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

[The Soloist]

A very religious aunt tried to convince my mother that D&D was satanic. My mother replied that she had never seen me so happy with my new group of friends, and I was now interested in mathematics and statistics. Last I heard of it.

After I started DMing D&D, my school grades improved dramatically. At the end of the school year, I received the student award for the highest overall grade improvement from year to year.

 

[Retreater]

I wouldn't say that I was "abused," but I was ridiculed and outcast because of it at times.

Examples:

• My older brother convincing my religious mother that fantasy was corrupting me and had "actual magic" in it - just because he knew I loved it and she'd take it away. So my fantasy novels and D&D books were taken away for several weeks until my mom forgot about it.
• The neighborhood kids weren't allowed to play D&D. We were all latchkey kids. I would come over and run games for them but would need to run out the backdoor and hide when their parents got home.
• Not that this was specific to D&D, but just because I was a "nerd:" spitwads, wedgies, pelted in the face with basketballs, jocks sending me notes in class pretending they were from cute girls, lots of fights. Usually I would get in trouble from teachers when I got bullied because I was so nerdy that I "deserved" it. (I was once told by a particularly religious music teacher that I was going to hell because I was so nerdy.)

I'm glad people seem more accepting of nerd culture now and that bullying is being called out.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

The abuse has only evolved so that we can be attacked, ridiculed, mocked, and judged by the people we thought would be the most understanding and supportive. Instead, they are often the cruelest and most unreasonable persons encountered in this hobby. They would rather wage endless war defending their own ideas and ideology of things they feel define them as a person because of their perspectives, and cannot abide others who think differently or for themselves. They live in the online forums and social media platforms. Sheltered with anonymity. Protected by remote proximity. Shielded from morality or personal responsibility for the feelings and opinions of others. Abuse is worse now, and more accessible than ever.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yup and the real catalyst of course isn't the poor girl who feels bad about not saying who was abusing her, but the bloody social worker who was such a goddamn half-witted late-medieval peasant that she coached the kids into making up fictional Satanic abuse.

The girl feels bad, but people like that social worker, they live in a bloody magical reality where evil cultists lurk around every corner, and if she'd told the truth, because it was an authority figure abusing her, they probably wouldn't have believed her, and would just have tried to convince her to make up ("recover") some Satanic nonsense.

It's a fascinating contrast, compared to Michelle Smith (Of Michelle Remembers), who has never recanted, never fessed up to the harm she did or the lies.

I wouldn't say that I was "abused," but I was ridiculed and outcast because of it at times.

Examples:

• My older brother convincing my religious mother that fantasy was corrupting me and had "actual magic" in it - just because he knew I loved it and she'd take it away. So my fantasy novels and D&D books were taken away for several weeks until my mom forgot about it.
• The neighborhood kids weren't allowed to play D&D. We were all latchkey kids. I would come over and run games for them but would need to run out the backdoor and hide when their parents got home.
• Not that this was specific to D&D, but just because I was a "nerd:" spitwads, wedgies, pelted in the face with basketballs, jocks sending me notes in class pretending they were from cute girls, lots of fights. Usually I would get in trouble from teachers when I got bullied because I was so nerdy that I "deserved" it. (I was once told by a particularly religious music teacher that I was going to hell because I was so nerdy.)

I'm glad people seem more accepting of nerd culture now and that bullying is being called out.

It's shocking the mistreatment that was allowed to go on in schools in hindsight. I had my share of it, sadly.

Of course, today bullying also extends to the digital online realm, so you can never get away from it. Horrible too, that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Usually I would get in trouble from teachers when I got bullied because I was so nerdy that I "deserved" it. (I was once told by a particularly religious music teacher that I was going to hell because I was so nerdy.)

Talking to Americans, including my wife and US friends our age, this is the most shocking thing to me that keeps coming up - it seems like in a lot of US schools/areas, the parents and teachers generally thought truly brutal bullying was basically "acceptable" so long as it was done for certain reasons or to certain people. That parents would find their kid got in trouble for beating the hell out of another kid, and instead of being apologetic and concerned, would be full of bluster and fire about how the other kid deserved it, and the administration was often sympathetic to this. Insane stuff.

 

[Joshua Randall]

...Gygax was 36, with kids of his own iirc, in 1974. Was he still trying to tweak and rebel, you figure?

Possibly? I don't know his psychology, but in addition to kids, there are always "outsiders" in society who rebel against social norms. Often their rebellion is considered shocking and, yes, even childish in their time... and later seen as brilliant and artistic.

See: basically any "crazy" or "out there" artist since the dawn of recorded history!

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Outlier here. I grew up in the hometown of a televangelist many of you have probably heard of, as well as a rather progressive Unitarian congregation most of you probably haven't; my mother was, for most of our tenure there, aligned with the latter. And my grandparents could only have been more secular if they'd worked at it; I think they only ever entered a church for hatches, matches, and dispatches. Neither any of them, nor anyone at any school I ever went to student or faculty, gave a tinker's what me and my friends were doing with dice and Little Black Books.

 

[Retreater]

Talking to Americans, including my wife and US friends our age, this is the most shocking thing to me that keeps coming up - it seems like in a lot of US schools/areas, the parents and teachers generally thought truly brutal bullying was basically "acceptable" so long as it was done for certain reasons or to certain people. That parents would find their kid got in trouble for beating the hell out of another kid, and instead of being apologetic and concerned, would be full of bluster and fire about how the other kid deserved it, and the administration was often sympathetic to this. Insane stuff.

I guess it comes from the idealized, "independent and rugged" American concept. Our guidance counselor was also a gruff football coach, who encouraged me to get respect by playing sports (since I was an overweight kid, I should be good at football, right?) My dad was a coach as well, and after realizing that I didn't have the talent of my older brother, basically gave him all the attention until my dad's last 5-10 years of life. (We had a definite Boromir/ Faramir/Denethor relationship.)

I still have a knee-jerk reaction against nerd culture going mainstream, because to me, it still feels like the popular kids pretending to like something just to make fun of it (for example, The Big Bang Theory) or to callously take advantage of me with cash grabs (for example, most AAA video games). This is likely why I'm so anti-WotC and 5E on these boards. I feel bullied by them, even if it's not logical, because they're big and powerful.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(We had a definite Boromir/ Faramir/Denethor relationship.)

Just tell me your dad didn't eat tomatoes... that way...

But yeah not a great dynamic, sorry to hear that.

I still have a knee-jerk reaction against nerd culture going mainstream, because to me, it still feels like the popular kids pretending to like something just to make fun of it (for example, The Big Bang Theory) or to callously take advantage of me with cash grabs (for example, most AAA video games).

I get but I think it's more like there's just no longer a clean separation of nerds and everyone else, just like there never was outside the US. I think that's part of why for someone like me, who never saw themselves as an outcast or w/e at school, never got bullied (well, not past age 8 or so), and indeed often hung out with the cool kids (esp. at 16-18), always saw this as inevitable. Like I predicted it in the 1990s (something my dad and I have discussed before lol, because it was to him I said it).

But I definitely get why, having been tortured over this, it would seem bizarre, even perverse that people were "suddenly" going "This is cool and good actually!" (even though its merely a manifestation of a longer-term change).

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Just tell me your dad didn't eat tomatoes... that way...

Of course not! Tomatoes are a New World plant, just like potatoes and tobacc ... uh, forget I said anything.