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

[Jer]

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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

 

[Dioltach]

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.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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.

 

[Reynard]

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.

 

[nevin]

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.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

 

[Reynard]

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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Tonguez]

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