Just read the article. I'm confused, however, because though the article makes mention of Dungeons and Dragons and Fantasy Board Games, it makes no overt attempt to blame DnD for his actions.
Granted, the first paragraph of the article is rather offensive and just pointless. Saying, "he's a goth freak-o who plays childish games and has no grip on reality," would probably have been a more consice way of conveying what the article's author intended the reader to gather. It's negitive, sure, but if you ignore that paragraph the article is a lot less inflamitory and a lot more informing. I'd like to hear what James Tate, the police spokesman who quoted witnesses, heard but didn't repeat.
Personally, I find the idea that he burned candles on his shift to be more suprising and distasteful than the fact he fanatically played DnD, but I may be biased.
Fantasy games might have something to do with his choice of weapon, but if you work in a steel mill, sharp pointy bits of metal are readily available, and carrying them around attracts much less attention than a gun or even a 'real' knife would. I doubt he learned how to use a sword, or even how to make one, from DnD, and I'm more annoyed that the press chose DnD as a means to explain what kind of person James Flemons was instead of his acts of violence.
I don't see this as Anti-Dungeons and Dragons press. I simply see it as bad and irresponsible writing on the part of the article's author. Then again, if Flemons had belonged to a different 'fringe group' they'd be complaining about bad press and I would never have heard of this incident.
- Kemrain the Biased.