This has happened to me several times:
I am engaging in my hobby, preparing adventures, looking at an RPG book, or something to that effect. A young person I am associated with relatively often expresses interest and I give them a quick rundown. They get very excited and want to play. I tell them to ask their parents, they get the go ahead, and we play a little. They love it and are excited to play again.
The next day I get a call. The kid is no longer allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons. I don't ask questions, but it is almost always apparent that a new contributor scuttled the whole thing: a divorced parent or a concerned grandparent or something like that. Someone who has influence over decisions regarding the kid but with whom I don't have a relationship. Also, they are usually kind of obnoxiously old-school types.
Am I the only one who has a problem with this? Does anyone want to commiserate or offer suggestions?
...difficult to do this while tiptoeing around religion, but here goes.
When I was teaching in schools I saw this a little bit. I suspect there are likely several things going on, not
just the echoes of 80's D&D panic. (Although that comes and goes, so ::shrug:
I'm not sure if you're in a position to do so (and maybe being the DM entangles this as well), but often some straightforward talk can turn the trick. I didn't really run games for the kids, but I kinda mentored them and dealt with some parents over it. I didn't have to, but I can be scrappy sometimes when stupid runs amok. (At least in person, online there's little point...and yet here I am...
)
For example, I've seen many kids suffer this way when two adults are fighting for the possession of a child or the child's affection or attention (either divorced parents or parents and in-laws, even a widow and her in-laws once.) If A gives permission to do X, and subsequently is seen as having scored some points, then B often reacts negatively to whatever X is. This would seem to make no sense, except that the adults have often previously agreed not to badmouth the other in front of the child. So A is forced to rescind the permission, while B hopes the child blames A for the loss. This gets worse if there are step-spouses C and/or D involved, because it seems that no one ever successfully overcomes anyone's objections regardless of how silly.
Similarly, you sometimes see A & B getting into "goody two-shoes" contests, seeking to find moral fault with any parenting the other does and thus demonstrate their own moral purity. I saw several parents suddenly discover that they were staunch moral conservatives after their extra-marital affairs and drinking problems lead to divorce.
The motivation here seemed to always be custody battles, with both sides trying to present a "better" face to the judge. Sadly, I can't say that this didn't actually work sometimes.
Having said all that about how evil the parents are, there are also semi-legitimate concerns by parents...ill-advised or not, to push their kids into different activities. In particular, folks in my area all seem to believe that your kid can't get into college if their Curriculum Vita(!) isn't eight pages long before you get to the charitable work appendices. "Played D&D after school" doesn't really get much traction there. Nor does it help if parents are concerned about the child's physical inactivity.
As others have mentioned (facetiously or not) playing a different game can also be a boon (although WoD or most of the horror games probably aren't too much of a step up...at least put covers on the books). D&D is really the only brand within the hobby that has any cachet outside the hobby. As such, if you avoid mentioning D&D by name, you can sometimes simply avoid the fuss. Heck, you can sometimes get people on board if the games can be cast as "creative writing" or "group storytelling" games. A former friend of mine actually called his afterschool group a "fiction workshop", and had his kids write synopses that they would critique.
Beyond playing a game that doesn't say D&D on the cover, the only real advice I can offer is that straight talk kind of works...sometimes. Don't be afraid to talk about how silly the game really is, and for heaven's sake don't act like its something
serious. The research that [MENTION=24488]was[/MENTION] presented upthread can really arm the parent who would grant permission, especially the parts about suicide and criminality. I mean, really, how many people even know that such research could exist, let alone the results? However, they need to take the fight on outside your reach. Again, I don't know your situation, so this may not be advisable or possible for you*, but I was not afraid to stand up to administrators. You'd be surprised how people react to you when you confidently and calmly state things like "Actually the research (what little there is of it) shows that kids who play D&D are
less likely to commit suicide or commit crimes than the population as a whole. There are a lot of Urban Myths surrounding D&D that don't stand up to scrutiny." Offering to print copies of the studies tends to stun people into silence....I think just because no one ever considers the possibility of research into the topic actually existing. Also, don't be afraid to pass that research (or its links) onto some of the kids, sometimes they can surprise you.
...so I guess it wasn't that hard....seems less-satisfying though.
*I was a HS teacher dual-certified in Math and Physical Science, comfortable teaching both at an AP level, and could pinch-hit for computer programming and robotics classes, a rarity 'round here. When I left one school to follow my wife's career to a different city, I thought the principal was going to cry.
