Eldritch Wizardry and nude women! D&D history help, please.

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Why hide something so pure? If she's disgusted by it, then it's conditioning.

You don't know what you're talking about!
I condition my hair every day and I can still appreciate a good nude.

 

[Sir Elton]

You don't know what you're talking about!
I condition my hair every day and I can still appreciate a good nude.

I'm assuming that you are saying this in jest, yes?

 

[countgray]

Surely you jest.

I jest you not!

The 70's were much more relaxed about such things. It was only around the early 80's that American culture started to get very uptight.

Maybe it was because the religious right movement became suddenly very prominent in public politics and campaigned a lot about censoring the media for the sake of the children and such. Or maybe because the cultural pendulum was swinging towards the more conservative side as a reaction to the libertine excesses of the 70's and the hippie movement. Or maybe because the Baby Boomers started to have kids of their own and suddenly started reassessing their behavior. Or maybe because of the advent of Aids around that time.

I don't know the causes, but I do remember that nudity and adult themes were dealt with very commonly in the movies and other media in the 70's and then in the 80's that trend reversed. In the 80's there were all sorts of movements to censor the media and movies, music, and even comic books introduced a ratings system in the interest of "protecting" kids.

I would say that the pendulum has reversed again in recent years and is swinging back again towards more tolerance of such things. Except then you have John Ashcroft and the FCC fighting very hard to censor the media for all sorts of indecency like the Janet Jackson/Superbowl incident or violence in video games and the like.

I guess you always have these great tidal forces in play pushing the culture back and forth one way then the other, always moving that line around that demarcates the limits of decency and social standards.

 

[johnsemlak]

I think it's a bit dangerous to oversimplify the differences between the 70s and the 80s and assume those differences had anything to do with anti-RPG sentiment. Surely there were differences, but was America in 1981 really that different from America in 1977?

I think the key reason Eldritch Wizardry didn't cause much of a stink at its time was that it had a print run of , what, thousands?

in the early 80s D&D products were getting much better print runs and were much more available, and available in mass-comsumer locations like Sears.

I think if Eldritch Wizardry had been that widespread in 1976-77, it would have drawn comlaints then as well.

 

[diaglo]

but was America in 1981 really that different from America in 1977?

yes, it was.

disco was dead by 1981.

reaganomics had kicked in.

and gas prices.... well ... yes, it was different.

but you are right. it had more to do with other things than just rpgs.