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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 460718" data-attributes="member: 4937">I started RPing when I was 8.  I first held and fired a loaded gun at about the same age.No, I wouldn't quite say it is a loaded gun but I suppose the analogy could be extended.  I expect a kid of eight or nine to be able to handle a loaded gun without blowing his head off with it.  But I wouldn't trust him around a bunch of other eight year olds with loaded gun, nor would I let him join a gun club, nor would I let him use a firearm without my supervision, nor would I trust another adult (except for perhaps his granddad or similar relative) to supervise his gun education.But I don't think I'd quite worry in the same way about what my twelve year old was doing out of sight with an RPG as I would about what he was doing out of sight with a loaded gun.In my time I've 1st and 2nd hand experience with mixed age groups that were pretty vile.  This experience includes groups that really did attempt some of the things Jack Chick thought were ubiqitious to D&D, such as attempt to cast real spells, use books of Witchcraft and/or the Satanic Bible as source books, engage in consumption of drugs, and engage in LARP which resulted in violence or vandalism.  Even if we aren't talking about such serious abherent behavior, alot of prototypical early groups could be quite foul mouthed, misogynistic, and grotesquely violent.   The topics of the BoVD are nothing new to D&D, and although I haven't read the BoVD, I suspect that they are pretty tame compared to some of the things I've had related to me by people bragging about thier games.   Take a serious look at the art work in early 1st edition sometime.  I don't know what the character of the games was in the groups that were producing those products, but discussions with early older players revealed to me that alot of the early groups did have rampant nudity, sexuality, graphic (often sexual) torture, and serious investigation of the occult.  To me, its not really a wonder that D&D caused so much contriversy when it first came out.  While I find Jack Chick as laughable and objectionable as the next guy, I don't assume that every gaming group is perfectly harmless.   I suspect that we could find some groups here that admit to having some pretty 'vile' material, though I imagine most would insist all thier players are 'mature'.  Have any of you ever read the adaptation of 'ET: The Extraterrestial'?  It always struck me that the guy who wrote that had a really good feel for D&D of the time - right down to the drug references.  Alot of the guys that were first attracted to D&D were well, weirdos (and there is the pot calling the kettle black), and they had an unusually large influence on the first generation of role players. So no, I'm not worried so much about my (at this point hypothetical) kid acting out juvenile power fantasies, as I am worried about who his friends are and whether or not he's started hanging out with and being influenced by people who are a whole lot older than he is.UPDATE: I just reread what I wrote, I have to wonder just what the influence of people like Tracy Hickman was on the development of D&D, and whether or not his responce to the BoVD was largely due to the fact that he felt D&D was headed back to the 'bad old days'.</blockquote>

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