"D&D is evil. I have seen it from the inside."

[Insight]

My vague recollection from seeing this claim investigated some time in the 90s is that the guy's qualifications were overstated - that he was a freelancer of some kind. But it's been a while.

I actually have no trouble believing that some kind of occult research went into D&D, for example the properties of herbs/gems stuff in the 1ed DMG. I always figured that such research consisted of cracking open a book at the local library, finding a bit about the sort of properties historically associated with those items, and then adding a few tons of artistic license. Where I differ with organizations like Chick Ministries or the 700 Club is that I don't believe the occult holds any supernatural power, so I don't care if a game draws on occult trappings.

Keep in mind something very important to the discussion with Jack Chick, the 700 Club or any other religious fundamentalists. They NEED the threat of EVIL in order to justify their own existence. If people could easily identify and avoid EVIL, there would be no need for these fundamentalists, of course.

You and I know that there are no real spells in D&D. Who knows if spells really exist or not? Who knows if the supernatural exists or not? Not me, and certainly not people who blanketly label every thing they don't understand as EVIL.

 

[chrisnd]

Being as I am a born-again Christian (and very joyful about that fact), I have been asked on a few occasions about why I play D&D. My first comment is alwasy "Christianity and D&D are not mutually exclusive". I have been playing for quite some time, and when I first read the Chick Ministries article (my local gaming store actually printed a few of them out and keeps them right next to all of his Satan worship books - oops, I mean his d20 manuals), I could not help but laugh. There are always extremists that have the potential to put the majority of people in a bad light. Chick Ministries is one of them.

The funny thing is, my Christianity does not get in the way of my D&D play, and my D&D play does not interfer with my Christianity. My time in the morning is spent with a quick prayer to Jesus, and some Bible study. My time in the evening is making modifications to my campaign or reading up on some D&D reference materials. Neither of them interfer with each other.

As DMScott says "I don't believe the occult holds any supernatural power, so I don't care if a game draws on occult trappings." Regardless of your religion (Chick MInistries obviously geared to the supposed anti-Christian message of D&D), DMScott has summed it up best. Those people who ask me about being a Christian gamer have this false sense that somehow the occult can have an influence over those that want no part or connection to. It just doesn't happen. I have seen and read a lot of wackos out there who will try to fill our minds with mush and crap that makes no sense - Christians are among that group.

And besides, the best incantation that I can see is in fact "I cast fireball" - and there goes the "fireball".

Oh, one last thought. If you play D&D on the computer, does that still make you Satanic? Or does that make the computer Satanic, since the code is actually "casting" the spell?

 

[Buttercup]

:Looks at calendar: Um, it's not April 1st dude. Save this silliness for a few months and drag it out then.

 

[Buttercup]

Oh, one last thought. If you play D&D on the computer, does that still make you Satanic? Or does that make the computer Satanic, since the code is actually "casting" the spell?

Some guy once told me that computers were satanic, and that god would someday punish everybody who used 'em. (Really! I work with the public, so I hear all kinds of wacky stuff!) Perhaps he was onto something....

 

[Hand of Evil]

:Looks at calendar: Um, it's not April 1st dude. Save this silliness for a few months and drag it out then.

Ah, but it was on one of those news shows just this week, one million people now worship Satan, four million play D&D, there has to be a relationship, everyone knows D&D equals...

 

[Xath]

You know, I was drilling holes into pearls for my mom's jewelry company the other day up in her workroom (which also happens to have the wine refridgerator), and as some of them crumbled from the pressure, I thought to myself...."If only I had an owl feather."

 

[PaulKemp]

Of course, the real story here is that the "Alexandrian Tradition of Witchcraft" incorporates elements of Dungeons and Dragons, not the other way around. I should know, because I was on the inside.

I was the High DM of my gaming group (Michigansian Tradition, but not affiliated with the Kalamazoo Heresy) when I was contacted by an Alexandrian warlock who wanted to ensure that his rituals correctly reflected the real spells contained in the Player's Handbook. So he and two of his fellow witches sat in on one of our gaming sessions and took copious notes -- they wanted to make certain that their religion was as real as possible. You would have been amused at some of the simple spellcasting mistakes they were making -- using balls of used cat litter instead of bat guano to cast fireball; drawing "square" circles of protection (yes, they WERE making those kinds of fundamental mistakes; I told you they were confused); saying "bic" instead of "zip-po" when casting the firefinger cantrip; the list goes on. We set them straight for the most part, though the one warlock did seem intent on using in a...peculiar way the iron rod necessary to casting a hold person.

Anyhoo, my group likes to think of ourselves as the Hegel to the Alexandrian tradition's Marx.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Man I love these discussions. The truth of the matter is that the RPG industry was served by the Christian hysteria. It was shortly after people started calling the game satanic that it really took off, and most, including Gygax, aknowledge a connection. The simple truth was that there were a lot of people who wanted to check out what all the hysteria was about for themselves.

Did the original game designers investigat the occult? I have no clue. I know I have checked it out, just to fulfill my own personal curiosity about it. I wouldn't be surprised if they did talk to some actual cultists to see if there was anything that could be borrowed for the game, but as we can all see, there's nothing in there that relates too strongly.

Despite the "holy war" against the game, the other side lost the battle, and they lost it a long time ago. Had they gotten what they wanted, the game would no longer be produced, there would be laws against it, and nobody would be playing it. What's more is that more recently we can thank movies like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter for making the D&D-ish material mainstream.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Ah, but it was on one of those news shows just this week, one million people now worship Satan, four million play D&D, there has to be a relationship, everyone knows D&D equals...

So we geeks outnumber the satanists 4:1. AND we know how to use swords, use guns, and cast spells (only stands to reason, listen to the news, they tell you RPG's will impart knowledge about the use of weapons and magics to their players).


But back on the original topic: No, D&D doesn't have any rituals. What a scam. I remember first buying that Player's Handbook in order to find some evil curses and whatnot that didn't rely on sacrificing a goat (one in our coven can't see blood - he once almost puked on a protection circle, being that close to freeing the type IX demon contained therein - and that was after he made fun of his ears; and also we have the whole freezer full of goat-meat, and that stuff tastes horrible.)

But imagine my disappointment when there were no explicit instructions in that book at all! You can believe me, next time I went to the local priest and yelled at him because of that false advertising. But then the game itself wasn't bad, either, and now we'd rather eat crisps and drink soda than butcher another animal. We even (almost) got that vomit smell out of the cellar!

 

[Torm]

WARNING: some of the following involves religious commentary. I mean no offense to anyone, and apologize ahead of time to anyone I will inevitably offend, anyway.

As a former Wiccan priest (moved on to Deism, the belief of most of the American Founders) who has studied a great deal of world religion, I'd like to comment on a few things:

1. Wicca is very eclectic, with all sorts of traditions and the only required commonalities being a belief in the Rede and reciprocity (Three-fold law), and I've heard of a LOT of traditions, but never an 'Alexandrian' one. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but if it does, when talking to others a practitioner would almost certainly say 'of an Eclectic path' rather than assuming someone else would just know about their path.

2. The Church of Satan has only, as far as I know, ever had three High Priests or Priestesses, period - Anton Lavey, of the original church, and after he died, a schism resulted in a church run by his daughter with her as a High Priestess, and another church run by Lavey's close associate High Priest Lord Egan. (If you want to seek one of these out for more info (both have message boards at their sites), I recommend the latter - they're nicer people, in my experience, and much more willing to share.) Other officials in the churches are called Maguses and sometimes Lords, but rarely priests, and never high priests.

3. There IS an extreme JudeoChristian point of view that says that anything that is not done to glorify G-d and/or according to G-d's Law is Satanic. I have a great deal of respect for people who TRULY believe this to the extent of trying hard to model their whole lives around it - mostly Amish, Mennonites, and such. Unfortunately, most of the time this concept is pulled out and put on display by people who hypocritically want to apply it only to things they want it applied to - i.e. it applies to Dungeons and Dragons because "different" people play that, but not to golf. Even though the people who play both make nods at deities from other religions, and aren't busy studying the Bible or following the Law.

4. A magickal ritual is anything you do that causes your will to feel empowered over your surroundings. (As opposed to prayer, which is asking the Divine Will to be preeminent over your surroundings, and trusting in that.) Very rarely, if ever, have I felt that way about the spells in D&D. The closest thing to it in D&D is when you roll dice and try to "push" a particular outcome with your will. A Judeo-Christian player should probably never do this, and instead just roll and be content to let G-d's Will be as preeminent in the lives of their characters as it is in their own.

5. If they want to point at anything in D&D as being 'Satanic', it should be the Clerics, not the arcane magic-users, because the Cleric class encourages the 'worship' of 'false idols'. Not that this is a particularly useful way to look at it when it comes to getting along in a world filled with alternate REAL religions. Not to mention that this falls under 'selective Satanism' (see 3 above) again....

6. Not that there isn't anything to think about in all this - anything that makes you think about why you do things you do is probably a good thing - but I'd like to encourage you to go to chick.com and read through some of the other things they say are 'Satanic', and see if these are people you want (or that you think G-d wants) giving you spiritual guidance.

7. Didn't want to stop at 6, for numerological reasons.