MGibster
Legend
I ran into a few people who took it seriously but nobody I was particularly close to. My mother used to jokingly ask, "Are you going to go play your Satanic game?" when I asked to go to a friend's house.
Satanic Panic of the late 80's
It's like FDR said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
I lived through the era but I don't know anyone who was affected on the D&D front. Mad Magazine collection chucked by overly religious parents but not D&D. This may be because of the area I lived despite being a normally very religious state , wasn't.
And note most younger gamers reading this post,while the US is more religious than Europe but it was massivly more religious in that decades than it is today.
I won't comment on Q ANON its more political than I feel comfortable with but the NXIVM thing merits a response. Its not really related as it started as a private legal enterprise and had a lot of rich influential people in it. It eventually went off the rails into human trafficing territory but even much of the skeevier conduct was technically consensual at first.
It wasn't anything the public would ever have even a shade of contact with unlike D&D which was everywhere or the accusations contained in the Q stuff claim.
The one thing i will say about the Satanic Panic was that it was great for sales. Even 80's kids wanted to be edgy , c.f like half the heavy metal album covers and what is edgier than scary devil stuff.
Yeah, this was a fairly big deal for me in the 1980s. Lots of arguments with my mom, lots of "don't mention it around these friends of ours," etc. Fortunately, we lived overseas for much of this period, so it was more muted, but among our American friends, it was still a thing.
Like many others, the combination of the Satanic Panic and general anti-geek youth culture left me keeping D&D mostly private. Even in college, when I was more open about it, I remember cringing when younger members of the gaming club would yell nerdy comments across the quad at me... "Hail, wise guildmaster!"
Fittingly, now I teach classes on RPGs at school, had a sold-out gaming summer camp booked last summer (that was a sad victim of COVID), help run the middle school gaming club, and run introductory games for numerous families around the neighborhood. (Including multiple professional pastors.) Meanwhile, my adult gaming groups are bursting at the seams, and friends and colleagues are constantly asking to get involved. I still find myself bemused by how popular this hobby has become!
Like many others, the combination of the Satanic Panic and general anti-geek youth culture left me keeping D&D mostly private. Even in college, when I was more open about it, I remember cringing when younger members of the gaming club would yell nerdy comments across the quad at me... "Hail, wise guildmaster!"
Fittingly, now I teach classes on RPGs at school, had a sold-out gaming summer camp booked last summer (that was a sad victim of COVID), help run the middle school gaming club, and run introductory games for numerous families around the neighborhood. (Including multiple professional pastors.) Meanwhile, my adult gaming groups are bursting at the seams, and friends and colleagues are constantly asking to get involved. I still find myself bemused by how popular this hobby has become!
Oof! Yeah, I got hit with it in the 80's. Basically, some relatives of mine who literally lived on a Bible camp came to our house and told my Dad a bunch of lies about D&D. I tried to argue against it, tried to ask for specifics, for proof. But, hey, you know the type; they weren't real big on "evidence" or "proof" or "honesty". So I was forced to throw away my books. I wound up fishing them out of the trash and kept them hidden for several months before my Mom found them. I unloaded them at a second-hand book store for a tiny fraction of their value; the owner felt bad for me, even tried to talk me out of it, but this time I had no choice. In recent years I've managed to rebuild a tiny portion of the collection (the core AD&D 1e books, a Basic box set, some key modules), but some of the items are hard to find, some impossible, and it would be overly expensive to buy everything I can find on eBay.
But the loss of the books was only part of the problem. Back then, I had a lot of issues socializing, compounded greatly by a crippling speech impairment. But with D&D, I actually started to socialize, even joined a club that met during lunch at my high school. That all ended thanks to the Panic, and I withdrew again.
My Dad and I are good (long story, much of which isn't my story to tell), but the Bible-camp liars are dead to me (not that we were ever close to begin with). And though it took several years to play out, this was also the beginning of the end of my involvement with Christianity.
To each their own, but this is one of the main reasons I passed on 2e. I'd probably play it now, given the opportunity, but back in the day I saw is as a capitulation. Which, frankly, it was.
But the loss of the books was only part of the problem. Back then, I had a lot of issues socializing, compounded greatly by a crippling speech impairment. But with D&D, I actually started to socialize, even joined a club that met during lunch at my high school. That all ended thanks to the Panic, and I withdrew again.
My Dad and I are good (long story, much of which isn't my story to tell), but the Bible-camp liars are dead to me (not that we were ever close to begin with). And though it took several years to play out, this was also the beginning of the end of my involvement with Christianity.
To each their own, but this is one of the main reasons I passed on 2e. I'd probably play it now, given the opportunity, but back in the day I saw is as a capitulation. Which, frankly, it was.
MGibster
Legend
The D&D side of things was really small potatoes in the grand scheme of the moral panic that was taking place. I'm not surprised many people didn't experience it first hand when it came to gaming, I know I didn't. After all, D&D attained a large measure of mainstream success in the 80s having their products appear in toy stores, their intellectual property plastered on all sorts of merchandise, and even having a network cartoon on Saturday mornings. There were tons of people who didn't worry about D&D being Satanic.
I suspect the bible belt is where it hit the hardest. I say that because all the game cons retreated to wisconsin or the coasts.
Nytmare
David Jose
Oddly enough, my parents' fears weren't targeted at the cartoon (no more than any other cartoon we watched) or even really at the game. Their fear was that Satanists were using the game to meet children, and my my friends and I might somehow accidentally run into some and get kidnapped and ritually sacrificed.
[EDIT] Which if I remember correctly was also a news story (at least locally) about the dangers of Pogs, Nintendo DS, Pokemon Go, and flicking your high beams to warn someone that their headlights were off.
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