D&D General The Satanic Panic never really died?

[teitan]

“Hey everybody! Get a load of this concerned mother’s sincerely held religious beliefs! Guess she didn’t get the memo that the 1980s are over HA HA!”

Classy.

No that's bigotry.

 

[FrogReaver]

Let me help.

The idea being presented is that, for someone of a particular worldview, the use of "real demons" (through their names) in the game their child is engaged with would be problematic/concerning.

It is a choice by WotC to use those names. Lots of people appreciate that choice! That there are other names they come up with, though, is irrelevant to the concern outlined above.

There are other companies who, while still having supernatural entities, do NOT use "real demon names," and would therefore not present the same concern.

If you want to say Paizo contributes to the 'Satanic Panic' that's fine. More for the mother to be concerned with. Paizo doesn't have to use "real demon" names either.

It would be bizarre to say to the mother in question "I know you're concerned about the presence of Baalzebul and Asmodeus, but don't worry, they also have stuff like Yeenoghu."

Maybe you're just one of those guys that jumps in at perceived slights to WotC or something, but that's not what this was; it was an attempt to understand a fairly different worldview.

But does anyone really think that excluding real demon names from D&D would have actually lessened the panic?

 

[Garthanos]

rejecting your religion to be correlated with being able to accurately judge what is real

Only if you accept the paradigm of majority being able to differentiate reality better than some minority (there is a fair amount of confirmation bias and other extremes of thinking errors which seem almost core to human thinking so I do not think we can conclude that)

 

[Eric V]

But does anyone really think that excluding real demon names from D&D would have actually lessened the panic?

Honestly, it was a problem for some priests I spoke with.

 

[Yaarel]

No single faith accounts for more than 50% of the world population, therefore even if one of them is right the majority of believers are wrong, and thus we would still expect rejecting your religion to be correlated with being able to accurately judge what is real as most people would be born into a religion a religion other than the correct one

If you have one clock, you know what time it is. I you have two clocks, you dont know what time it is.

If you have three clocks, you begin to understand what the science of keeping time is all about.

Similarly, for religion.

If you only have one religion, you know what the truth is. If you have two religions, you dont know what the truth is.

But if you have three religions, you begin to understand what human spirituality is all about.

 

[FrogReaver]

Honestly, it was a problem for some priests I spoke with.

Maybe - but I think the demon names were an ancillary issue, but one that was easy to bring up and cause shock. So it may have been spoken about more and not been the underlying issue.

 

[Lucas Yew]

Anti intellectualism is... a sin... (yes, intended sarcasm)

 

[Eric V]

Maybe - but I think the demon names were an ancillary issue, but one that was easy to bring up and cause shock. So it may have been spoken about more and not been the underlying issue.

It's some combination. Plenty of parents who weren't sure what to think might have gone to their parish priest for guidance on this sort of thing.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's some combination. Plenty of parents who weren't sure what to think might have gone to their parish priest for guidance on this sort of thing.

Maybe for Catholics, but I don't think lack of actual demon names would have made a difference in many protestant churches - like Baptist or Pentecostal etc.

 

[Yaarel]

If the rules of D&D were setting neutral, and settings were published separately. None of this would be an issue, because different cultures would play D&D using whichever setting they find to be most fun.

The issue comes up because of baking flavor into the rules.