basic in 1991 due to the release of the Black Box and RC). Parmandur's reasonable thesis is ... well, this was the Satanic Panic, right? It had to be!

The short, and unsatisfying answer is ... no. No it wasn't. To understand why, we have to do a slightly deeper dive into what, exactly, the Satanic Panic was _in terms of D&D_, how it affected D&D's sales, how the Satanic Panic was just part of the larger moral panics of the 80s, and why the sales figures for '83-'84 are not surprising at all.


*1. Why the Satanic Panic Was Instrumental to D&D's Success.*

After reading _Game Wizards_, the path of D&D's success became clear. Originally, TSR was set up to just publish various rules for the wargaming market. But as people began to play D&D, began to see how it was played (remember, the OD&D rules were notoriously opaque) it slowly caught on. TSR became a giant ... but in a small-sized pool. The peers (and targets) for TSR were companies like Avalon Hill.  The entire market ... was a tiny hobbyist market; the entire market (IIRC) was less than TSR's revenue in 1980.

Still, TSR was doing well! The had become a major player, and were well-known in the industry, and were even instigating the (kind of hilarious) feuds over Origins and GenCon.  D&D was their big product, and it was primarily an older market - adults and college kids, science fiction fans and people in the wargaming hobby. And then came the Egbert incident. In August of 1979, James Dallas Egbert III disappeared from his dorm room. The whole story is ... sad. But for purposes of D&D, this was the beginning of the Satanic Panic. An investigator hired by Egbert's family (William Dear) went on a media crusade and claimed that Egbert was "live-playing" D&D in the steam tunnels, and that Egbert has lost touch with reality ... and also kept hammering the "Satanic" undertones of D&D. This became the basis for the later book and movie, _Mazes and Monsters_.

The two things to know about this is that (1) William Dear was full of it ... none of what he was talking about was true; and (2) this catapulted D&D into national consciousness. As detailed in _Game Wizards_, suddenly people around the country were calling in to stores and asking if they had this "D&D" product. The recently written "Basic" (by Dr. Holmes) was a hot seller, as was the DMG and PHB. The Satanic Panic was rocket fuel to D&D. In addition, it also had the somewhat ... interesting ... effect of making the consumer demographic for D&D much, much lower than it had been before. Previously, D&D was primarily selling to college-age and older; now, D&D was primarily selling to high school and middle school kids. 

This massive explosion is seen in Riggs' chart- in 1979, they were having trouble keeping up with the year-end demand (the incident played out over the fall), and then as they ramped up production, you see the 1980 explosion. This period ('79-'83) is often thought of as a golden time for D&D, because of the sheer number of publications, modules, and output. And the sales of the core books match it.

At the most basic level then, D&D as a mass-market phenomenon would not have existed _but for the initial panic_.


*2. Pulling, BADD, and the Continuing Waves of the 80s*

Of course, the Satanic Panic with D&D wasn't just a single incident. While there were other incidents (detailed in _Game Wizards_, and leading to TSR having a rapid response team) the primary one was the death of Irving Lee Pulling in 1982; his mother, Patricia Pulling, blamed D&D for his death. She sued a school principal and TSR- all cases were dismissed. Then, in 1983, she formed BADD (ugh ... Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). There were innumerable media appearances and hearings, and this became a real issue for Christians.

Which ... what? Okay, backing up a bit, this is the part that doesn't get as much coverage about the 80s. The Satanic Panic? It was a _real thing_. Footloose? That movie was based on actual events- places at the time still had dancing bans. And people really, truly believed that there was a giant mass of Satan worshippers out there, killing people, doing ritual abuse in the name of Satan, engaged in child sacrifice. And people were ... jailed. Lost their jobs. 

I know .. crazy, right? Only in the 80s could some sort of bizarre conspiracy theory spread like wildfire that baseless accused people of ritual child torture and trafficking. _....Wait... what? Oh ... never mind._

But this was a very real thing. There were experts that testified at trials about the "Satanic cults" responsible. Child protection agencies had to have training on Satanic ritualized abuse. The 80s weren't all trapper keepers and day-glow colors. 

And it wasn't just D&D! Companies like Proctor & Gamble had to battle this as well because of their logo- with Church groups claiming that the executives were in league with Satan. Constant rumors circulated about every single rock group - and, of course, the implicit Satanic messages from playing the records backwards (??)_. It's crazy in retrospect ... but it's there.  


*3. Did the Satanic Panic Cause D&D's Crash?*

In a word ... no. The Satanic Panic clearly _affected D&D. _But it wasn't the cause of the crash. To understand why, it helps to first understand the ways in which the Satanic Panic affected D&D. First, it should be acknowledged that, _despite the bravado espoused by Gygax and others_, TSR was concerned about the moral panic. There is evidence of this long before the 2e transition. For example-
1. Renaming Deities & Demigods (and changing the cover picture) to Legends and Lore in 1985. Gygax complained about this capitulation.
2.  By 1982, TSR already had a one-page Code of Ethics that required, inter alia, that good always triumph, ridicule of religion is not permitted, and evil will neve be presented in glamorous or alluring circumstances. 
3. As recounted in_ Game Wizards_, TSR was already reacting to, and softening, its material due to these pressures in the early 80s.

But this is missing a very salient point about the specific timing. For this, we are going to go briefly to E.T. Remember in E.T. who is playing the game that is D&D (albeit not called that)? That's right- the cool older brother and his cool friends. In the very early 80s, D&D was ... _cool. _It was a fad, like a lot of things that swept through the 80s. Like parachute pants. Or a cabbage patch doll. Amazingly, in 1984 TSR was worried by the rise of a new fad that was eating their lunch ... _TRIVIAL PURSUIT._

It was also ubiquitous. You could get D&D from a Sears catalog. Or from B. Dalton. Or from Kaybee toys. Or from any one of a number of sources. 

Finally, the books lasted forever. The original PHB, DMG, and MM ... were well made. They lasted forever (for the most part). And unlike the phenomenom we see with 5e, people weren't buying multiple copies of the books in a group. 

Which brings us back to the chart- looking just at 1980 - 1983, we can see that almost 2 million core books (PHB+DMG) were sold. Two. Million. Books. Contrasting this with the revenue numbers from _Game Wizards_, we see that revenues didn't plummet in 1984. TSR was still selling a lot of stuff. _Just not the core rule books_. Which makes perfect sense! The market was saturated, and the fad period was ending. The people that wanted the rules books to play _had already bought them_ in the prior four years. 

The primary issues with TSR were at the corporate governance level; in essence, the company was poorly run, they were making decision based on the past growth, and they were funneling money to the Blume family and to Gygax's ... adventures ... in Hollywood as opposed to their core business. 

Did the Satanic Panic hurt actual people? Definitely.
Did it affect sales? Sure, at the margins there were people that would have played, but could not because of their families/church groups/etc. Arguably, that may have been counterbalanced by the people that played because they heard of it through the free media.
But was the Satanic Panic responsible for the collapse in sales in 1984? Not based on what I've seen. 

So I'm throwing this out for general conversation. Also? Go ahead and pre-order the book by Ben Riggs. I bet it's awesome!


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## Cruentus (Jul 8, 2022)

Wait... parachute pants were a fad?  

As someone who started playing DnD in grade school in, wait for it, 1981, our group lived the satanic panic.  Actually, our forever DM (who we still play DnD with), had a family member who constantly sent his mom pamphlets and other propaganda about the dangers of DnD.  Fortunately, for all of us, all of our parents paid it no mind (and we were all parochial school kids too!).  Their response: 1) I know where my kids are, and I'd rather have them in the basement than wandering the streets; 2) we trust them; and 3) I've read the game material/heard about it, and its no big deal. 

We also never paid attention to the overall ups and downs of the brand.  We never noticed when TSR struggled, or paid attention to their internal issue.  One, we were kids, two, the internet didn't exist, and we didn't have "social" media to follow everyone's every whim, gastronomic preference, etc.  We bought new books when they came out, subscribed to Dragon, Dungeon, and RPGA, and our intensity of play waxed and waned as we got older, found and unfound relationships, computer games started to get better (beyond Pong), etc.  But we still managed to play from Basic through to 5e, and remain together as a group (now mostly VTT, even though we all live in the same metro area).

We also did what most did back then, played the game our way, with our understanding of the rules and our preferences, and had a blast doing it.  We still reference ridiculous or cool situations that occurred 35 years ago (and never let our DM forget them).  We didn't have group think about how to play, didn't have play guides, or optimization beyond that one guy in the group who was always able to find the broken stuff (our resident engineer).  Which is how we continue to mostly operate. 

Like any long lasting IP/Brand, I imagine that DnD will continue to have its ups and downs, as every company does or will, and we'll continue to enjoy all of it.  We still stay away from forums (except me, I think I have a problem), and play the game that we want.  We have less time now than before, so the up all weekend marathon play sessions don't happen, but we want our gaming to not be a waste of time, so we play the edition we like best, change what we want, try things out etc.  

DnD is likely my longest running hobby, aside from baseball, but playing that is dangerous at my age, so actually, it is my longest running.  (and I still have my old Dragons, Deities and Demigods (though our DM has the Elric/Cthulhu version), and other really old books.  They just keep lasting.


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## Mind of tempest (Jul 8, 2022)

so it was simply the market filling up, interesting.


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## Tonguez (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I know .. crazy, right? Only in the 80s could some sort of bizarre conspiracy theory spread like wildfire that baseless accused people of ritual child torture and trafficking. _....Wait... what? Oh ... never mind._



only in America could such cultist fanaticism see an actor elected as president and big hair and big shoulders become symbols of hope and exceptionalism.

I agree though any sales decline in the 80’s is more likely to have been due to the market becoming saturated with alternatives both competition and substitutes


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## Reynard (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Which ... what? Okay, backing up a bit, this is the part that doesn't get as much coverage about the 80s. The Satanic Panic? It was a _real thing_. Footloose? That movie was based on actual events- places at the time still had dancing bans. And people really, truly believed that there was a giant mass of Satan worshippers out there, killing people, doing ritual abuse in the name of Satan, engaged in child sacrifice. And people were ... jailed. Lost their jobs.



This is super important and I am glad you brought it up. A lot of folks see the Satanic Panic as this funny kitsch 80s thing, and for gamers it was pretty tame. But it hit things like child care facilities extremely hard, with crackpot hypnotists getting little kids to accuse adults of horrible crimes. People not only lot their jobs and went to jail, some committed suicide. it was horrible.

I lived in rural Ohio in the late 80s when I was in high school and at least one of our players had to lie to his parents about what we were doing to be able to play D&D.


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## Parmandur (Jul 8, 2022)

Cruentus said:


> and we were all parochial school kids too



Thst might be the key there: the fringe right in Catholic circles would have been caught up in this panic, but that didn't penetrate mainstream Catholicism the same way that it did with Protestants.

Literally every Gen X or younger Catholci Priest or Religous that I know was a big D&D nerd.


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## Bupp (Jul 8, 2022)

I should be in hell already with all the D&D I played and metal music I listened to in the 80s.

I also had a player that had to lie about playing to his parents. Kept his dice and character sheets at my house.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> But this is missing a very salient point about the specific timing. For this, we are going to go briefly to E.T. Remember in E.T. who is playing the game that is D&D (albeit not called that)?



I don't think they show or name the game like a product placement, but it's clearly D&D.  The screenplay identifies it as D&D.






						E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) movie script - Screenplays for You
					

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) movie script - Screenplays for You



					sfy.ru
				





> EXT: SUBURBAN HOUSE: NIGHT
> 
> [This is an establishing shot.]
> 
> ...




The mechanics are portrayed a bit less accurately than in Stranger Things, but it's pretty clear.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Jul 8, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I don't think they show or name the game like a product placement, but it's clearly D&D.  The screenplay identifies it as D&D.




It's supposed to be D&D, but they weren't allowed to use the product. They wanted it in the movie ... and TSR apparently turned them down.

....Yeah. A bunch of business GENIUSES running TSR back then.


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## David Howery (Jul 8, 2022)

having started with rpgs in 1980, I saw the Satanic Panic thing as something.... that happened way over there.  In spite of the fact that I grew up in a tiny MT town surrounded by some rather religious conservative types, the whole anti-D&D thing was never really a thing there.  People generally regarded it as just some geek thing that college kids were into (and which surprised no one at all that I was into it, having been a rather major geek at the time).  About the only thing I ever saw on it locally was some mom who was irked by it up in Missoula, where it was enough to make the local papers (on page 5 or 6)....


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## Jer (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> It's supposed to be D&D, but they weren't allowed to use the product. They wanted it in the movie ... and TSR apparently turned them down.
> 
> ....Yeah. A bunch of business GENIUSES running TSR back then.



I didn't realize that TSR pulled an M&M-Mars on that one. 

And unlike with Reese's Pieces there wasn't another company there to profit from the mistake. Imagine if somehow the stars aligned so they ended up playing Traveller in that scene instead of D&D.


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## overgeeked (Jul 8, 2022)

Reynard said:


> This is super important and I am glad you brought it up. A lot of folks see the Satanic Panic as this funny kitsch 80s thing, and for gamers it was pretty tame. But it hit things like child care facilities extremely hard, with crackpot hypnotists getting little kids to accuse adults of horrible crimes. People not only lot their jobs and went to jail, some committed suicide. it was horrible.
> 
> I lived in rural Ohio in the late 80s when I was in high school and at least one of our players had to lie to his parents about what we were doing to be able to play D&D.



We lived in a less rural area so the panic wasn't as much of a thing. Our parents joked that they didn't care about us sacrificing chickens and goats to Satan, they were just glad we were reading.


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## Dioltach (Jul 8, 2022)

Bupp said:


> I should be in hell already with all the D&D I played and metal music I listened to in the 80s.



Just imagine, all those D&D players in Hell! You'd never have to look far for a group!

Of course the only game allowed would be Star Frontiers: New Genesis. Or else every roll is a natural 1.


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## Vaalingrade (Jul 8, 2022)

Everyone knows Satan didn't even get into D&D until late 2e and he didn't last long before mostly playing Traveler, CoC and Bunnies and Burrows. He haughtily calls D&D Players posers and not 'real' roleplayers. He's kind of a jerk, TBH.


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## Reynard (Jul 8, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> We lived in a less rural area so the panic wasn't as much of a thing. Our parents joked that they didn't care about us sacrificing chickens and goats to Satan, they were just glad we were reading.



My parents were lifelong sci-fi and fantasy readers and my dad was an OG computer gamer, so the only thing they worried about was whether we were getting our chores done with all that dice slinging we were doing.


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## nevin (Jul 8, 2022)

I think it depended on where you lived as to how much it impacted your gaming.  In most of the South it was pretty brutal.   I think one of the biggest things that show how bad it was is that we had one Gen Con/Origins combined in dallas and then they all moved West and north, never to be seen again.   But someone posted in another thread sales numbers.   Remember 1984-1985 as I remember it was about the height of the Church Pushback on "Satanic D&D" 



			https://www.enworld.org/attachments/b4bd1df6-1ccc-4a2e-bc44-43fe5335ce8b-jpeg.252810/
		


Now there were other issues like quality of books, The complete screw up of the Gamma World launch in an attempt to beat Traveler's new release, the many public fights among management and staff, and a complete lack of focus on how to achieve thier goals.   Don't minimize the fact that TSR actively beat down any players or fans who shared anything online. they turned thier legal department on any fan that dared to even share a photo of an image they owned.


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## Lanefan (Jul 8, 2022)

The Satanic panic might have had its roots in 1979 and then 1982 but it didn't grow into anything all that big until a bit later, side-along with the Moral Majority _et al._ moving from fringe to mainstream.  

This mainstreaming of the MM etc. forced D&D along with various other things back to the fringes, where other than a few blips it largely stayed until about 6-ish years ago.  Now it's poking its nose into the mainstream again much like 1983 - and given the current climate and the way that history tends to repeat I'd be sad but not at all surprised were a new MM-like movement to arise before long*, though I'm not sure it would gain as widespread accepance as it did in the mid-80s.

* - not specifically in response to D&D, though D&D would most certainly be one of its targets.


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## Reynard (Jul 8, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> The Satanic panic might have had its roots in 1979 and then 1982 but it didn't grow into anything all that big until a bit later, side-along with the Moral Majority _et al._ moving from fringe to mainstream.
> 
> This mainstreaming of the MM etc. forced D&D along with various other things back to the fringes, where other than a few blips it largely stayed until about 6-ish years ago.  Now it's poking its nose into the mainstream again much like 1983 - and given the current climate and the way that history tends to repeat I'd be sad but not at all surprised were a new MM-like movement to arise before long*, though I'm not sure it would gain as widespread accepance as it did in the mid-80s.
> 
> * - not specifically in response to D&D, though D&D would most certainly be one of its targets.



I keep waiting for the first mainstream D&D linked celebrity to get caught doing something monstrous and thereby drag the whole hobby back into the mud. But maybe that's just the scared 10 year old in me.


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## overgeeked (Jul 8, 2022)

nevin said:


> Now there were other issues like quality of books.



You mean the ones that are still holding together great decades later? Seems the quality is there.


nevin said:


> the many public fights among management and staff,



Did many/any of the kids playing D&D in the early '80s care? I had zero knowledge of TSR as a company beyond the fact that their logo was plastered on the books I loved. I couldn't care less about anything beyond the game as we played it.


nevin said:


> Don't minimize the fact that TSR actively beat down any players or fans who shared anything online. they turned thier legal department on any fan that dared to even share a photo of an image they owned.



The mainstream/global internet (web 1.0) wasn't a thing until '89-'90. That's a bit later than the Satanic Panic.


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## Tonguez (Jul 8, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> The Satanic panic might have had its roots in 1979 and then 1982 but it didn't grow into anything all that big until a bit later, side-along with the Moral Majority _et al._ moving from fringe to mainstream.
> 
> This mainstreaming of the MM etc. forced D&D along with various other things back to the fringes, where other than a few blips it largely stayed until about 6-ish years ago.  Now it's poking its nose into the mainstream again much like 1983 - and given the current climate and the way that history tends to repeat I'd be sad but not at all surprised were a new MM-like movement to arise before long*, though I'm not sure it would gain as widespread accepance as it did in the mid-80s.



I think D&D being on the fringes was more because of it being nerds that played, nerds only became cool in the 2000s


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## David Howery (Jul 8, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Did many/any of the kids playing D&D in the early '80s care? I had zero knowledge of TSR as a company beyond the fact that their logo was plastered on the books I loved. I couldn't care less about anything beyond the game as we played it.



Kids, no.  I wasn't a kid when I started playing though, and I couldn't help but notice that TSR had some management issues... some things just couldn't be hidden.... the mass layoffs at different times, the failure of some business ventures (acquiring SPI's stuff, for ex.), etc.


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## DarkCrisis (Jul 8, 2022)

Just wanted to add that Mazes and Monsters is the best D&D movie currently and every fan should watch it.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 8, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> The mainstream/global internet (web 1.0) wasn't a thing until '89-'90. That's a bit later than the Satanic Panic.



The Satanic Panic was still wriggling some tentacles at least into the early 90s.  The McMartin Preschool trials didn't conclude until 1990, and some charlatans and preachers were still pushing the myths of satanic ritual abuse and recovered memories for at least another year or two. 

Every once in a while you see an older televangelist push this stuff even today, but it's much less frequent.


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## Shiroiken (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> parachute pants.



Speaking of Satanic


Snarf Zagyg said:


> Or a cabbage patch doll.



Dammit, I spoke too soon!


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## Tonguez (Jul 8, 2022)

Shiroiken said:


> Speaking of Satanic
> 
> Dammit, I spoke too soon!



_Baptist pastor G. Richard Fisher wrote a letter to his followers in 1986 warning them of the evils of Cabbage Patch Dolls, which were very popular then. The dolls, which are “adopted” by their buyers in a written contract, caused strange, destructive behavior, according to the letter._


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## Cadence (Jul 8, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> _Baptist pastor G. Richard Fisher wrote a letter to his followers in 1986 warning them of the evils of Cabbage Patch Dolls, which were very popular then. The dolls, which are “adopted” by their buyers in a written contract, caused strange, destructive behavior, according to the letter._




Back in 1907 it was Teddy Bears... Pessimists Archive


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## squibbles (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I know .. crazy, right? Only in the 80s could some sort of bizarre conspiracy theory spread like wildfire that baseless accused people of ritual child torture and trafficking. _....Wait... what? Oh ... never mind._



Lol, nice surprise torpedo. I always appreciate your humor.

To be honest, though, that is a very insightful cultural observation.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 8, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> Thst might be the key there: the fringe right in Catholic circles would have been caught up in this panic, but that didn't penetrate mainstream Catholicism the same way that it did with Protestants.
> 
> Literally every Gen X or younger Catholci Priest or Religous that I know was a big D&D nerd.



1982-86, I was a Catholic kid at a private Catholic HS in Texas.  I founded a D&D club there that operated on school grounds.  The Monks didn’t have a problem with it- only the born-again art instructor (whom- I should note- I consider a dearly beloved mentor) did.  He even gave away all of the new wave cassettes he played during class to some (undoubtedly) undeserving upperclassman.


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## MGibster (Jul 8, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Which ... what? Okay, backing up a bit, this is the part that doesn't get as much coverage about the 80s. The Satanic Panic? It was a _real thing_. Footloose? That movie was based on actual events- places at the time still had dancing bans. And people really, truly believed that there was a giant mass of Satan worshippers out there, killing people, doing ritual abuse in the name of Satan, engaged in child sacrifice. And people were ... jailed. Lost their jobs.



When I worked at a museum in a historical building, we would sometimes allow ghost hunters to use the facilities at night.  They paid us a nice fee, they were always respecful of the building and the artifacts, and while I thought they were kooky they were harmless.  One year, they had a guest speaker who started answering a question by saying, "When we had all those occult related crimes in the 1980s...." and I just wanted to shout, "No, that didn't #%%#ing happen!"  But people believed it then and a lot of people believe it now. 



Snarf Zagyg said:


> I know .. crazy, right? Only in the 80s could some sort of bizarre conspiracy theory spread like wildfire that baseless accused people of ritual child torture and trafficking. _....Wait... what? Oh ... never mind._



Any time I hear someone pontificate on how stupid Europeans were for the whole witch-craze in early modern Europe, I point to us today and arch an eyebrow.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> The primary issues with TSR were at the corporate governance level; in essence, the company was poorly run, they were making decision based on the past growth, and they were funneling money to the Blume family and to Gygax's ... adventures ... in Hollywood as opposed to their core business.



The more I've learned about TSR over the years, the more amazed I've been that they were successful.  It just goes to show you that sometimes you can catch lightning in a bottle and be successful despite your best efforts. 



Snarf Zagyg said:


> But was the Satanic Panic responsible for the collapse in sales in 1984? Not based on what I've seen.



I would tend to agree.  The stellar success of D&D was a faddish, and at some point the ethusiasm died down.  I guess around 1984?  I've spent a lot of time playing D&D in some form or another, but it's only in recent years that I wasn't embarrassed to say that out lound.  In 1989, I sure as hell didn't tell any of the girls I wanted to hand with that I played the game.  (Although now I'm old and maybe I just don't care what others think.)


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## MGibster (Jul 8, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> The mechanics are portrayed a bit less accurately than in Stranger Things, but it's pretty clear.



Holy cow, those kids are smoking!  Forget Satan, that's the real scandal.


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## James Gasik (Jul 9, 2022)

The Satanic Panic had an aftermath that lasted quite a while as well.  It's funny to talk about this again, since the last time I did, I was booted off the forum I was frequenting for not referring to it as the "social phenomenon involving role playing games in the 80's".  Heh.

But it was actually 1988 when I came home from the big library in Joliet to the tiny speck of a town I had moved to 50 miles south of Chicago, armed with a couple of 1e hardcovers and my next door neighbor looked at them aghast, pulled my mother aside and asked her if she knew what "those devil books were".

The next day Mom asks me if I'm worshipping the devil, and in my head I was thinking "not unless he can let me cast magic missile!".  Man.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 9, 2022)

I did have _some _relatives who bought into the Satanic Panic Re: me.

The only one who mattered was my Mom- concerned about D&D and my growing interest in heavy metal, she ASKED me about them.  We talked.  Issue resolved.


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## Orius (Jul 9, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> Thst might be the key there: the fringe right in Catholic circles would have been caught up in this panic, but that didn't penetrate mainstream Catholicism the same way that it did with Protestants.
> 
> Literally every Gen X or younger Catholci Priest or Religous that I know was a big D&D nerd.






Dannyalcatraz said:


> 1982-86, I was a Catholic kid at a private Catholic HS in Texas.  I founded a D&D club there that operated on school grounds.  The Monks didn’t have a problem with it- only the born-again art instructor (whom- I should note- I consider a dearly beloved mentor) did.  He even gave away all of the new wave cassettes he played during class to some (undoubtedly) undeserving upperclassman.




That's mostly my recollection of the time too.  The whole Satanic Panic thing was primarily an American thing and a lot of it was a reaction to the cultural shifts and conflicts of the 70's.  The Church is very much an international organization.  I do remember them using some of the talking points, but I think that they were taking advantage of it for their own ends, probably competing with evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants for influence over conservative Christians.  The Church also tends to be more rational minded about things as well.

The closest I came to the Panic was in the late 90's.  I was flipping through some new release at B. Dalton's - I don't remember which exactly - when some guy about my age, roughly late teens or early 20s at the time, started looking at the second Dark Sun MC and commenting on the monsters or something.  Then some older woman came over and started scolding him for looking at it and that it was bad or something.  I think maybe she was his mother but I don't know.  He seemed a little strange, so I don't know if he was autistic or something, or she just had him browbeaten.  She kept flashing _me _the stink eye, but I ignored her completely, and she got more and more agitated about it until she stormed away.  She was probably looking for a fight and I left her feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.  What interests me is none of her damn business, never has been and never will be.  If she got in my face too much, well the D&D section wasn't far from the front counter where I could reasonably find the store manager.




Snarf Zagyg said:


> It's supposed to be D&D, but they weren't allowed to use the product. They wanted it in the movie ... and TSR apparently turned them down.
> 
> ....Yeah. A bunch of business GENIUSES running TSR back then.




To be fair, Gary did later admit he screwed up big time there.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 9, 2022)

Vaalingrade said:


> Everyone knows Satan didn't even get into D&D until late 2e and he didn't last long before mostly playing Traveler, CoC and Bunnies and Burrows. He haughtily calls D&D Players posers and not 'real' roleplayers. He's kind of a jerk, TBH.




Think he was. Vampire player


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## Helldritch (Jul 9, 2022)

Well, the Satanic Panic had some impact in my home town. At some point, it became impossible to get D&D books in any store. I had to go to parents board and church meeting to show them what D&D actually was. I made many speeches and had to show our pastoral teachers the game itself. 

I was fortunate enough to still be serving mass in latin at our local monastery. It gave me that little something that most zealots were waiting to believe to let go of D&D as a simple hobby and not a series of black bible books bent on the corruption of their young children and teenagers.

But for over a year, no D&D books were available on stores in town. We had to go on an hour and a half trip to an other town to find some.


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## James Gasik (Jul 9, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> Think he was. Vampire player



Oh yeah, I ran into him once.  Would *not* stop talking about his 5th Generation Toreador who was Prince of Coos Bay, Oregon, who came there ever since (he claimed) Sir Francis Drake took refuge from a storm there in 1579.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 9, 2022)

James Gasik said:


> Oh yeah, I ran into him once.  Would *not* stop talking about his 5th Generation Toreador who was Prince of Coos Bay, Oregon, who came there ever since (he claimed) Sir Francis Drake took refuge from a storm there in 1579.



Make's sense of how Drake managed to kick off the transatlantic slave trade and still have time to win a game of bowls.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 9, 2022)

Helldritch said:


> But for over a year, no D&D books were available on stores in town. We had to go on an hour and a half trip to an other town to find some.



I had an experience similar to that _before_ the Satanic Panic. 

I was introduced to AD&D in Aurora, CO- a suburb of Denver.  But dad’s next posting was to Fort Riley, near Manhattan, KS.  Not exactly a bustling metropolis.  Besides the Army base, KSU was the next biggest thing.  The A&W drive-in was a notable dining experience, and there were 2 Chinese restaurants- one good, one bad.

I could get _some_ gaming stuff, probably in no small part due to the high percentage of college students in town.  But it was mainly in only 2 stores- the campus bookstore and a small mom & pop bookshop near the hardware store,  Thing is, there wasn’t much turnover.  It might be a month or so before a new mini got put on the rotating stand, and modules were rare (which is how I got into Dragon Magazine).  Support for Traveller was worse.

To get anything different, you had to travel to Lawrence, Topeka, Wichita or Kansas City,  Kids would save our allowances for the eventual trips to those cities, and if your friends knew you were going, you’d often get a shopping list and a wad of dollars.


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## bloodtide (Jul 9, 2022)

Satan was behind a lot in the '80's, TV shows, comic books, cartoons, music, music videos, RPGs and ouija boards.
​But this had little effect on most RPG sales.

Few gamers even bought the D&D books.  Typically a forever DM would buy them, but that is just about it.  Sure a couple players would buy every book, but not many.  Some players might buy a Players Handbook.  A lot of players either just used their DMs books.....or made photo copies of needed pages(OR...hand write out copies)

Many players saw no need to buy all the books and/or saw many books a "for the DM only".

Also, by the mid 80's everyone had the "core" books that wanted them.  So sure new players and DMs came to the game and bought books.....but not "that" much.  

TSR flounder a bit with not enough focus on AD&D, so again drop in sales.  Only if someone would have thought of putting out a book like "The Dragons of D&D" or such....


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## South by Southwest (Jul 9, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> Few gamers even bought the D&D books.  Typically a forever DM would buy them, but that is just about it.  Sure a couple players would buy every book, but not many.  Some players might buy a Players Handbook.  A lot of players either just used their DMs books.....or made photo copies of needed pages(OR...hand write out copies)



That certainly wasn't my experience. Among all the gamers at my school anyway, pretty much anyone who played had bought--at minimum--the _Player's Handbook, _the _Monster Manual,_ and the _Dungeon Master's Guide._ The kids who were hardcore players typically also had the _Fiend Folio_ and _Deities and Demigods_. I didn't see any greater or lesser book-purchasing habits among DMs than among players: in our school they seemed pretty equal.


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## nevin (Jul 10, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> You mean the ones that are still holding together great decades later? Seems the quality is there.
> 
> Did many/any of the kids playing D&D in the early '80s care? I had zero knowledge of TSR as a company beyond the fact that their logo was plastered on the books I loved. I couldn't care less about anything beyond the game as we played it.
> 
> The mainstream/global internet (web 1.0) wasn't a thing until '89-'90. That's a bit later than the Satanic Panic.



no I mean the first print of the second edition books that fell apart after being opened 15 or 20 times.   my first Unearthed arcana split in half 6 months after I bought it.   One of my monster manuals did the same thing.   The absolute cake though were the Monster Manuals for 2nd edition that were 3 ring binders and you had to pull out the printed sheets that had 3 hole punched paper and put them in the binder yourself.  If you used them often the holes broke and the pages started falling out.    THOSE are the books I'm talking about.  Of course the ones you still have are great.   All the lousy ones I'm talking about are freaking hard to find because the quality was naughty word.

the problem in the south was Clubs couldn't find places to play.  Most of our biggest clubs in the DFW metroplex just faded away between 1984 and 1986.  The southern baptist convention was dead set on shutting down every Arcade and every D&D player in the south.  I've stated in another post ages ago that I had players just show up and drop off all thier books because they were tired of dealing with thier family who thought they were becoming Satanists.  Yeah the kids that lived in areas that weren't religious probably didn't notice.   But it was bad enough the only place you saw D&D stuff or ads of any sort was in the shrinking number of game stores.  do a little research tell us how many Con's and big gaming conventions were held in the southern united states from 1984 to 1990.

And no not mainstream internet.  TSR started attacking people on BBC's and at College Libraries where everything was copied and shared in those days.  Think about that thier legal department was trolling  electronic bulletin boards and sending cease and desist letters to people, because the TSR staff thought thier falling game sales were being significantly impacted by BBC's and photocopiers at the library.

I remember it well it well.   If they'd been trying to destroy their brand they couldn't have done it much better.


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## nevin (Jul 10, 2022)

bloodtide said:


> Satan was behind a lot in the '80's, TV shows, comic books, cartoons, music, music videos, RPGs and ouija boards.
> ​But this had little effect on most RPG sales.
> 
> Few gamers even bought the D&D books.  Typically a forever DM would buy them, but that is just about it.  Sure a couple players would buy every book, but not many.  Some players might buy a Players Handbook.  A lot of players either just used their DMs books.....or made photo copies of needed pages(OR...hand write out copies)
> ...



all my players that could afford them bought several books.  Also in the mid 80's you could go to a gaming store and they'd have 20 or 30 modules, supplements for D&D and AD&D, Dragon magazines and Dungeon Magazines.   I don't think lack of stuff to buy, or players not buying was an issue.  The first half of the 80's they were everywhere pushing thier product and then the second half of the 80's it was like they vanished into the woods.  Maybe it was all the infighting you read about between Gygax and TSR staff and his wife.  I don't know.  something went really wrong though.   I think part of it was they retreated from half the country trying to not be "SATANIC.  To be fair in the 70's when they were smaller they almost tanked over a half dressed princess on a module.  After that they may have been afraid of fighting with parents and churches and hurting thier public image.


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## Richards (Jul 10, 2022)

I started with the AD&D 1st Edition trio of core books (Christmas gifts for me and my two younger brothers), but everything beyond that was hit or miss.  We didn't have any gaming shops nearby, so we didn't use minis - it was all theater of the mind out of sheer necessity.  I remember Kay-Bee Toys and Toy-R-Us were places where the odd D&D book would pop up on occasion, and I picked up what I could whenever I found something.  (I remember that's where I eventually found the _Dungeon Survival Guide_ and _Oriental Adventures_.)  It wasn't until I went to college that I had access to a regular comics/gaming shop...but by then, I didn't have a gaming group to play with.  It wouldn't be until a few years into the Air Force (in the late 80s) that I was able to get back into AD&D, and by then it was 2nd Edition.

Johnathan


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## gamerprinter (Jul 10, 2022)

I started playing regular games of D&D in 1979, while in high school. So, obviously, I was playing AD&D 1e during "Satanic Panic" years, but other than having heard some of the stories and reactions - it was distant news for me, something I never personally witnessed. I was in the US Army from 1983 unti 1987, so I played plenty of TTRPGs, not just D&D, and never encountered a Satanic Panic issue. Even after I got out, I found a group right away in my hometown, and played with them over 20 years. The Satanic Panic issues was something I was aware of, but in no way directly impacted me.


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## Ogre Mage (Jul 10, 2022)

It makes sense that if the media/authority figures make something seem forbidden, it can actually INCREASE interest in the forbidden thing.  In the early 2000s this phenomenon became known as the "Streisand Effect" -- when an attempt to censor or remove information has the unintended consequence of increasing interest in that information.

I first played D&D as a kid in 1986.  During this time, the "Satanic Panic" was in full swing.  The panic struck me as nonsense.  I was playing a cleric who could turn undead, how was that "satanic?" My social group of 11-13 year olds derided the people who believed in the Satanic Panic as stupid.  It probably helped that I lived in Seattle, Washington which was a bastion of progressivism then and now.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 10, 2022)

Ogre Mage said:


> It makes sense that if the media/authority figures make something seem forbidden, it can actually INCREASE interest in the forbidden thing.  In the early 2000s this phenomenon became known as the "Streisand Effect" -- when an attempt to censor or remove information has the unintended consequence of increasing interest in that information.
> 
> I first played D&D as a kid in 1986.  During this time, the "Satanic Panic" was in full swing.  The panic struck me as nonsense.  I was playing a cleric who could turn undead, how was that "satanic?" My social group of 11-13 year olds derided the people who believed in the Satanic Panic as stupid.  It probably helped that I lived in Seattle, Washington which was a bastion of progressivism then and now.




 Could also be the old"there's no such thing as bad press". 

 Not strictly true but I get the sentiment.


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## Lanefan (Jul 10, 2022)

nevin said:


> no I mean the first print of the second edition books that fell apart after being opened 15 or 20 times.   my first Unearthed arcana split in half 6 months after I bought it.   One of my monster manuals did the same thing.   The absolute cake though were the Monster Manuals for 2nd edition that were 3 ring binders and you had to pull out the printed sheets that had 3 hole punched paper and put them in the binder yourself.  If you used them often the holes broke and the pages started falling out.    THOSE are the books I'm talking about.  Of course the ones you still have are great.   All the lousy ones I'm talking about are freaking hard to find because the quality was naughty word.



I think that's just luck of the draw, in that my own anecdotes are pretty much the opposite*.  My 2e hardcover books are secondhand and while they were already thrashed to hell when I got them the one thing that hasn't given out is the binding.  My 1e UA is still in near-perfect condition, as are my other 1e books except for self-inflicted damage e.g. the cup of tea I spilled onto an open PH and 38 years of hard use for my DMG.

The binding in some of my 2e softcover books, though, e.g. the Complete Xxxxx series didn't hold up nearly as well.

* - other than the 2e loose-page Monster Manuals, which I've neither owned nor used.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 10, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> I think that's just luck of the draw, in that my own anecdotes are pretty much the opposite*.  My 2e hardcover books are secondhand and while they were already thrashed to hell when I got them the one thing that hasn't given out is the binding.  My 1e UA is still in near-perfect condition, as are my other 1e books except for self-inflicted damage e.g. the cup of tea I spilled onto an open PH and 38 years of hard use for my DMG.
> 
> The binding in some of my 2e softcover books, though, e.g. the Complete Xxxxx series didn't hold up nearly as well.
> 
> * - other than the 2e loose-page Monster Manuals, which I've neither owned nor used.




 One if my 2E books spine split phb 1995 iirc. It had a hard life of idiots grabbing it though.


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## Sacrosanct (Jul 11, 2022)

In my neck of the woods, people were more up in arms about the devil and heavy metal than they were with D&D. My mom supported our D&D  hobby, but banned all heavy metal and rock.  In fact, I remember one discussion how she banned Huey Lewis and the News because of "I Want a New Drug" song.  Didn't matter us trying to tell her it was literally the opposite of pushing drugs; she wasn't having it.


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

I was in high school in Rockford, Illinois (middle of the northern edge of the state) in the mid-80s and don't remember the satanic panic being a thing.  We had a comic/record/game store in the neighborhood, a comic/game store in nearby Loves Park, and Jeff Perrin's (iirc) Royal Hobby that I thought kept selling it the whole time.  I don't remember if they stopped being sold at the various mall bookstores or not.

Checking newspapers.com for articles in Illinois, there are some pretty inane articles though:

Northwest Herald (Woodstock) on 7 Aug 1986 talked about the accused Night Stalker in LA, a 17-year old former D&D player in SF who was found dead, and others.

The Southtown Star (Tinley Park) had one on 11 Dec 1988 quoting some really wackadoodle stuff from Matteson Police Chief Donald Story "a nationally recognized expert on ritualistic crime and criminal aspects of the occult", that includes supposed baby sacrifices that became unrecorded births, and saying folks should throw out D&D.

The Messenger (Belleville) from 13 Apr 1990 has Jan Stanton (a consultant in private practice) and Jeff Randall (a family therapist) talking about the the "four levels of satanic involvement.  The first level are dabblers who play games like 'Dungeons and Dragons' and listen to heavy metal music."


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## Orius (Jul 11, 2022)

Well, while @Snarf Zagyg 's initial premise that the Satanic Panic probably didn't cause the initial 1984 crash seems to bear out, I think that it may have hampered any recovery.   Or more like TSR let it hamper a recovery. TSR didn't seem to engage in any sort of strong pushback, and certainly once the Stackpole report came out, they could have gotten strongly behind that especially as the biggest player in the RPG industry.  Instead, they went with appeasement, and income stayed pretty flat.  Nor did it help that they did things to alienate their core audience.


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## James Gasik (Jul 11, 2022)

Oh hey, does anyone remember that time the California Highway Patrol pulled over some guys with Vampire: the Masquerade books in their trunk?


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Orius said:


> That's mostly my recollection of the time too.  The whole Satanic Panic thing was primarily an American thing and a lot of it was a reaction to the cultural shifts and conflicts of the 70's.  The Church is very much an international organization.  I do remember them using some of the talking points, but I think that they were taking advantage of it for their own ends, probably competing with evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants for influence over conservative Christians.  The Church also tends to be more rational minded about things as well.



England definitely had some religious busybodies as well; I remember reading about some similar Satanic Panic activity in the pages of Game Master magazine (an English publication) in the 80s too.  Probably more reactionary Anglicans than Catholics at the time, though.



nevin said:


> all my players that could afford them bought several books.  Also in the mid 80's you could go to a gaming store and they'd have 20 or 30 modules, supplements for D&D and AD&D, Dragon magazines and Dungeon Magazines.   I don't think lack of stuff to buy, or players not buying was an issue.  The first half of the 80's they were everywhere pushing thier product and then the second half of the 80's it was like they vanished into the woods.  Maybe it was all the infighting you read about between Gygax and TSR staff and his wife.  I don't know.  something went really wrong though.   I think part of it was they retreated from half the country trying to not be "SATANIC.  To be fair in the 70's when they were smaller they almost tanked over a half dressed princess on a module.  After that they may have been afraid of fighting with parents and churches and hurting thier public image.



"half dressed princess on a module"?  Are you thinking perhaps of the nude figure on the altar from the cover of 1976's Eldritch Wizardry?  I don't recall there being a lot of controversy over it. 








						Eldritch Wizardry - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




Or maybe the kerfuffle over Palace of the Silver Princess, in 1980?








						Palace of the Silver Princess - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				






gamerprinter said:


> I started playing regular games of D&D in 1979, while in high school. So, obviously, I was playing AD&D 1e during "Satanic Panic" years, but other than having heard some of the stories and reactions - it was distant news for me, something I never personally witnessed. I was in the US Army from 1983 unti 1987, so I played plenty of TTRPGs, not just D&D, and never encountered a Satanic Panic issue. Even after I got out, I found a group right away in my hometown, and played with them over 20 years. The Satanic Panic issues was something I was aware of, but in no way directly impacted me.



I think it only rarely impacted adults.  It was mostly kids impacted, whose parents were overly credulous and misled by sensationalist news stories and preachers bearing false witness.  I've known a number of folks over the years whose books got taken away, tossed or burned.  My folks were supportive, but we had a few older relatives who thought D&D was bad, and I remember a fill-in babysitter (in her 50s) when I had recently acquired my first set, who repeated the steam tunnel myth to me when I talked about the game.


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## MGibster (Jul 11, 2022)

James Gasik said:


> Oh hey, does anyone remember that time the California Highway Patrol pulled over some guys with Vampire: the Masquerade books in their trunk?



Wasn't that on an episode of _Real Stories of the Highway Patrol_?


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

James Gasik said:


> Oh hey, does anyone remember that time the California Highway Patrol pulled over some guys with Vampire: the Masquerade books in their trunk?



Remember when the NSA raided Steve Jackson Games and seized computers and everything related to GURPS Cyberpunk?


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## MGibster (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I think it only rarely impacted adults. It was mostly kids impacted, whose parents were overly credulous and misled by sensationalist news stories and preachers bearing false witness. I've known a number of folks over the years whose books got taken away, tossed or burned.



There were probably plenty of parents who weren't so concerned about the Satanic part, but were more concerned about the alleged suicides and anti-social behaviors brought on by D&D, heavy metal, etc., etc.


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## MGibster (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Remember when the NSA raided Steve Jackson Games and seized computers and everything related to GURPS Cyberpunk?



Remember?  It was the cornerstone of Steve Jackson's marketing for years!


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

I had forgotten that Bruce Sterling made his 1992 book The Hacker Crackdown, about the events of 1990 (the raid on Steve Jackson Games among them) available for free online.  The introduction is a lovely little piece, and still pretty much about us today.



			http://www.mit.edu/hacker/introduction.html
		




> This is a book about cops, and wild teenage whiz-kids, and lawyers, and hairy-eyed anarchists, and industrial technicians, and hippies, and high-tech millionaires, and game hobbyists, and computer security experts, and Secret Service agents, and grifters, and thieves. This book is about the electronic frontier of the 1990s. It concerns activities that take place inside computers and over telephone lines.
> A science fiction writer coined the useful term "cyberspace" in 1982. But the territory in question, the electronic frontier, is about a hundred and thirty years old. Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. _The place between_ the phones. The indefinite place _out there_, where the two of you, two human beings, actually meet and communicate.
> 
> Although it is not exactly "real," "cyberspace" is a genuine place. Things happen there that have very genuine consequences. This "place" is not "real," but it is serious, it is earnest. Tens of thousands of people have dedicated their lives to it, to the public service of public communication by wire and electronics.






			The Hacker Crackdown


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> My folks were supportive, but we had a few older relatives who thought D&D was bad, and I remember a fill-in babysitter (in her 50s) when I had recently acquired my first set, who repeated the steam tunnel myth to me when I talked about the game.



My mom was supportive.  My dad didn't think much of the Satanism nonsense but also didn't see how it could possibly be worth the money for a game and so I'd get flak for that from him sometimes. But at least neither of them were worried that I was falling into Satanism.

But what I remember is the Satanic Panic folks making D&D sound a whole lot edgier than it actually was.  They'd paint lurid pictures of D&D being this:






When the reality was vastly different...


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Sacrosanct said:


> In my neck of the woods, people were more up in arms about the devil and heavy metal than they were with D&D. My mom supported our D&D  hobby, but banned all heavy metal and rock.  In fact, I remember one discussion how she banned Huey Lewis and the News because of "I Want a New Drug" song.  Didn't matter us trying to tell her it was literally the opposite of pushing drugs; she wasn't having it.




It was all three where I lived. Piece of Mind was forbidden in my house due to the song Revelations. I think it often boiled down to where you lived and what social circle your family was part of (as well as what TV programming they watched). Was allowed to listen to Stryper and Petra though lol. I had it easy though, I knew kids who weren't allowed to watch shows like Full House. 

First I have ever heard of Huey Lewis being banned lol


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Jer said:


> My mom was supportive.  My dad didn't think much of the Satanism nonsense but also didn't see how it could possibly be worth the money for a game and so I'd get flak for that from him sometimes. But at least neither of them were worried that I was falling into Satanism.
> 
> But what I remember is the Satanic Panic folks making D&D sound a whole lot edgier than it actually was.  They'd paint lurid pictures of D&D being this:
> 
> ...




I think the thing that makes it hard for people to appreciate these days is how much rumor was involved and how much of it was due to this being a new game that, to outsiders, seemed to blur reality and fantasy. Also there were a lot of mainstream experts and shows giving credence to it (so it wasn't just the 700 club, this stuff was on ABC). And it was a blend of a religious and psychological and legal panic. There were a lot of things, that I think were coming on the heels of some of the cultural chaos of the 60s and 70s, that made a scape goat like music or gaming very appealing (I don't know if people remember how many adults were traumatized vets in the early 80s, but I sure do, and I think stuff like that, also had a major influence: had a lot of friends parents in recovery for example). What I recall is my mother was fearful from a religious point of view, because we were very religious, but also from the point of view of worrying about me getting into drugs or losing my hold on reality (she had heard from a friend, who claimed her friends kid was killed because he played D&D and took PCP and they acted in the woods or the sewers---can't recall precise details: I think this was just a wives tale that spread from stuff like the story in the OP). Now we know how much of this was fantasy, how much was based on reality. At the time, if you were a mom or dad worried about your child's wellbeing, it was a lot less clear (moral panics tend to be like that when you live through them).


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## James Gasik (Jul 11, 2022)

MGibster said:


> Wasn't that on an episode of _Real Stories of the Highway Patrol_?



It was, and the White Wolf staffers were less than thrilled about it.


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## James Gasik (Jul 11, 2022)

It is true though that D&D had some "lurid" art back in the day.  The cover of the DMG, for example, which, to a lot of people, looks like a big demon or devil to begin with.  And there's more inside, like the weeping Succubus.

And then there's some early Dragonmirth cartoons as well.  Mixed bag, that AD&D.  : )


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

James Gasik said:


> It is true though that D&D had some "lurid" art back in the day.  The cover of the DMG, for example, which, to a lot of people, looks like a big demon or devil to begin with.  And there's more inside, like the weeping Succubus.
> 
> And then there's some early Dragonmirth cartoons as well.  Mixed bag, that AD&D.  : )



It is important to remember that D&D was not originally designed for kids. Like all things kids actually find cool, it was designed for young people that wanted to see blood and boobs in their fantasy. I don't know how much it is brought up, but softening that edge probably didn't just irritate the existing players that wanted their demons and devils back, but probably also made D&D look much lamer to the 12 years olds in search of something just a little bit naughty (boob armor and Elmore lady poses notwithstanding).


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think it often boiled down to where you lived and what social circle your family was part of (as well as what TV programming they watched). Was allowed to listen to Stryper and Petra though lol. I had it easy though, I knew kids who weren't allowed to watch shows like Full House.



Yes.  A lot of this was very local - I moved around a lot in the 80s and while it was universal that at some point upon finding out that I played D&D someone would say "isn't that game Satanic" the way the question was intoned would often be very different - sometimes accusatory, sometimes just openly curious whether it really was or not, and sometimes in a "I'm open to a bit of Satanism, tell me more" sort of tone. In highly religious areas (where I lived a few times) you got a bit more of the accusatory tone (but also more of the "hey maybe tell me more about this Satanism thing" too, so it balances), while in the non-religious areas it was far less "exotic" and folks just didn't care as much.

One thing most folks could agree on after actually playing the game though was that the game was more math than Satan.  As a pre-teen/young teen I was able to convince a few parents of very religious friends that role-playing was okay by letting them watch sessions of us playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (not D&D - even as a dumb kid I knew that it would be easier with a game that didn't involve magic) and they walked away convinced that mostly what I was doing was tutoring my friends in math in a creative way, which they highly approved of  



Bedrockgames said:


> First I have ever heard of Huey Lewis being banned lol



I moved into a town shortly after Huey Lewis released "I Wanna New Drug" and it was one of the first examples I can remember of being viscerally shown that if you want kids to buy your stuff you have to convince their parents to ban it.  I think that had to be the height of Huey Lewis's popularity with the pre-teen set...


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> It is important to remember that D&D was not originally designed for kids. Like all things kids actually find cool, it was designed for young people that wanted to see blood and boobs in their fantasy. I don't know how much it is brought up, but softening that edge probably didn't just irritate the existing players that wanted their demons and devils back, but probably also made D&D look much lamer to the 12 years olds in search of something just a little bit naughty (boob armor and Elmore lady poses notwithstanding).




It feels like B/X was always aimed pretty young, in both content and advertising.


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## James Gasik (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> It is important to remember that D&D was not originally designed for kids. Like all things kids actually find cool, it was designed for young people that wanted to see blood and boobs in their fantasy. I don't know how much it is brought up, but softening that edge probably didn't just irritate the existing players that wanted their demons and devils back, but probably also made D&D look much lamer to the 12 years olds in search of something just a little bit naughty (boob armor and Elmore lady poses notwithstanding).



Mmm, loved me some Elmore ladies...sorry, what were we talking about?


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> It feels like B/X was always aimed pretty young, in both content and advertising.



Flipping through my copy of B/X, I don't feel that way. it's art is higher quality but in tone very much like the AD&D art of the time. BECMI was much softer and "lamer" as I defined it above.


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## James Gasik (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> It feels like B/X was always aimed pretty young, in both content and advertising.



Who remembers TSR's attempt to break into the children's games market with Morley, the Game Wizard?


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Flipping through my copy of B/X, I don't feel that way. it's art is higher quality but in tone very much like the AD&D art of the time. BECMI was much softer and "lamer" as I defined it above.




B/X didn't have any of the nude/topless female human-appearing monsters and gods that the MM, DMG, and Deities and Demi-gods had, did it?   (Although one female character in B had seemingly really powerful nipples under that armor).  No harlot table.  And no Demons or Devils.


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> It feels like B/X was always aimed pretty young, in both content and advertising.



I don't think so actually - I think B/X was aimed at older and teen players but not specifically at the pre-teen audience.  Yes it had "Ages 10 and up" on it, but I think that was more of a "what's the actual lower bound on this" and not a real intent at targeting that audience.

By the '83 Mentzer revision, though, I think they were consciously aiming to write a D&D that everyone could play.  So BECMI I think was aimed to be an all ages game in a way that B/X was not.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> B/X didn't have any of the nude/topless female human-appearing monsters and gods that the MM, DMG, and Deities and Demi-gods had, did it?   (Although one female character in B had seemingly really powerful nipples under that armor).  No harlot table.  And no Demons or Devils.



If you look at the AD&D PHB and B/X Basic side by side (which i just did) they are about equivalent, except that there is more humor art in AD&D. I think people ever-remember the boobs in AD&D because, well, they were probably adolescent boys at the time.


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Jer said:


> I don't think so actually - I think B/X was aimed at older and teen players but not specifically at the pre-teen audience.  Yes it had "Ages 10 and up" on it, but I think that was more of a "what's the actual lower bound on this" and not a real intent at targeting that audience.
> 
> By the '83 Mentzer revision, though, I think they were consciously aiming to write a D&D that everyone could play.  So BECMI I think was aimed to be an all ages game in a way that B/X was not.



I shouldn't have said B/X was specifically aimed at pre-teens (as opposed to including them), but it seemed open to them when I and my friends were pre-teens.

I've never flipped through BECMI.  What do you think it did beyond what B/X did to make it explicitly all ages?  (What separated the changes out as being explicitly more open to the younger group as opposed to the no-experience group?)   Thank you for any insight!

Moldvay, et.al. thought about the 10+ group enough that they went to a children's librarian for recommendations for the bibliography - although they have those sections listed as young adult in the book list and not children.   In the fiction side, I'm pretty sure the Black Cauldron books were read in grade school, and the Narnia ones were read in 3rd grade by a ton of people in my elementary school, and a lot of the non-fiction ones look like picture books.




Reynard said:


> If you look at the AD&D PHB and B/X Basic side by side (which i just did) they are about equivalent, except that there is more humor art in AD&D. I think people ever-remember the boobs in AD&D because, well, they were probably adolescent boys at the time.



I had pulled up the B/X too and the art on most monsters/PCs doesn't seem that different, but I'm not sure why they would.  YMMV, but it feels like randomly throwing in naked monsters is a difference a lot of parents would notice when flipping through the books before buying things for their teens and pre-teens?


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## Sacrosanct (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> It feels like B/X was always aimed pretty young, in both content and advertising.




I don't think it was necessarily marketed to pretty young people (the ads are all late teens to college age), but with the word "BASIC" on the cover, I think many parents assumed it was more for kids, so thus the impression was made that it was for kids even if the company didn't present it as such.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Sacrosanct said:


> I don't think it was necessarily marketed to pretty young people (the ads are all late teens to college age), but with the word "BASIC" on the cover, I think many parents assumed it was more for kids, so thus the impression was made that it was for kids even if the company didn't present it as such.
> 
> View attachment 253248



Plus "10 and up" meant kids like me could start begging for a copy 3 years earlier!


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think the thing that makes it hard for people to appreciate these days is how much rumor was involved and how much of it was due to this being a new game that, to outsiders, seemed to blur reality and fantasy. Also there were a lot of mainstream experts and shows giving credence to it (so it wasn't just the 700 club, this stuff was on ABC). And it was a blend of a religious and psychological and legal panic. There were a lot of things, that I think were coming on the heels of some of the cultural chaos of the 60s and 70s, that made a scape goat like music or gaming very appealing (I don't know if people remember how many adults were traumatized vets in the early 80s, but I sure do, and I think stuff like that, also had a major influence: had a lot of friends parents in recovery for example). What I recall is my mother was fearful from a religious point of view, because we were very religious, but also from the point of view of worrying about me getting into drugs or losing my hold on reality (she had heard from a friend, who claimed her friends kid was killed because he played D&D and took PCP and they acted in the woods or the sewers---can't recall precise details: I think this was just a wives tale that spread from stuff like the story in the OP). Now we know how much of this was fantasy, how much was based on reality. At the time, if you were a mom or dad worried about your child's wellbeing, it was a lot less clear (moral panics tend to be like that when you live through them).




Yes, although the "a lot of mainstream experts and shows giving credence to it" is another part of the myth.

It was reported in a lot of mainstream places, mostly local newspapers and tabloid talk shows, though 60 Minutes most famously.  I don't think there was ever actually a significant number of medical or psychological experts who had a problem with it.  Pat Pulling's accomplice, fraud and later felon Thomas Radecki, founder of the "National Coalition on Television Violence" was the most prominent and loud "expert", and he was later shown demonstrably to be a complete charlatan.  As was Pulling.  









						Radecki on Trial: The Psychiatrist who Attacked D&D
					

In the 80s, Dungeons & Dragons was all the rage with kids, a new target market for TSR who only recently discovered.  As the D&D franchise expanded, including a cartoon, toys, and of course the Advanced and Basic versions of the game. The influence of the game did not go unnoticed, and it was...




					www.enworld.org
				




For a while there was a little cottage industry of these fake experts on "satanic crimes" doing circuits "training" local police departments.


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Sacrosanct said:


> I don't think it was necessarily marketed to pretty young people (the ads are all late teens to college age), but with the word "BASIC" on the cover, I think many parents assumed it was more for kids, so thus the impression was made that it was for kids even if the company didn't present it as such.
> 
> View attachment 253248




Thank you for pulling those up!

Would explicitly aiming at young kids (as opposed to keeping it approachable and open to them) turn off the teens and older?

I guess Dungeon! did explicitly go further to include kids. I might have been conflating them in my memory.


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## Mind of tempest (Jul 11, 2022)

I will have to ask my father what if any there were problems for him during the 80s involving dnd.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> Thank you for pulling those up!
> 
> Would explicitly aiming at young kids (as opposed to keeping it approachable and open to them) turn off the teens and older?
> 
> ...



Board games, I think, were still very much considered the province of kids and families at the time. It wasn't until -- what, the early 90s? -- that "Eurogames" got a real foothold?


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## Sacrosanct (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Plus "10 and up" meant kids like me could start begging for a copy 3 years earlier!



Exactly!  I was 7 as well (I started reading early).  Having a 10 year old brother who introduced me also helped a lot. Cuz my mom certainly didn't want to play, so she allowed me to get my own Moldvay basic book so we could keep each other entertained


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Board games, I think, were still very much considered the province of kids and families at the time. It wasn't until -- what, the early 90s? -- that "Eurogames" got a real foothold?



Early to mid 2000s, I think.  Settlers of Catan being the standard bearer. 



> After Settlers was first released in 1995, a small but passionate following emerged. It wasn't until a decade later that the game's popularity began to blossom. "The start of the tipping point was 2008," said Bob Carty, a spokesman for Settlers manufacturer Mayfair Games. "Settlers is three to five years away from being a household word." Last year alone, the game's sales grew 35 percent. Carty said that the game is mainly played by families, but it's also popular on college campuses and as a team-bonding activity at companies.




This article is from 2011.  2008 was also the first year that the Catan World Championships (started in Essen, in 2002) were held in the US, at Gen-Con Indy.  Starting then, the event has been every two years, alternating between the US and Germany until the pandemic put it on hold.






						Settlers of Catan: How a German Board Game Went Mainstream
					

Two decades after it was invented, this game is about to become a household name. How did it happen?




					www.theatlantic.com
				












						Catan - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> I've never flipped through BECMI.  What do you think it did beyond what B/X did to make it explicitly all ages?  (What separated the changes out as being explicitly more open to the younger group as opposed to the no-experience group?)   Thank you for any insight!



So specifically in the Basic set I think the introduction on how to play - the narrative choose-your-own-adventure beginning and the later more "fighting fantasy" numbered text sequence for how to play the game with dice and hit points - are the things that feel aimed at a younger audience than the B/X game.  The B/X version of it was the "Example of Play" which just reads like any other example of play you might read. There are a few other little things - like how in the B/X version clerics are explicitly priests of gods/goddesses while in Mentzer Basic clerics explicitly gain their spells from a devotion to a "great and worthy cause" - usually their Alignment, and the discussion of having mythological gods in the game is off in the DM's book as an optional thing you could add if you really want to and everyone is okay with it.  Basically the fact that it's a much more tutorial oriented rulebook combined with some nods to Satanic Panic.  

I do think that trails off after the Basic set though - the Expert-Immortals sets are more "all ages" than specifically targetting a younger crowd (in fact if I remember correctly the Immortals set was 14+ - mostly I think because of the discussions of 5-th dimensional mathematics and physics that made up a large chunk of the book, tbh.)


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Early to mid 2000s, I think.  Settlers of Catan being the standard bearer.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I must have been remembering Catan. I thought the follow on was quicker.


----------



## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Board games, I think, were still very much considered the province of kids and families at the time. It wasn't until -- what, the early 90s? -- that "Eurogames" got a real foothold?




Were the Avalon Hill ones (and those of that style) aimed at older?  Did the public at large have any consciousness of them?


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Yes, although the "a lot of mainstream experts and shows giving credence to it" is another part of the myth.
> 
> It was reported in a lot of mainstream places, mostly local newspapers and tabloid talk shows, though 60 Minutes most famously.  I don't think there was ever actually a significant number of medical or psychological experts who had a problem with it.  Pat Pulling's accomplice, fraud and later felon Thomas Radecki, founder of the "National Coalition on Television Violence" was the most prominent and loud "expert", and he was later shown demonstrably to be a complete charlatan.  As was Pulling.




I am just reporting what I remember from the time, and I am sure this varied a great deal, but I certainly recall seeing it on mainstream news programs, seeing experts on panels. I also remember a number of school counselors at my schools taking issue with Dungeons and Dragons (and routinely asking those of us who played questions about our hold on reality). I am sure there were a majority of experts who didn't go in for this stuff. But people were going to jail for crimes they didn't commit during the satanic panic. It wasn't a marginal movement by any stretch.


----------



## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Jer said:


> So specifically in the Basic set I think the introduction on how to play - the narrative choose-your-own-adventure beginning and the later more "fighting fantasy" numbered text sequence for how to play the game with dice and hit points - are the things that feel aimed at a younger audience than the B/X game.  The B/X version of it was the "Example of Play" which just reads like any other example of play you might read. There are a few other little things - like how in the B/X version clerics are explicitly priests of gods/goddesses while in Mentzer Basic clerics explicitly gain their spells from a devotion to a "great and worthy cause" - usually their Alignment, and the discussion of having mythological gods in the game is off in the DM's book as an optional thing you could add if you really want to and everyone is okay with it.  Basically the fact that it's a much more tutorial oriented rulebook combined with some nods to Satanic Panic.
> 
> I do think that trails off after the Basic set though - the Expert-Immortals sets are more "all ages" than specifically targetting a younger crowd (in fact if I remember correctly the Immortals set was 14+ - mostly I think because of the discussions of 5-th dimensional mathematics and physics that made up a large chunk of the book, tbh.)



Yeah, Mentzer Basic in 1983 was the dedicated effort to crack the formula to teach players how to play directly from the books. Folks DID teach themselves from B/X and from Holmes Basic, but it was definitely harder.

Those first couple of years in the 80s were when the sales numbers, as Snarf mentioned in the OP, shifted younger.  Much more middle schoolers than before.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> Were the Avalon Hill ones (and those of that style) aimed at older?  Did the public at large have any consciousness of them?



Which ones? The war games weren't board games, they were war games. Later I know they tried to ape Dungeon, but I don't know what market they aimed at.


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> For a while there was a little cottage industry of these fake experts on "satanic crimes" doing circuits "training" local police departments.




But that is pretty mainstream. If it is prevalent enough that you have law enforcement taking advice and acting on it, that shows how mainstream the satanic panic was


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> I am just reporting what I remember from the time, and I am sure this varied a great deal, but I certainly recall seeing it on mainstream news programs, seeing experts on panels. I also remember a number of school counselors at my schools taking issue with Dungeons and Dragons (and routinely asking those of us who played questions about our hold on reality). I am sure there were a majority of experts who didn't go in for this stuff. But people were going to jail for crimes they didn't commit during the satanic panic. It wasn't a marginal movement by any stretch.



Can you remember any specific shows with those panels, and which mainstream news programs might have hosted them other than the famous 60 Minutes episode?



Bedrockgames said:


> But that is pretty mainstream. If it is prevalent enough that you have law enforcement taking advice and acting on it, that shows how mainstream the satanic panic was



Perhaps we're having a bit of a semantic issue here.  There are (depending on how you count) around 15,000 - 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the US.  Whether fraudulent trainers on nonexistent "satanic crime waves" are mainstream kind of depends on how common they are, and perhaps whether their teachings were ever incorporated into larger national or regional training kinds or materials, no?  

You can have a little cottage industry of these charlatans bilking money out of Bible belt departments run by misguided Evangelicals without it ever becoming a common thing for most departments or agencies.


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> Were the Avalon Hill ones (and those of that style) aimed at older?  Did the public at large have any consciousness of them?



The only Avalon Hill game that I remember anyone in the general public knowing about was Diplomacy.  In the early 90s I knew folks who played Diplomacy who wouldn't have picked up another Avalon Hill game or played D&D.


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Those first couple of years in the 80s were when the sales numbers, as Snarf mentioned in the OP, shifted younger.  Much more middle schoolers than before.



Makes you wonder maybe if some of the growth in sales was from moving the game to younger and younger buyers after each age group saturated.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Jer said:


> Makes you wonder maybe if some of the growth in sales was from moving the game to younger and younger buyers after each age group saturated.



I don't think there is much doubt that the main reason for the decline was market saturation. The satanic panic didn't help, but neither did Artari 2600.


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

I'm just imagining how awful the Satanic Panic (or Comic Book panic in the 50s) would have been if social media had been around...


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## South by Southwest (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> I'm just imagining how awful the Satanic Panic (or Comic Book panic in the 50s) would have been if social media had been around...



_Incalculable._


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Which ones? The war games weren't board games, they were war games. Later I know they tried to ape Dungeon, but I don't know what market they aimed at.






Jer said:


> The only Avalon Hill game that I remember anyone in the general public knowing about was Diplomacy.  In the early 90s I knew folks who played Diplomacy who wouldn't have picked up another Avalon Hill game or played D&D.




The only Avalon Hill one I ever played was Titan, but I remember seeing them at the hobby stores.   

I'm not sure where the line between war game and board game is (from Risk to Titan to Star Fleet Battles).


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> I'm just imagining how awful the Satanic Panic (or Comic Book panic in the 50s) would have been if social media had been around...



*cough**QAnon**cough*


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> *cough**QAnon**cough*



I've had something rolling around my head wondering how much the 1950s comic panic, 1980s satanic panic, and the modern things all fed off of the same personality traits and types of people.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> I've had something rolling around my head wondering how much the 1950s comic panic, 1980s satanic panic, and the modern things all fed off of the same personality traits and types of people.



Long before those things, and long after. Human nature is what it is and isn't likely to change any time soon.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> Were the Avalon Hill ones (and those of that style) aimed at older?  Did the public at large have any consciousness of them?



They absolutely were aimed at an older audience, but they were a pretty small, hobby market. There are solid annual figures in Game Wizards comparing TSR's revenue to Avalon Hill and SPI and the general wargaming market each year, but I don't have my copy handy with me.

Greg Costikyan's famous 1996 elegy for SPI gives some numbers as well. The first commercial wargame (ignoring early outliers like HG Wells' Little Wars, I guess) he lists as 1953's _Tactics_, which sold 2000 copies and was the basis for Avalon' Hill's formation. The most successful war game of all time he lists as Avalon Hill's _Squad Leader_, with 200,000 copies sold.



			SPI Died for Your Sins
		




> In the mid-70s, SPI was grossing $2 million annually, and employing as many as forty people. It was publishing forty or more games every year. As it appeared at the time, SPI, and wargaming as a whole, was on an upward trend.
> 
> The mid and late 70s were the heyday of the field. New companies sprang up every year: Rand Games Associates, Simulation Design Corps, Panzerfaust, Conflict Games, Operational Studies Group, Yaquinto, Worldwide Wargames (3W), Simulations Canada.... The most successful and enduring was Game Designers Workshop, founded by a group of game enthusiasts who met at the University of Illinois's Champaign campus. From the very first, GDW's games were innovative, well-designed and of the highest quality. They tended, however, to deal with more obscure topics than SPI's, and often had fairly opaque rules; in general, GDW appealed more to the hardcore hobbyist.
> 
> ...






Reynard said:


> Which ones? The war games weren't board games, they were war games. Later I know they tried to ape Dungeon, but I don't know what market they aimed at.



I think you've got wires crossed a bit. Most war games back in the day, like Avalon Hill and SPI's bread and butter publications, were board wargames. "Hex and chit", commonly. Using printed game boards with counters for units that you moved around the board.

Wargames using miniatures were a sub-set of the larger wargaming hobby, but more expensive and space intensive. A game of Squad Leader might take hours but could be tucked away in a neat box and put back in a convenient spot on a regular book case afterward.  Avalon Hill had a whole line of boxed games for years they specifically titled "Bookcase games" (_Outdoor Survival _is one of them, as is my copy of their  _Starship Troopers_ game), which had a standard box size meant to have a similar footprint as a large encyclopedia or dictionary volume.  Very different from the common long rectangle I always remember mass-market boardgames for kids coming in when I was growing up, and is still widely used (for _Monopoly_, e.g.) by the big  boardgame companies like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley.






Side note- _Dungeon! _was originally sold in a smaller box, with a folding vinyl map.  My first copy, OTOH, "_The New Dungeon!_" was the 1989 edition, which made the board bigger and fit it into the familiar larger rectangle shape/footprint of a mass-market boardgame for kids.

 There's a significant incident talked about in Game Wizards about _Fantasy Forest_, TSR's 1980 attempt at a mass market boardgame for kids, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars they lost due to the singular incompetence of a Blume in-law who was then head of Purchasing, who managed to buy boxes and boards for the game which were completely incompatible in size!

A miniatures collection, on the other hand, at least takes boxes, and many of us collectors have extensive display shelves, and boxes and boxes of our unpainted stuff.  _Chainmail _was a miniatures game, and the major wargame publishers initially saw this "fantasy gaming" fad as part of that sub-set.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I think you've got wires crossed a bit. Most war games back in the day, like Avalon Hill and SPI's bread and butter publications, were board wargames. "Hex and chit", commonly. Using printed game boards with counters for units that you moved around the board.
> 
> Wargames using miniatures were a sub-set of the larger wargaming hobby, but more expensive and space intensive. A game of Squad Leader might take hours but could be tucked away in a neat box and put back in a convenient spot on a regular book case afterward.  Avalon Hill had a whole line of boxed games for years they specifically titled "Bookcase games" (Outdoor Survival is one of them, as is my copy of their  Starship Troopers game), which had a standard box size meant to have a similar footprint as a large encyclopedia or dictionary volume.  Very different from the common long rectangle I always remember mass-market boardgames for kids coming in when I was growing up, and is still widely used (for Monopoly, e.g.) by the big mass market boardgame companies.
> View attachment 253258
> ...



Oh, I know, but being a "board wargame" was not being a "board game" and I imagine you would get some angry stares walking into a board game event and asking them how they liked their board games.


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## Wolfram stout (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Can you remember any specific shows with those panels, and which mainstream news programs might have hosted them other than the famous 60 Minutes episode?
> 
> 
> Perhaps we're having a bit of a semantic issue here.  There are (depending on how you count) around 15,000 - 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the US.  Whether fraudulent trainers on nonexistent "satanic crime waves" are mainstream kind of depends on how common they are, and perhaps whether their teachings were ever incorporated into larger national or regional training kinds or materials, no?
> ...



While I thought the Phil Donohue show had an episode I can't find the specifics, but I did find an episode of Geraldo Rivera show from Oct 1988 that was on "Exposing Satan's Underground".  I have not gone back and watched it so I don't know the details.   I found the general listing on IMDB.com


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Wolfram stout said:


> While I thought the Phil Donohue show had an episode I can't find the specifics, but I did find an episode of Geraldo Rivera show from Oct 1988 that was on "Exposing Satan's Underground".  I have not gone back and watched it so I don't know the details.   I found the general listing on IMDB.com



Right.  Those are the "tabloid TV talk shows" I referenced.  Geraldo, Phil Donohue, Sally Jesse Raphael, Morton Downey Jr., etc.

Certainly those were mainstream media, but they had a lot of frauds and hucksters on; at least as many as reputable experts.


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## Parmandur (Jul 11, 2022)

South by Southwest said:


> That certainly wasn't my experience. Among all the gamers at my school anyway, pretty much anyone who played had bought--at minimum--the _Player's Handbook, _the _Monster Manual,_ and the _Dungeon Master's Guide._ The kids who were hardcore players typically also had the _Fiend Folio_ and _Deities and Demigods_. I didn't see any greater or lesser book-purchasing habits among DMs than among players: in our school they seemed pretty equal.



Yeah, one experience or the other doesn't tell us too much: however, thst there was such a close correlation of PHB and DMG purchases suggests that the DM as book buyer model was more common, along with modern WotC customer data and 5E DM-centric prodict design. after the failure of the 3E attempt to sell to everyone at the table...


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## Deset Gled (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Can you remember any specific shows with those panels, and which mainstream news programs might have hosted them other than the famous 60 Minutes episode?




I found a surprisingly interesting Tik Tok channel that specializes in old videos from the Satanic Panic.  Lots of good stuff here, mostly from VHS tapes: Satanic Panic at the Disco TikTok



Cadence said:


> Were the Avalon Hill ones (and those of that style) aimed at older?  Did the public at large have any consciousness of them?




The two adult board games that immediately come to my mind first are Risk (a staple of late nights at college, arguably a "light" war game) and Trivial Pursuit.  But there are others that are clearly just as much for adults as kids, including Scrabble, chess, backgammon, etc.


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Deset Gled said:


> I found a surprisingly interesting Tik Tok channel that specializes in old videos from the Satanic Panic.  Lots of good stuff here, mostly from VHS tapes: Satanic Panic at the Disco TikTok
> 
> 
> 
> The two adult board games that immediately come to my mind first are Risk (a staple of late nights at college, arguably a "light" war game) and Trivial Pursuit.  But there are others that are clearly just as much for adults as kids, including Scrabble, chess, backgammon, etc.



I had Trivial pursuit coming out much later in my head!


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Can you remember any specific shows with those panels, and which mainstream news programs might have hosted them other than the famous 60 Minutes episode?




Well, 60 minutes was as mainstream as it gets, but I remember it being aired on network news, it certainly made its way onto day time talk shows. It was not just the 60 minutes program. And you had TV movies like Mazes and Monsters, the book it was based on. You also had a ton of religious programing about it (which people can dismiss as fringe, but stuff like the 700 club and Jerry Falwell had considerable cultural pull in the 80s). I believe i even posted clips I found from old news shows here and elsewhere in previous threads (but I can't recall exact programs off the top of my head). And if you go beyond D&D, into music and ritual satanic abuse allegations, that was on pretty much everything, from the nightly news, to daily talkshows and more. But again, just pointing to my own experience of guidance counselors who expressed grave concern about D&D, and people I knew who were in therapy where that was the source of the household ban (not religion). I am not saying it was satanic panic all the way down in the mental health field at that time, but you had all kinds of people testifying in court cases, appearing on TV and showing up in peoples daily lives who seemed to believe there was a potential issue with the game. 

Again, I am not claiming my memory is the sole arbiter here, but what I recall from living through it, is that it was quite mainstream for a number of years (and obviously some of that is going to be regional: there was a lot more Satanic panic when I was living in the west coast than I encountered living in the east coast---but the panic was also dying down by the time I moved back east so not sure how much of an impact that had). I think people also tend to forget how religious the country was in the early 80s. I also think people tend to forget how conservative the mental health field could be at that time too.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Oh, I know, but being a "board wargame" was not being a "board game" and I imagine you would get some angry stares walking into a board game event and asking them how they liked their board games.



I'm honestly not sure!  I had a few of these games, but in my early con-going days in the 80s, getting in on a game of Yaquinto's Adventurer, GW's Talisman, or GDW's Harpoon was kind of a consolation if I couldn't get into a D&D game.    

The Peterson books definitely talk about about how the board wargamers kind of saw themselves as grownups and of a more historical and scholarly bent than the fantasy gamers.


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## Warpiglet-7 (Jul 11, 2022)

Reynard said:


> *cough**QAnon**cough*



So what you are telling me is hard to grasp.  Are you insinuating that we are NOT being run by reptilian humanoids that were modeled on the 4 hit die creatures in the game?

You do know that most things from D&D were first talked about in the actual world/earth?  These monsters come from somewhere.

When I pay my taxes I KNOW they are financing the breeding rodents for a reason. Food.  Until you can show me a detailed list of government expenditures, you have not disproven the presence of the child abusing lizards.

Keep living in your dreamland!  No wonder so many of you play Dungeons and Dragons!  It’s practicing keeping your head in the fantasy land!  Pretending our pizza parlors are safe and that our lizard overlords are beneficent!

Edited: bad grammar in a dire warning!


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> Well, 60 minutes was as mainstream as it gets, but I remember it being aired on network news, it certainly made its way onto day time talk shows. It was not just the 60 minutes program. And you had TV movies like Mazes and Monsters, the book it was based on. You also had a ton of religious programing about it (which people can dismiss as fringe, but stuff like the 700 club and Jerry Falwell had considerable cultural pull in the 80s). I believe i even posted clips I found from old news shows here and elsewhere in previous threads (but I can't recall exact programs off the top of my head). And if you go beyond D&D, into music and ritual satanic abuse allegations, that was on pretty much everything, from the nightly news, to daily talkshows and more. But again, just pointing to my own experience of guidance counselors who expressed grave concern about D&D, and people I knew who were in therapy where that was the source of the household ban (not religion). I am not saying it was satanic panic all the way down in the mental health field at that time, but you had all kinds of people testifying in court cases, appearing on TV and showing up in peoples daily lives who seemed to believe there was a potential issue with the game.
> 
> Again, I am not claiming my memory is the sole arbiter here, but what I recall from living through it, is that it was quite mainstream for a number of years (and obviously some of that is going to be regional: there was a lot more Satanic panic when I was living in the west coast than I encountered living in the east coast---but the panic was also dying down by the time I moved back east so not sure how much of an impact that had). I think people also tend to forget how religious the country was in the early 80s. I also think people tend to forget how conservative the mental health field could be at that time too.



I agree with you that the panic was fairly mainstream in the culture.  Again, I met people even here in New England who bought into it.

My recollection from a few decades of hobby study, including a bit of formal undergraduate study in the 90s, was that there was never any peer-reviewed or substantive scientific, psychological, or medical evidence to support there being anything harmful or dangerous about roleplaying.

And in fact the opposite, as later studies demonstrated, such as the ones on the suicide rates of teenagers in general vs. D&D playing teenagers, which showed that RPG gamers have a fraction of the rate.  Which in retrospect seems totally logical- having a group of friends you socially interact with regularly for a fun activity is exactly the antonym of a risk factor.

 I can't remember the names of any _real _experts who did such testifying.  Radecki and Pulling were all over the place, but were literal frauds.

TSR hired Dr. Joyce Brothers to do some spokesperson work after the Egbert incident to try to counter the myths, but sadly the stories of prevaricators and perjurers like Pulling, Radecki and Dear got repeated a lot.


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Perhaps we're having a bit of a semantic issue here.  There are (depending on how you count) around 15,000 - 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the US.  Whether fraudulent trainers on nonexistent "satanic crime waves" are mainstream kind of depends on how common they are, and perhaps whether their teachings were ever incorporated into larger national or regional training kinds or materials, no?
> 
> You can have a little cottage industry of these charlatans bilking money out of Bible belt departments run by misguided Evangelicals without it ever becoming a common thing for most departments or agencies.




I don't know what the numbers are, but I know it was big enough that you would see stuff on the nightly news where it was being taken seriously by reporters, law enforcement and people in high positions. Again it was much bigger than dungeons and dragons. D&D was just a small aspect of the satanic panic. It cut through music (with subliminal satanic messages, subliminal suicidal messages), it led to wrongful allegations of satanic ritual abuse of children, etc. Even as late as 1990 (granted from something that happened in the mid-80s), you had the Judas Priest trial (and there were plenty of people taking the whole subliminal messaging seriously during the 80s. And it wasn't just limited to evangelicals (certainly more prevalent in those communities, but the counselors I had in mind were in the north east, very far from any kind of evangelical culture).


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

Went looking for panic articles and got sidetracked.  Apologies for the tangent, but...1975 seems to have been a big year as far as early media presence for board/wargaming/D&D.

The oldest newspaper I found mentioning Dungeons and Dragons was about Origins I.  Appearing in a variety of papers starting on 28 July 1975 under various titles* and edits, this particular copy is from The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis TN on 28 July 1975:






*Arizona Daily Star (Tuscon):  "To Play, You 'Must Be Crazy" super-titled "'War-Gamers' Gather"
Daily Press (Newport News): "Lovers of War Games Let Nothing Bar Play"
Globe-Gazette (Mason City, Iowa): "Board battles create furor"
Arizona Republic (Phoenix): "Games played on boards attract fanatical breed of strategy minded people"
Dayton Daily News (Dayton, OH): "Strategy Game Players Relive Wars, Disasters"

In Baltimore itself there was an Editorial on 2 Aug 1975 in the Evening Sun that was a bit amusing.





For those wanting more, the Baltimore Sun had one with a lot more quotes on D&D on 10 Aug 1975 with lots of pictures and quotes about gaming in general.





For more on the state of the war game hobby at the time, the Washington Post had an article about it that was picked up elsewhere (like the Anderson Herald in Indiana), also on 10 Aug 1975 and well into September elsewhere.



and





The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a big one on Gen Con VIII on 31 Aug 1975 (including some random quotes from a games):


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## Warpiglet-7 (Jul 11, 2022)

I had a period of secret D&D playing.  A very persuasive and opinionated friend of a parent convinced them that the game was blasphemous.

Meanwhile, I was going to church and never heard it mentioned.  Not did my parents that I know of.

Oddly, the folks were buying me all the LJN toys for Christmas!  Loved Northlord the barbarian!

Fast forward a few years and I bucked up and told them we had been playing all along.  

OK.  You don’t erupt into flames when we go to church.  You are nice to family pets and children .  You Gygax inspired vocabulary is ahead of the curve….well “I guess it’s ok.”

And now that I play the game with their beloved grandchildren is only met with questions about whether the youngsters had fun, if the monsters got them etc.

But it was real for some of us.  It petered out totally by 86 or 87 for me.  And my geek flag flew freely through high school, college, grad school, professional/learner life and on…

But it was anxiety producing and I felt like I had to lie for a couple of years.

The real scandal is that my parents let me get an AC/DC record at age 7…

Hellfire!  Scandal!


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I agree with you that the panic was fairly mainstream in the culture.  Again, I met people even here in New England who bought into it.
> 
> My recollection from a few decades of hobby study, including a bit of formal undergraduate study in the 90s, was that there was never any peer-reviewed or substantive scientific, psychological, or medical evidence to support there being anything harmful or dangerous about roleplaying.




To be clear I wasn't arguing that there was research supporting the claims about D&D, just that the claims were taken seriously by a lot of mainstream institutions. I am talking more practical level therapists and psychologists (which I definitely remember encountering), people who went on Donahue and the nightly news to give expert opinion on the matter (which at the time, could often be very out of step with what we know today). I think this was all stuff that was just coming up in the culture and part of the why it was probably hard for parents to navigate (and why I am sympathetic to a lot the choices my parents made during the satanic panic) is because there wasn't much good information to go on. I think it was just something new, people perceived potential danger, and in the cultural climate it led to a real moral panic (it is easy to forget this isn't that distant from stuff like Son of Sam, the Manson Killings, a widespread change in drug culture, massive historical change, the rise of a political Christianity in the 70s that was still quite strong in the 80s, etc).


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 11, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> And in fact the opposite, as later studies demonstrated, such as the ones on the suicide rates of teenagers in general vs. D&D playing teenagers, which showed that RPG gamers have a fraction of the rate.  Which in retrospect seems totally logical- having a group of friends you socially interact with regularly for a fun activity is exactly the antonym of a risk factor.
> 
> I can't remember the names of any _real _experts who did such testifying.  Radecki and Pulling were all over the place, but were literal frauds.
> 
> TSR hired Dr. Joyce Brothers to do some spokesperson work after the Egbert incident to try to counter the myths, but sadly the stories of prevaricators and perjurers like Pulling, Radecki and Dear got repeated a lot.




I totally agree that the impact of these things isn't what they thought it was during the panic. I can definitely see how it would help with mental health issues for example. I also think the same about violence in RPGs (I think it is more of a cathartic violence that is probably beneficial rather than harmful: violence in the games was a big talking point during the panic).


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## Cadence (Jul 11, 2022)

From a 2017 BBC magazine article ( The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic ) on the Satanic Panic and it going well past the 90s:




Google shows that the BBC and CBC both have some more recent documentary podcasts on the Satanic Panic that I'll have to check out at some point.


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## Reynard (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> From a 2017 BBC magazine article ( The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic ) on the Satanic Panic and it going well past the 90s:
> 
> View attachment 253282
> Google shows that the BBC and CBC both have some more recent documentary podcasts on it I'll have to check out at some point.



I had forgotten about the penal ban on D&D and RPGs in general. That's messed up (but what isn't about the US prison system?).


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2022)

Cadence said:


> From a 2017 BBC magazine article ( The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic ) on the Satanic Panic and it going well past the 90s:
> 
> View attachment 253282
> Google shows that the BBC and CBC both have some more recent documentary podcasts on it I'll have to check out at some point.



I don't think that's Satanic Panic - that's more about how the US prison system operates.

(I've rewritten this post 16 times in an effort to avoid the rules on politics for the board - the US prison system makes me incredibly angry)


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> To be clear I wasn't arguing that there was research supporting the claims about D&D, just that the claims were taken seriously by a lot of mainstream institutions. I am talking more practical level therapists and psychologists (which I definitely remember encountering), people who went on Donahue and the nightly news to give expert opinion on the matter (which at the time, could often be very out of step with what we know today). I think this was all stuff that was just coming up in the culture and part of the why it was probably hard for parents to navigate (and why I am sympathetic to a lot the choices my parents made during the satanic panic) is because there wasn't much good information to go on. I think it was just something new, people perceived potential danger, and in the cultural climate it led to a real moral panic (it is easy to forget this isn't that distant from stuff like Son of Sam, the Manson Killings, a widespread change in drug culture, massive historical change, the rise of a political Christianity in the 70s that was still quite strong in the 80s, etc).



Sure.  We're mostly on the same page on most of that.

But I think we may be running into an irresolvable difference between our recollections, at this point, re: how many mainstream experts actually weighed in.  My recollection is that it was mostly just Radecki and Pulling and various news outlets uncritically promulgating the myths, in the usual "Is this a threat to YOUR children?" sensationalist form of coverage, that we used to mock in all the tabloid shows, but has become the staple of clickbait articles and tv news promos today.  



Jer said:


> I don't think that's Satanic Panic - that's more about how the US prison system operates.
> 
> (I've rewritten this post 16 times in an effort to avoid the rules on politics for the board - the US prison system makes me incredibly angry)



Indeed. Although I suspect that the cruel policy here is probably still being informed by the myths about D&D going back to William Dear, and through him to Pulling and Radecki and so forth.


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## Audiomancer (Jul 11, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> Yeah, one experience or the other doesn't tell us too much: however, thst there was such a close correlation of PHB and DMG purchases suggests that the DM as book buyer model was more common, along with modern WotC customer data and 5E DM-centric prodict design. after the failure of the 3E attempt to sell to everyone at the table...



Interesting. In my circle, pretty much everyone had the PHB and the DMG (and very often one of the Monster books).

Part of that was due to the fact that we periodically rotated DM duties… but I think the bigger factor was a desire to have _all_ the rules. No secret, DM-only knowledge for us!

That said, this is obviously anecdotal information about my particular circle, only. If your group played differently, then you had a different experience. And I have no evidence to suggest that my group was more typical than yours.


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## Parmandur (Jul 11, 2022)

Audiomancer said:


> Interesting. In my circle, pretty much everyone had the PHB and the DMG (and very often one of the Monster books).
> 
> Part of that was due to the fact that we periodically rotated DM duties… but I think the bigger factor was a desire to have _all_ the rules. No secret, DM-only knowledge for us!
> 
> That said, this is obviously anecdotal information about my particular circle, only. If your group played differently, then you had a different experience. And I have no evidence to suggest that my group was more typical than yours.



I was born on 1985, and my first experience with AD&D, such as it ia, was in 2008-2009, ao I have no anecdotes from then. For 5E, my experience is one or two people DM and also buy books, everyone else borrows. The numbers here suggest that this is historically normal.


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## MoonSong (Jul 12, 2022)

It seems that people had a wild run in the 80's, at least in the anglosphere... Here in my country the satanic panic didn't arrive until the 90's, and its main casualties were mostly the Smurfs, then it killed anime as a mainstream tv phenomenon, (and later would go on to kill Adult Swim), and one priest called for a torching of Pokemon toys and paraphernalia. (It also made a small controversy out of the Ketchup song) but nothing on D&D. Ironically WoD -and Vampire the Masquerade in particular- which is relatively more popular here managed to fly under the water unnoticed, Magic the Gathering and Yugioh got way more flak...


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## Mezuka (Jul 12, 2022)

Didn't check if this has been said already but I strongly believe that by 1983ish there was enough competition by other rpg systems to split the market. Combine that with those who stayed behind at each new iteration (OD&D, Basic, BECMI, AD&D1) you get a fractured and diminishing fans base. And the competition wasn't labelled 'satanic', thus could be played.

My religious aunt tried to convince my mother D&D was dangerous but it didn't work. My mom had never seen me so happy and motivated about a project (DMing).


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## MGibster (Jul 12, 2022)

Reynard said:


> It is important to remember that D&D was not originally designed for kids. Like all things kids actually find cool, it was designed for young people that wanted to see blood and boobs in their fantasy. I don't know how much it is brought up, but softening that edge probably didn't just irritate the existing players that wanted their demons and devils back, but probably also made D&D look much lamer to the 12 years olds in search of something just a little bit naughty (boob armor and Elmore lady poses notwithstanding).



I'm still upset about the remove of the random harlot table.  Where are my random harlots, Mrs. Pulling?  You're right that it's important to remember that AD&D wasn't really designed with children in mind.  It's been a while since I read 1st edition, but it certainly expanded by vocabulary quite a bit.  (Again, the random harlot table was both educational and fun.)


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## MGibster (Jul 12, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> Well, 60 minutes was as mainstream as it gets, but I remember it being aired on network news, it certainly made its way onto day time talk shows. It was not just the 60 minutes program. And you had TV movies like Mazes and Monsters, the book it was based on. You also had a ton of religious programing about it (which people can dismiss as fringe, but stuff like the 700 club and Jerry Falwell had considerable cultural pull in the 80s). I believe i even posted clips I found from old news shows here and elsewhere in previous threads (but I can't recall exact programs off the top of my head).




Let's not forget this stunning exposé on the dangers of Dungeons & Dragons.


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## Richards (Jul 12, 2022)

Cadence said:


> B/X didn't have any of the nude/topless female human-appearing monsters and gods that the MM, DMG, and Deities and Demi-gods had, did it?   (Although one female character in B had seemingly really powerful nipples under that armor).  No harlot table.  And no Demons or Devils.



As yes, good old Morgan Ironwolf.  I remember her well....

Johnathan


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## Orius (Jul 25, 2022)

Bloody thing still isn't over for some people.  The other day I got a news feed with a headline about how fantasy roleplaying is a threat to or problem for American society or some such nonsense from some Christian media source.  I see someone has learned how to manipulate Google's algorithms.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 25, 2022)

Orius said:


> Bloody thing still isn't over for some people.  The other day I got a news feed with a headline about how fantasy roleplaying is a threat to or problem for American society or some such nonsense from some Christian media source.  I see someone has learned how to manipulate Google's algorithms.



It's a surprisingly nuanced piece.

It's not actually about roleplaying games, which the author notes turned out to be generally harmless fun.  It's more about people finding meaning in delusional heroic versions of themselves, like the QAnon hoax.









						Fantasy Role-Playing Is Hurting America
					

How the cult of imagined heroism is bringing down our nation’s institutions.




					www.christianitytoday.com


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## Orius (Jul 25, 2022)

Yeah that looks like it.  

But c'mon, tell me that headline doesn't look like it's screaming "The Devil's Game!!!!"


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## Deset Gled (Jul 25, 2022)

Orius said:


> Yeah that looks like it.
> 
> But c'mon, tell me that headline doesn't look like it's screaming "The Devil's Game!!!!"




Click bait gotta bait clicks, man.


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## Orius (Jul 25, 2022)

Well I certainly didn't bite.


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## ThrorII (Jul 28, 2022)

I grew up in the beach cities of L.A. County in the late 70s through 80s. My first game of D&D was OD&D (I think), run by one of my dad's friends, in around 1978. I was 9ish. He ran both a couple D&D games and a Traveller game for my family. My folks didn't get in to it, but me and my brother did. 

We got the Holmes basic set for that Christmas. We played the heck out of it, and when I got to 6th grade (1980) I graduated to AD&D - as that's what everyone was playing at my school.

The Satanic Panic was not a big deal in my area. One of our school electives was 'games', and we had a regular D&D campaign running there. My parents were present when we discovered D&D, and understood the game, so were not afraid of it. 

We also had a hobby shop just a mile from my house, so I could ride my bike there and buy modules, dice, etc.

We naturally grew out of AD&D around 1982, transitioning to Gamma World, Traveller, and Top Secret. And like others said, I had no knowledge of how big or small TSR was, or if they were a wreck or a good company.


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## MGibster (Jul 28, 2022)

ThrorII said:


> We naturally grew out of AD&D around 1982, transitioning to Gamma World, Traveller, and Top Secret. And like others said, I had no knowledge of how big or small TSR was, or if they were a wreck or a good company.



I see you are a man of culture as well.


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## Quode (Aug 8, 2022)

This is humerus to say the least. At the time RPGs were well represented in the community, not just DnD. There was no panic, there was a tragedy of two young men that commit suicide and DnD was said to be of blame. From college campuses to conventions to clubs DnD ands other games were played. Stores like Toys are Us sold the game with no issues. The so-called panic was over reported yet under influenced. In fact, the panic spurred sales of DnD. With no internet at the time there was no central way to spread the so-called story. Some churches did try to ban the game for youths and some parents grew concerned but not on a national scale. The whole thing is more myth these days then fact. What is overlooked is the sheer number of DnD groups in colleges born of the early adopters of DnD in the 70s like me. We played both war games and DnD and other RPGs on the late 70s in high school with no issues. When I joined the navy in the 80s DnD was super popular and over the 6 years I was in I found gamers everywhere. 
Not once did encounter the so-called panic in my hobby, it just was not a panic, just a blip and forgotten. We forget in stranger things Eddie is also a pusher, a drug dealer, regardless of him running DnD the character prays on the needy, drug dealers are a blight. Also, on the show he’s pursued do to the fact a young woman he is selling drugs to dies tragically. This is not the satanic panic, till that time the gamers were tolerated till Eddie ran. 

This link might help. Michael A. Stackpole: The Pulling Report (rpgstudies.net)


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## billd91 (Sep 14, 2022)

In current news: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/intern...kDpX0NYu_DHC7g-JTDypNcke-8EAQ9R1EtjNwCi72faUw

While not directed against D&D (currently), the Satanic Panic is surging right now. Given the current targeting of LGBT+ people and the more inclusive focus of a number of game companies, including WotC, I expect some to be directed D&D's way again.


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## Deset Gled (Sep 14, 2022)

billd91 said:


> In current news: Boosted by QAnon and mainstream conservatives, satanic panic spreads online and through local communities
> 
> While not directed against D&D (currently), the Satanic Panic is surging right now. Given the current targeting of LGBT+ people and the more inclusive focus of a number of game companies, including WotC, I expect some to be directed D&D's way again.










The Satanic Panic never really stopped. D&D just stopped being popular enough to be the main target. IIRC, Harry Potter got the brunt of it after D&D.


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## Gradine (Sep 14, 2022)

Deset Gled said:


> The Satanic Panic never really stopped. D&D just stopped being popular enough to be the main target. IIRC, Harry Potter got the brunt of it after D&D.



*Mod Edit:*
Meme that comes across as transphobic removed.  ~Umbran


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## MGibster (Sep 14, 2022)

Deset Gled said:


> The Satanic Panic never really stopped. D&D just stopped being popular enough to be the main target. IIRC, Harry Potter got the brunt of it after D&D.




The main focus of the Satanic Panic wasn't D&D.  The moral panic of the 1980s was centered around a fear of abductions by Satanic groups who would engage in the ritualistic abuse, often of a sexual nature, of children.  It all started with a book called _Michelle Remembers_ written by a psychologist who claimed to treat a little girl who had been victimized by a Satanic group in the 1970s.  The book has no credibility today but it launched a movement when it was published in 1980.  The Satanic Panic did branch out and people went after rock music, complained about corporate logos, D&D, etc., etc., but that wasn't the meat and potatos of the movement.  

The Satanic Panic was just a type of moral panic.  Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of a moral panic as "a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society."  What changed wasn't that D&D dropped in popularity, instead the moral panic came to an end as fears of Satanic cabals abducting and abusing children was no longer widespread.


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## Mannahnin (Sep 14, 2022)

MGibster said:


> The main focus of the Satanic Panic wasn't D&D.  The moral panic of the 1980s was centered around a fear of abductions by Satanic groups who would engage in the ritualistic abuse, often of a sexual nature, of children.  It all started with a book called _Michelle Remembers_ written by a psychologist who claimed to treat a little girl who had been victimized by a Satanic group in the 1970s.  The book has no credibility today but it launched a movement when it was published in 1980.  The Satanic Panic did branch out and people went after rock music, complained about corporate logos, D&D, etc., etc., but that wasn't the meat and potatoes of the movement.
> 
> The Satanic Panic was just a type of moral panic.  Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of a moral panic as "a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society."  What changed wasn't that D&D dropped in popularity, instead the moral panic came to an end as fears of Satanic cabals abducting and abusing children was no longer widespread.



As a note, the mostly quackish and fraudulent Recovered Memory movement in psychology (made famous by _Michelle Remembers_, as I recall) hasn't entirely gone away.  It's just lost mainstream credibility after general debunkings by researchers like Dr. Elizabeth Loftus.  There are still people pushing these ideas and the (almost always fake and made up) cult abuse stories.  The Satanic Temple (the trolly anti-fundamentalist, anti-religious supremacy First Amendment advocacy quasi-church) has a sub-org devoted to debunking and counteracting fraudulent "conspiracy therapists".  









						Grey Faction
					






					thesatanictemple.com
				




And on a broader note, the moral panics and conspiracy theories about children being abducted and abused or sacrificed by strangers (as opposed to reality, in which such acts are very rare, but abuse by close family depressingly common) go back centuries, at least.  In older times they were often used to help fuel and justify religious persecution (such as against Jewish people) and related pogroms and abuse.


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## Lanefan (Sep 15, 2022)

MGibster said:


> The main focus of the Satanic Panic wasn't D&D.  The moral panic of the 1980s was centered around a fear of abductions by Satanic groups who would engage in the ritualistic abuse, often of a sexual nature, of children.  It all started with a book called _Michelle Remembers_ written by a psychologist who claimed to treat a little girl who had been victimized by a Satanic group in the 1970s.



And set right here in Victoria BC, no less.

It made being a Pagan around here an interesting experience in the late 80s and through the 90s, but rarely gets mentioned these days that I know of.


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## the Jester (Sep 15, 2022)

Yeah, I was in 7th grade in 1983. I remember my kind old lady English teacher, Mrs. Bowman, showing me one of the flyers with all the "D&D teaches ASSASSINATION! VOODOO! DEMON SUMMONING! etc" on it and asking me about it. I laughed, but it was definitely a thing that affected our local culture. I believe they tried to ban playing D&D at recess and lunch, but it never took with us.

OTOH I also remember Time-Life's series about all the fantasy stuff having a demon summoning ritual in it, and a few of us got some chalk one day only to find that we couldn't inscribe a very circular circle on the ground, soooo no luck for us.


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## David Howery (Sep 15, 2022)

the Jester said:


> OTOH I also remember Time-Life's series about all the fantasy stuff having a demon summoning ritual in it, and a few of us got some chalk one day only to find that we couldn't inscribe a very circular circle on the ground, soooo no luck for us.



I dunno, I'd say you were awfully lucky that you didn't summon a demon....


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## the Jester (Sep 15, 2022)

David Howery said:


> I dunno, I'd say you were awfully lucky that you didn't summon a demon....



Caution prevailed when we saw how wobbly and not-circular our magic circle was.


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## Cordwainer Fish (Sep 15, 2022)

the Jester said:


> OTOH I also remember Time-Life's series about all the fantasy stuff having a demon summoning ritual in it, and a few of us got some chalk one day only to find that we couldn't inscribe a very circular circle on the ground, soooo no luck for us.



You need a peg and a bit of rope.

Don't ask me how I know this.


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## Mind of tempest (Sep 15, 2022)

Deset Gled said:


> The Satanic Panic never really stopped. D&D just stopped being popular enough to be the main target. IIRC, Harry Potter got the brunt of it after D&D.



you had bits of it descended movements attacking pokemon in the 90's bits in the 2000's past that it becomes undiscussable on these forums, I know it well as I did it for a piece of work for getting into university as I find my own nation's moral panics incomprehensible.


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## Mannahnin (Sep 15, 2022)

Lanefan said:


> And set right here in Victoria BC, no less.
> 
> It made being a Pagan around here an interesting experience in the late 80s and through the 90s, but rarely gets mentioned these days that I know of.



Yeah, it was definitely an interesting wrinkle growing up in the pagan community back then.  Back when we knew people who had bricks thrown through their shop windows, or had their neighbors call the police on them while they were holding services on their own land (on a large wooded property).


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## Ralif Redhammer (Sep 15, 2022)

I remember holding "seances" on the playground in elementary school. Surprisingly enough, not one teacher seemed to care or notice. Probably because we just looked like a bunch of kids sitting in a circle. Not much different from when we were playing D&D.

Also, Time-Life Books' The Enchanted World series is delightful. Also, filled with nightmare fuel:








the Jester said:


> Yeah, I was in 7th grade in 1983. I remember my kind old lady English teacher, Mrs. Bowman, showing me one of the flyers with all the "D&D teaches ASSASSINATION! VOODOO! DEMON SUMMONING! etc" on it and asking me about it. I laughed, but it was definitely a thing that affected our local culture. I believe they tried to ban playing D&D at recess and lunch, but it never took with us.
> 
> OTOH I also remember Time-Life's series about all the fantasy stuff having a demon summoning ritual in it, and a few of us got some chalk one day only to find that we couldn't inscribe a very circular circle on the ground, soooo no luck for us.


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## Orius (Sep 17, 2022)

I remember that one.  I had it statted out too but never used it.


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## MoonSong (Sep 17, 2022)

Wow, and to think I felt very hardcore because we'd tell each other horror stories during break... How naive I was...


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## corwyn77 (Sep 18, 2022)

I guess I'm lucky that none of these anti-D&D people have even heard of GURPS, my system of choice. Imagine the fun they'd have with some of those titles: Voodoo, Thaumatology, Spirits, Cthulhupunk, Magic, Illuminati and Religion.


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## Cadence (Sep 18, 2022)

corwyn77 said:


> I guess I'm lucky that none of these anti-D&D people have even heard of GURPS, my system of choice. Imagine the fun they'd have with some of those titles: Voodoo, Thaumatology, Spirits, Cthulhupunk, Magic, Illuminati and Religion.




Granted comics were blamed for everything from kids stealing airplanes (iirc) to drugs and violence and the seduction of innocents (and not particularly satanism), but the Comics Code Authority is interesting to look over too.  I thought the first two entries about the 60s-70s particularly sad/funny.









						Comics Code Authority - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org


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