D&D haters???

[palleomortis]

I live in a smaller town, with the "small town-polotics", wich consiquintly leads to there being several people who do not like D&D. Basically, they take a stong opposition to it, for "no reason". Granted the "people" I'm referring to are more specifically several friends, and parents of friends (I'm 18, and run a group of high school-aged friends). The main reason I'm even mentioning this, is becuase we have a friend that would like to play, but the only thing restraining her from it are her parents. How do you guys/gals usually deal with the generic, unsupported, boarderline destain of D&D? Or DO you?

P.S. This seems like a common-ish topic, but I didn't spot any threads already running about it, are there any links to previouse threads?

 

[Wepwawet]

I suppose you live in the US, right?
It's the only place in the world where that sort of thing would happen! Heheheheh

About your problem, first, don't people have their own life to live?
Second, it's an imagination game... And imagination develops creativity and intelligence!
Like A. Einstein said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

It freaks me out to see people afraid of anything that's a bit different from their routine boring lives....

 

[Celebrim]

Generally speaking, people seldom have opposition for 'no reason'.

Heck, I even play and even advocate playing as potentially highly beneficial, but I'm completely sympathetic of those who are frightened by the game - even if they have a hard time articulating why or have reasons that seem 'mystical' to your average gamer.

For starters, prior to RPG's coming along, the primary usage of 'role playing' was psychotherapy, and unlike alot of the fraud in that field, it's a tool that I actually think works. Handing a bunch of people a role playing game is potentially like having them do unsupervised memetic surgery on themselves. Games can change you for the better or for the worse. I've seen it.

For another, RPG's are enormous time wasters. You can kill alot of time playing an RPG and while it isn't necessarily unproductive it isn't as productive as say actually learning a craft or actually studying something academic.

For a third, not everyone who plays RPG's is somebody that I would want my children to associate with. Let's face it. Some of us nerds really are dysfunctional freaks, and I've met some really wierd gamers. "No reason" might turn out to actually mean, "My mommy doesn't want me to play with you."

Finally, IMO D&D has never done itself the best of service by borrowing so much material from occult sources. Greek myths are fairly safe material because only a small small group of people take them seriously. The number of people who think occult material is morally offensive and/or something to be taken seriously is not small. And even among those that don't actually thing occult material represents or misconstrues something real, people can have legitimate religious complaints against either D&D in general or the content of some particular DM's game. For example, the real life people who consider themselves followers of Druidism recieved so many converts from exposure to D&D that they put it on thier questionaire of why people wanted to become 'Druish'. Even if you think Druidism is harmless bosh, if you think your kid is going to think its something other than harmless bosh because he played D&D, you might be skeptical that this is a harmless game. Likewise, even if you think the occult stuff in D&D is harmless bosh, if the kid's DM is a practicing Satanist who kills small animals in religious rites and it influences his game (and I've seen this too), you might not consider his game suitable for your kid.

No, as for what to do about that, my answer would be you have to address the kid's parents concerns about the game, whatever they may turn out to be, in a frank, honest, and understanding manner.

 

[Celebrim]

I suppose you live in the US, right?
It's the only place in the world where that sort of thing would happen! Heheheheh

About your problem, first, don't people have their own life to live?
Second, it's an imagination game... And imagination develops creativity and intelligence!
Like A. Einstein said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

It freaks me out to see people afraid of anything that's a bit different from their routine boring lives....

For example, this might be frank and honest, but it's not a particularly understanding (or productive) way to address the problem.

 

[boerngrim]

Hi
When I was in elementary school in the 80's, my friends and I were told to stop playing D&D during recess (indoor recess in winter) because a class mate told her parents, and the parents called the principal. The preacher at their church had told them D&D was the work of the devil, and they didn't want their child exposed to it.
The moral of this story is: the wishes of a minor's parents trump every other consideration when it comes to D&D. Unfortunately, if one of your minor friends has been forbidden to play D&D by her parents, you should respect their wishes. 18 isn't that far away, and its worth the wait.
Thanks.

 

[Darkwolf71]

It's funny, yet sad, that after all this time those early/mid eighties stigma are still hounding this game.

If her parents are resonable folks you might consider inviting them to sit in on a game. Now, this may cramp your style a bit, require you to watch the language and any sexual overtones you may normally have in game, (If you do, I'm just sayin...) but I think any level headed and open minded adult would be hard pressed to find anything actually wrong with your average D&D gaming session. I mean, crap... it's cops & robbers with dice.

If they are not reasonable, for whatever reason, you may be just stuck. Your only option would be to lie about it and I do not recommend that. It will only bite you on the arse down the road.

Good luck.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's irredeemably nerdy. But at least it's social. And all that crap about promoting devil worship and increasing the risk of suicide is, well, crap.

 

[Darkwolf71]

It's irredeemably nerdy. But at least it's social. And all that crap about promoting devil worship and increasing the risk of suicide is, well, crap.

So its sort of social. Demented and sad, but social, right?

 

[Celebrim]

I mean, crap... it's cops & robbers with dice.

I think that it is this explanation which is most needed when dealing with wary parents.

Basically, RPG's are games designed to resolve the inevitable problem in imaginative play where someone says, "Bang, I shot you." and someone else says, "No, you didn't. You missed."

Tell them that. Then show them that. There is a good chance that once they've understood and seen that that they'll be more understanding.

But first, find out what it is that is really troubling them because I garantee it isn't "no reason".

 

[palleomortis]

Yea, we're all nerds anyways She and her parents know me relativly well, so it would be somewhat of a shocker if it was me in particular she didn't want around the game, but it's still a though. She's actually in a Belegarth group with us (Medieval Combat group), so she's plenty nerdy already . The "no reason" (Scarcasm), is most likely the bad rep that D&D has gotten in past decades. They're a strongly christian family, so It wouldn't suprise me much if this was the case.

How did the "Bad Rep" come around anyways? How did they come to the conclusion that D&D was "devil warship" and "Increased suicidal thoughts" or whatever?