How many were abused due to their love of D&D, RPGs, and related items when they were young?

[Blue]

My parents and I had a spirited disagreement about it for about 2 or 3 hours. I think this is the first time I can remember defying my parents. They asked my opinion as was usual, they didn't like it this time and it was about me this time, and they set to trying to convince me I was wrong. I was like 13 and had an IQ several standard deviations above normal and read voraciously. The debate was both intellectual and heated. In the end, I like Galileo conceded but also didn't concede. The books got burned.

But abuse? No. It wasn't abuse. My dad's cousin his age he grew up with committed suicide and D&D/occult was considered by the family to have played a role in his mental health problems. Dad was just trying to do what he thought was best to protect his family, and honestly the argument turned more on my little brother's behavior than on mine (because my brother at the time was acting out some of his own frustrations). I think Dad was wrong but I don't think that was abuse. He was acting on the information he had available to him at the time out of good intent with respect to me as a person. That wasn't always the case with my parents, but it was vastly more often than not, and as a parent, no parent or person is perfect.

It's nigh 40 years later and my Dad played D&D with me as the DM at Christmas, because well, both me and the little brother turned out OK after all.

They can have the best of intentions, and it can still be abuse. And it can be of a lesser degree than someone else suffered and still be abuse.

Did they destroy something of yours? "The books got burned." Were they a gift or bought with money you earned or were given?

 

[CM]

Despite growing up in a conservative evangelical family in the 80s, they never had a problem with D&D stuff. In fact my first product was a used basic set my mom picked up at a rummage sale for me.

 

[MGibster]

The most severe form of abuse I personally encountered was a teacher in 6th grade who said, "I don't think you're supposed to have that at school." She was referring to The Keep on the Borderlands module I was reading at lunch, but she didn't try to take it away and I never heard anything more than that. My parents would jokingly ask, "Are you guys playing your Satanic game today?" That said, I kept by D&D playing on the downlow at school as much as possible. Granted, I played football and wrestled, so I wasn't in any particular danger of being picked on, but girls didn't seem to think playing D&D was a positive trait.

 

[Joshua Randall]

But beyond the occasional comment like, “I see Satan in your works, _______.” directed at my D&D/fantasy art pieces,

Best. Art critique. Ever.

 

[jdrakeh]

I wasn't "abused" but my parents were weird about D&D. They let me read pretty much any sci-fi or fantasy novel that I wanted to (including overtly pagan stuff like The Dark is Rising Sequence), but they were full--on convinced that D&D was evil for years. I once bought a B/X Basic Set at a garage sale and they immediately took it from me. I never saw it again. They also (along with some other parents) likely got a teacher fired from my elementary school for using Holmes Basic as a teaching aid.

They were weird about video games in the same way. Computer games of any kind were a-okay. They bought me Sierra's ultra-violent Phantasmagoria, for example. But console games? They thought console games (barring those on the Atari 2600 for some reason unknown to me) were of the devil. My grandmother bought me a Super Nintendo and, while I was away at summer camp, my parents stole it from me and sold it to another kid in the neighborhood. I was livid about that for the better part of ten years.

So, I guess, reading the two above paragraphs, I don't feel abused, but my parents definitely did some naughty word stuff to me surrounding entertainment that they felt was inappropriate.

 

[aco175]

I was lucky growing up. My father introduced my older brother and myself to the game and was the weekly DM for a few of us in the neighborhood. My mother tolerated the Friday sleepovers and the noise of us playing downstairs. We expanded to play with just the neighborhood kids with a few being several years older and maybe a bit weird if your 12 year old was hanging around with a 17 year old. We mostly played at my house, so mom seemed to know everyone, and the neighborhood seemed to know most people back in those days.

 

[FrogReaver]

But abuse? No. It wasn't abuse. My dad's cousin his age he grew up with committed suicide and D&D/occult was considered by the family to have played a role in his mental health problems. Dad was just trying to do what he thought was best to protect his family, and honestly the argument turned more on my little brother's behavior than on mine (because my brother at the time was acting out some of his own frustrations). I think Dad was wrong but I don't think that was abuse. He was acting on the information he had available to him at the time out of good intent with respect to me as a person. That wasn't always the case with my parents, but it was vastly more often than not, and as a parent, no parent or person is perfect.

I agree with your assessment.

I didn’t do d&d as a kid unless you count a few of the computer games. So no personal anecdotes to add.

 

[FrogReaver]

But beyond the occasional comment like, “I see Satan in your works, _______.” directed at my D&D/fantasy art pieces,

Maybe if you had not drawn so many tieflings

 

[GrimCo]

@Bae'zel

If it isn't to personal, you said your mother was very religious. What denomination was she? I'm curious, since i met fair share of priests with more positive attitude towards fantasy, rpgs and metal music.

 

[Bae'zel]

@Bae'zel

If it isn't to personal, you said your mother was very religious. What denomination was she? I'm curious, since i met fair share of priests with more positive attitude towards fantasy, rpgs and metal music.

Anglican, but she had a lot of baggage; religion was just her excuse. Our church was relatively progressive in hindsight.