D&D Still Satanic? "So my mom threw away all my D&D books..."

[TheAuldGrump]

My stories were not even good Mary Sue's. My character in the stories didn't have delicate ankles that twist at just the right moment and all the male characters were not in love with her. Though she was a top notch pilot, engineer and handy with a phaser.

Personally I think a lot of what some of these people believe to be off the wall. Sometimes it seems they see satanism in everything. And you usually can't change their mind.

But that doesn't change the fact that if you have certain religious beliefs you are going to try your hardest to raise your child in them because you believe that it is the right way. And when you believe in an immortal soul and damnation for all eternity you want to make sure that your child does nothing to endanger that.

I was raised Catholic and I was brought up with the entire concept of mortal sin and purgatory. It was a sin to eat meat on Friday or go to mass without your head covered. I was taught that doing those things would endanger my soul. I once had a hot dog on Friday and my mother panicked and dragged me to confession because she was afraid if I died before atonement I would be heading to hell. She really believed this. So parents who really believe DND endangers their child's soul are going to be against it.

If this mother truly believed the whole satanic BS then as a parent she did the right thing to protect her child.

I feel sorry for the kid and I am glad his friend rescued his books and he will be 18 soon so hopefully he can be on his won and not have to deal with this.

It is, perhaps, almost worse when the beliefs aren't 'off the wall', but rather 'off the rack' - when belief does not truly enter the picture, but is instead a parroting in an effort to fit in. (I have not encountered this in regards to D&D in particular - more often it has been evolution.)

I was also raised Roman Catholic, and went to parochial school - that was how I got involved in wargaming and then D&D. One of the players was the priest who taught Comparative Religion.

I bumped into him twenty years later, he remembers the games I ran in a much kinder light than I do. (As a young priest he had a beard and a full head of hair, when I met him again both were gone. He recognized me, I didn't recognize him - the scary thing is that he knew me in my early teens... had I changed that little?)

My family was a different kind of crazy, but religion was not the basis for our madness. I am glad that you have survived your mum's insanity with your own sanity more or less intact. (Hey, being a little bit crazy is what keeps me sane....)

The Auld Grump

 

[Traveller From Afar]

Some of the teachers got up in front of the entire school body, which numbered about 400 students (I lived in a small town of a thousand people), about how Satanism turns people into horrible horrible monsters because they don't believe in God.

"These children are playing with dark and dangerous powers!"

"Well, what else are they supposed to do with them?"

 

[Orius]

The moral to the story? Yeah, there are still people out there who think D&D is satanic. But their numbers have been reduced to the same looney fringe that burns Harry Potter books. I feel sorry for anyone who runs afoul of them, but overall they're not really a factor any more.

This seems to be the case to me. In the 80's the whole Satanism thing was a more generalized panic, more mainstream. But that fell out of public awareness when Pulling and her allies were discredited, and I'm sure the various scandals that hit several prominent televangelists around the same time also hurt the Satanic panic stuff that was going on. Then as well, the teens who were playing D&D in the early 80's grew up and had families and they knew from experience the whole "devil's game" was a load of bunk.

Yeah, there's still a fringe out there that thinks D&D is Satanic, but they're probably focused more on stuff like Harry Potter, MtG, possibly WoW and similar games since they're more popular.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Honestly, I think that even the original Satanic Panic was less "mainstream" and more "high-profile."

The difference? The former means it was an actual concern for a large number of people (like natural disasters); the latter means it got a lot of press (like the Westboro Church's protests at funerals of dead servicemen).

I mean, we had a couple of trials involving the lyrics of metal bands, a few trials involving purported satanic rituals and some anti-D&D press. And even though I've lived in the Bible Belt since 1982, went to a Catholic school and am a practicing Catholic, I can count the number of personal issues with it beyond the level of some meaningful discussions is nil. It's all the stuff we saw in the press: Jack Chick, a bad movie, and the occasional story like this one. And these stories pop up how often? 1-3 times a year?

 

[Diamond Cross]

Doesn't matter how often they pop up.

"You seem to find no tranquility in anything. You struggle against the inevitable. You thrive on conflict. You're selfish, yet you value loyalty. You're rash, quick to judge, slow to change. It's amazing you've survived. Be that as it may, as species, we have no common ground. You're too aggressive, too hostile, too militant. "

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Doesn't matter how often they pop up.

Sure it does if you're trying to gauge how much of an issue this really is. Yes, reports don't equal instances, but it's what we have.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So, uh ...

People will use any means at their disposal to not change their minds. It doesn't matter what the words they use or how verbose they get, it's still a dismissal of something they don't want to believe or see.

A few years ago, I changed my mind on [a US political issue], and I now hold a belief that runs counter to the way I thought for many, many years and is counter to the wishes of my preferred political party.

Am I lying, or are you wrong?

 

[Diamond Cross]

So, uh ...



A few years ago, I changed my mind on [a US political issue], and I now hold a belief that runs counter to the way I thought for many, many years and is counter to the wishes of my preferred political party.

Am I lying, or are you wrong?

I've already dropped this. I have nothing further to say on this matter so please drop this.

 

[pawsplay]

Honestly, I think that even the original Satanic Panic was less "mainstream" and more "high-profile."

The difference? The former means it was an actual concern for a large number of people (like natural disasters); the latter means it got a lot of press (like the Westboro Church's protests at funerals of dead servicemen).

I mean, we had a couple of trials involving the lyrics of metal bands, a few trials involving purported satanic rituals and some anti-D&D press. And even though I've lived in the Bible Belt since 1982, went to a Catholic school and am a practicing Catholic, I can count the number of personal issues with it beyond the level of some meaningful discussions is nil. It's all the stuff we saw in the press: Jack Chick, a bad movie, and the occasional story like this one. And these stories pop up how often? 1-3 times a year?

My experience was that it was thoroughly mainstream. My mom is not very religious, but her relatives and other people she knew kept egging her own. Plenty of kids opined to me that D&D was satanic. It wasn't quite as popular as believing Proctor & Gamble was Satanic, but it was close, I think, at least in my neck of the woods.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A question: were you in small-town or big city Bible Belt?

(I was- and am again- in the Dallas area.)