wingsandsword
Legend
When I was first getting interested in D&D, when I was about 12, I remember buying a Basic D&D box set. I thought it was neato, but my father, based strictly on some half-remembered sermons from years before, "knew" that D&D was some satanic plot that makes kids commit suicide (or something like that). I challenged him to flip through it and find where and how it was evil, how was this unlike a video game, or a board game (he didn't mind me playing Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the NES, he didn't mind me owning Hero Quest and all the expansions), where the same Fantasy themes came up, but when the name "Dungeons and Dragons" came up, he suddenly thought it was evil.
Growing up in a small town with very provincial attitudes, when I started talking about D&D at recess and seeing if anybody wanted to play, I found myself getting a quick ticket to the Counselor because "your peers have reported that you have been showing suicidal tendencies", just mentioning to some other kids that I was looking at D&D and wondered if anybody wanted to play apparently meant that I was contemplating suicide and devil worship and was trying to recruit others into a cult and mass suicide apparently, because several of my supposed friends went and told the teachers that.
I even remember hearing their "proof" that D&D was "satanic", that they made official "satanic idols" to worship with the D&D name on them. I couldn't believe that, it seemed utter hogwash, and wanted proof and pictures. They showed me, and I ended up laughing at their face, their "satanic idol" was a miniature of a red dragon, which they were sure was a devil and it's use was to be worshipped. When I tried to explain otherwise, I lost a few more supposed friends, who didn't want to hang out with a "satanist".
I had to wait until I went to college to really be a gamer because of all that.
One thing I use as a rebuttal nowadays is to point out that D&D is made by Hasbro, a huge corporation that is publically traded and watched very closely by the government. That convinces some people it's on the up and up, but some people just then think that Hasbro is part of some giant satanic conspiracy.
The arguments some people make that it is "evil" are so broad that almost anything could be evil. They make a religious argument that to fantasize or contemplate an action is as bad as actually doing it, so pretending to cast a spell or attack somebody with a sword is no different than actually casting black magic. I like to point out that Monopoly must be evil since you pretend to drive people into bankruptcy and poverty.
A lot of the "evidence" is anecdotal, the "I knew this kid who killed himself, and he played D&D", never mind the many serious warning signs of suicide or mental illness.
The "D&D is evil" thing was just the new pop culture thing that was "in" to call evil in the Early '80's. Before that it was Swing Dancing, Jazz Music, and Rock Music, and then came D&D, He-Man, and Smurfs, all of which were called satanic. Video games, then Harry Potter were the new things to call "Evil". Most of these things became quite mainstream over time, or were short-lived fads that faded away and left mostly memories, but among all these things, D&D persists but never really became mainstream, so it still exists, and many people may hazily remember it being called "satanic", and might still run into it.
As has been said, if you're underage, try reasonably to convince them, do some research and disprove their arguments, but once you're a legal adult, you may just have to do something they won't approve of because some people just can't be convinced.
Amusingly, years later I was able to tell my dad I graduated college thanks to D&D, that learning about probability and odds from dice, doing math adding up characters, and being very good at keeping track of details that D&D teaches was what really helped me get through my math classes. He's apparenly mellowed in the decade or so since he'd originally said no, and found it funny that the game he banned me from playing turned out to be one of the most educational "toys" I ever had growing up.
Growing up in a small town with very provincial attitudes, when I started talking about D&D at recess and seeing if anybody wanted to play, I found myself getting a quick ticket to the Counselor because "your peers have reported that you have been showing suicidal tendencies", just mentioning to some other kids that I was looking at D&D and wondered if anybody wanted to play apparently meant that I was contemplating suicide and devil worship and was trying to recruit others into a cult and mass suicide apparently, because several of my supposed friends went and told the teachers that.
I even remember hearing their "proof" that D&D was "satanic", that they made official "satanic idols" to worship with the D&D name on them. I couldn't believe that, it seemed utter hogwash, and wanted proof and pictures. They showed me, and I ended up laughing at their face, their "satanic idol" was a miniature of a red dragon, which they were sure was a devil and it's use was to be worshipped. When I tried to explain otherwise, I lost a few more supposed friends, who didn't want to hang out with a "satanist".
I had to wait until I went to college to really be a gamer because of all that.
One thing I use as a rebuttal nowadays is to point out that D&D is made by Hasbro, a huge corporation that is publically traded and watched very closely by the government. That convinces some people it's on the up and up, but some people just then think that Hasbro is part of some giant satanic conspiracy.
The arguments some people make that it is "evil" are so broad that almost anything could be evil. They make a religious argument that to fantasize or contemplate an action is as bad as actually doing it, so pretending to cast a spell or attack somebody with a sword is no different than actually casting black magic. I like to point out that Monopoly must be evil since you pretend to drive people into bankruptcy and poverty.
A lot of the "evidence" is anecdotal, the "I knew this kid who killed himself, and he played D&D", never mind the many serious warning signs of suicide or mental illness.
The "D&D is evil" thing was just the new pop culture thing that was "in" to call evil in the Early '80's. Before that it was Swing Dancing, Jazz Music, and Rock Music, and then came D&D, He-Man, and Smurfs, all of which were called satanic. Video games, then Harry Potter were the new things to call "Evil". Most of these things became quite mainstream over time, or were short-lived fads that faded away and left mostly memories, but among all these things, D&D persists but never really became mainstream, so it still exists, and many people may hazily remember it being called "satanic", and might still run into it.
As has been said, if you're underage, try reasonably to convince them, do some research and disprove their arguments, but once you're a legal adult, you may just have to do something they won't approve of because some people just can't be convinced.
Amusingly, years later I was able to tell my dad I graduated college thanks to D&D, that learning about probability and odds from dice, doing math adding up characters, and being very good at keeping track of details that D&D teaches was what really helped me get through my math classes. He's apparenly mellowed in the decade or so since he'd originally said no, and found it funny that the game he banned me from playing turned out to be one of the most educational "toys" I ever had growing up.
