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

[Mannahnin]

it was, and still is in many areas and subcultures, still acceptable to restrict kids access to materials offensive to their parents or their parents’ religion. And to force the child to destroy them.

Burning their books in front of them didn’t rise to the reporting threshold in Alaska… until they’re 16. Alaska gives property rights at 16. (came up at work, checked with children services, they said it wasn’t abuse in about 2012.)

Was it cruel? yes.
Was it unusual? Not particularly in the 80’s, 90’s, nor even 00’s in Alaska.
Was it illegal? i can’t rightly say, but it certainly wasn’t actionable by Office of Children’s Services in Alaska.
Should it be actionable? not sure. Definitely sits on the edge of violating the parents Freedom of Religion in the US.

Abusing kids should never be defended on grounds of religious freedom. Although it often is.

Not giving your kid a book you disagree with? Sure. Destroying your kid's property that they bought or received as a gift...? Certainly cruel.

Abusiveness really was more common and less unlawful in the 70’s, 80’s, and even 90’s.

Yes indeed. Although it's still way too common, societal attitudes are at least a bit better.

 

[KYRON45]

My geek group (Gen X all) included: Jocks, headbangers, valedictorians, stoners, rich kids, gear heads, club kids, and Eric. I never encountered that "those people" experience that it seems so many did. Sure we were all not the most popular, but no one picked on us. Did we pick on one another? You betcha.

 

[Retreater]

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

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

My dad did have pretty gross eating habits. You know that really loud smacking lips while eating?
We made peace in the end and had a few good years together before he passed away around a year ago. Oddly, I credit being the "worse son" for making me a better person in many ways.

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).

I have a split perspective. Like, I love it when I get to interact with people who are new to the hobby. I see the (now) college-age kids from the neighborhood who were once in my game now running games for their friends. They have picked up some DM-isms from me. It makes me happy to see the hobby continuing like this.

What ends up bothering me is seeing too much "how the sausage is made" at WotC corporate: spinning off the hobby into online gambling, CEOs referring to monetization strategies and the incorporation of AI, etc.

So, having folks want to try out the hobby - that's great. Having corporate realize there are new ways to get to my money while not caring about if I'm having fun or not - that's not great. And I know that TSR wasn't this altruistic business to bring joy to gamers around the world. It's just that we didn't hear that stuff until way after the fact.

It's hard to not feel that the C-suite is just looking down at us and laughing their way to the bank.

 

[Nebulous]

I got a lot of grief from my parents (especially mom) over D&D as a teen. I think the worst incident was when Dragon magazine arrived in the mail (one of my favorite things) but it was the issue with a controversial cover with a semi-nude female cultist kneeling on a devil altar (admittedly, it was just too risqué). I don't know if it had the paper sheathe to cover the image or not like you'd get with a skin mag, but that did not go over well. It became a monthly race to the mailbox to grab Dragon before it was confiscated. Whenever I went to college a full half of my considerable collection of all D&D stuff was dumped. I'm lucky to have any books left at all, and even had to replace some in later years. Not that I use them anymore, they're all boxed up, but the 1e books are where I started so they hold a special place to me. Well, technically you could say I started with Endless Quest around age 10, and those I still have also.

 

[messy]

Not abused but definitely discouraged. The thought was that the books were distracting me from my school work and that I should stop reading them.

They weren’t and I didn’t.

 

[Golden age Superhero]

My dad hated D&D but not because he thought it was satanic but because I spent more time playing than studying while I was in college. He attributed RPGs to me goofing off while he supported me in community college. So I kind of got it. Seriously, I just wasn't a college person and eventually I ended going into Job Corps. In Job Corps I found a gaming group and played Champions and D&D.

When I transferred from Utah Job Corps to San Fransisco Job Corps I became a born again Christian and didn't play for about 8 years. I got back into it when I found 4th Edition Champions. I haven't really looked back since, my time as a Born Again was complicated but I now have played with Christians who play RPGs.

As for general bullying I was always a big guy so I was mostly left alone. Strangely enough it was smaller guys who kept picking fights with me. Don't know why.

 

[Belen]

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.

This is still quite common with the added dimension of social media making it worse and more difficult to get away from your abuser.

It still happens in schools.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

That's regionally variable.
For example, a teacher in Alaska told a student he was going to hell, and said teacher was fired pretty much immediately, Office of Children's services investigated and charged them, the prosecutor dismissed the charges, but the termination was upheld.

Meanwhile, in florida, according to the captain of the airport police at the airport near Disney pointed out that in Florida, the law only allows school principals to spank children. Alaska, per the directer of DHHS noted that spanking is not outlawed in Alaska. Leaving a lingering mark while doing so is.

 

[aramis erak]

Abusing kids should never be defended on grounds of religious freedom. Although it often is.

Not giving your kid a book you disagree with? Sure. Destroying your kid's property that they bought or received as a gift...? Certainly cruel.

Minors and property rights are a complicated issue.

In most states, right to property comes along with the age of being able to engage in legally binding contract. A few have differences, I've read. But generally, that's somewhere in the mid teens.

As a friend found out at 15, when his mother burned his D&D books, he had NO legal recourse because he was 15 when she did so. No property rights until age 16 in that state.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's hard to not feel that the C-suite is just looking down at us and laughing their way to the bank.

Meh.

It's a D&D issue, not an RPGs-in-general issue.

Don't give WotC money if they operate like that imho. The thing is I don't think WotC and even more so Hasbro really understand their business very well. They're spending high tens of millions on 3D VTT and yeah coming up with these elaborate monetization strategies, but will any of it actually pay off? It seems to me like they're going to be laughing all the way to the bank and then the teller is going to say "Sorry sirs, your account is $50 million overdrawn", so that's going to change the mood a little bit. At this point I'd be unsurprised if Sigil actually got cancelled before a 1.0 launch, just like the previous 3D VTT. Maybe it'll turn out to have some awesome killer features and I'll be completely wrong but they sure as hell haven't even hinted at such features, let alone shown them to anyone. It's still incredibly clunky and limited and questionable as why you'd use it over any other VTT, let alone use it in preference to a table or the like.

Meanwhile RPGs that aren't D&D are flourishing in a way they haven't since the 1990s, actually probably doing a lot better than they did in the 1990s. It's not like that weird post-d20 crash era where barely anything was happening.