BBC analyzes the 1980s D&D Panic

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Best part of all of this was stories i've heard over the years of people whose parents had no problem with them playing Call of Cthulhu, because it wasn't that "satanic D&D" because an enormous evil waiting in the bowels of the Earth until the end of days to devour all humanity is far preferable to D&D, suuuure...

One of the (few) things that were a real head-scratcher for me in Dungeon Crawl Classics is its repeated references to Cthulhu as a deity worshiped by neutral characters. Maybe he, himself (MAYBE), isn't evil so much as indifferent (MAYBE), but anyone worshiping him would have to be considered evil and probably insane.

/derail off

 

[Zander]

Given that none of the 'evils' attributed to D&D ever materialised, many media outlets, mostly in the US, owe the gaming community an apology. I don't seriously expect one will ever be forthcoming, but it would be refreshing to get a bit of probity from the media for a change.

Perhaps this BBC article is as near we're ever going to get to redressing the slurr. And in fairness to the Beeb, it never jumped on the 'D&D is evil' bandwaggon so is hardly the most culpable.

Zander

PS to Whizbang, By reposting above what I said in the other thread, I wasn't trying to evade or ignore your response, merely trying to avoid having two threads on the same topic running in parallel.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Now that the world at large feels safe, it's time to let our demonic possessions out and take over the country.
*rolls evil mastermind check* 7

(didn't we use to have some dice roll integration?)

 

[Starfox]

Roleplayers were accused of being unable to separate fact and fiction. Well, many of those attacking RPGs seems to have suffered from just this. If you genuinely believe in demons, seeing your children playing a game in which a demon appears, or even having a demon miniature, is very, very scary. But at this point it is not the role-players who are having a hard time separating fact from fiction.

 

[Ryujin]

Roleplayers were accused of being unable to separate fact and fiction. Well, many of those attacking RPGs seems to have suffered from just this. If you genuinely believe in demons, seeing your children playing a game in which a demon appears, or even having a demon miniature, is very, very scary. But at this point it is not the role-players who are having a hard time separating fact from fiction.

And the same applies to all of the other things that have been blamed for corrupting the youth, from rock music to violent video games. The truth is that there are outliers, in any community, who are unstable or prone to anti social behaviour.

 

[Starfox]

It is so common to accuse others of exactly the thing we do ourselves. Believe it is called projection.

Luke 6:41-42: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? "

 

[Alzrius]

There was nothing imagined or "silly" regarding my concerns and first-hand experiences of months-long persuasion leading to violent attempted force by early teen boys to explicitly sexually molest me, a pre-teen, while participating in a social group away from adult supervision as a result of conspiratorial deception by the perpetrators (they always had cover stories and benign-seeming motives which matched) [in contrast to later true friends that I gamed with, and also groups of youths in Boy Scouts and martial arts].

Tom, not to minimize the horror of what you went through, but I think that you're misreading WayneLigon's post.

As I read it, he wasn't saying that instances of sexual predation on young people (or otherwise) were imagined, nor that they can be characterized as "silly"; rather, the idea that such crimes were taking place as part of wide-spread occurances of ritual Satanic worship was what was both imagined and silly.

One can fairly say there was "moral panic" at a societal level regarding D&D and imputed causal factors leading to criminal and deviant behaviors in "impressionable youth".

However, it would be unjust to make light of any real instances of harm that involved that game as a setting.

Again, I don't believe that anyone here is doing this. Rather, we're making light of the idea that the game was itself a causal factor of such harm, as you noted.

I only make a comment when sweeping generalizations are made that all stated harm that occurred during that period was fictitious. I do not take exception to the many explanations of general "moral panic" and overreaction.

The key take-away points for some people are that:

- Sexual crimes against children existed decades ago, and exist today

- Parents and organizations charged with youth oversight must strike a balance of involvement and must be wise regarding threats which do actually exist in society--focusing on criminals and their telltale stratagems which can be leveraged in numerous settings and activities, including role-playing games

Bearing in mind that no one is suggesting that "all stated harm" was fictitious, these are otherwise good points to make; the problem is that these weren't the points being made at the time - people were suggesting that these elements could be defeated, or at least not-insignificantly reduced if D&D were somehow stamped out of society as a whole, which is patently ridiculous.