Mazes & Monsters: Any Good?

[miscreationist]

Just to be clear - it is about what some people thought about our hobby, more than 20 years ago. The movie was released in 1982, based on a book from 1981, which was based on a case from 1979...

While I would love to agree that perspectives have changed, I live in an area (The Bible Belt of the southern United States) where some people still think this way, unfortunately. I remember some people in my area getting upset at Harry Potter books calling them satanic.

The movie may not be about the religious interpretations of the game but I felt that the creators of the movie were saying: "You should be wary of playing this game lest this turn out to be your mind forever trapped in the game" (Queue dark theme music). This is a similar tone as the Chick Tract.

 

[Darkwolf71]

While I would love to agree that perspectives have changed, I live in an area (The Bible Belt of the southern United States) where some people still think this way, unfortunately. I remember some people in my area getting upset at Harry Potter books calling them satanic.

The movie may not be about the religious interpretations of the game but I felt that the creators of the movie were saying: "You should be wary of playing this game lest this turn out to be your mind forever trapped in the game" (Queue dark theme music). This is a similar tone as the Chick Tract.

Very few people, Christian or otherwise, consider the Potter books to be 'satanic'. Most concern over them is more to do with the disrespectful treatment of parents, and most authority figures in general.

(Yes, there are 'some' and I realize that is exactly what you said. I just wanted to head off a potential misunderstanding.)

As for the film, the intent may or may not have been "You should be wary of playing this game lest this turn out to be your mind forever trapped in the game". If it was, IMO it failed horribly, since there were three (four?) more people in the movie who played the game and had no issue at all.

It was simply about one boy, not gamers as a whole. Now, the public may have taken something else away from it, and the Jack Chick types certainly used it as fuel for their fire, but over all I think the movie got kind of a bad rap.

 

[miscreationist]

Very few people, Christian or otherwise, consider the Potter books to be 'satanic'. Most concern over them is more to do with the disrespectful treatment of parents, and most authority figures in general.

(Yes, there are 'some' and I realize that is exactly what you said. I just wanted to head off a potential misunderstanding.)

As for the film, the intent may or may not have been "You should be wary of playing this game lest this turn out to be your mind forever trapped in the game". If it was, IMO it failed horribly, since there were three (four?) more people in the movie who played the game and had no issue at all.

It was simply about one boy, not gamers as a whole. Now, the public may have taken something else away from it, and the Jack Chick types certainly used it as fuel for their fire, but over all I think the movie got kind of a bad rap.

Right. I did not intend to make a broad generalization against any particular group of people, just that I know of people that do think in this fashion and do make arguments against things based on bad information such as this for religious reasons. My reason for bringing it up was intended to bring to light that it does still happen despite critical thinking that you would expect. The humor that I found in the film was that people would actually use it for an argument against roleplaying.

You are right. The movie is clearly about one boy and his problems and not gamers in general and it is a sad story.

 

[TheLe]

It is a fictional movie, based on a fictional book that was based on a real life 16 year old kid's disappearance and eventual suicide.

Real short version: Child prodigy suffers depression and is a closeted homosexual, his confusion and pressures from his family drove him to leave his college and make several suicide attempts. An investigator was hired to find him, in his investigation he learned about the D&D game the kid played. He formed a hypothesis that we are all familiar with: live action game, character dies, kid tries to kill self. He abandoned the theory, but after he finally located the missing boy, he was asked to keep the truth secret. Wanting to do right by the boy, he returned to his abandoned idea and called it truth. Several years later, after the kids final, successful suicide attempt, the investigator wrote a book telling the real story of the case, but the media already had it’s ‘truth’ and the damage was already (unintentionally) done.

You can read a (longer) short version at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dallas_Egbert_III#Egbert_incident

or a much longer, more detailed account here:
http://ptgptb.org/0006/egbert.html

It is a sad and tragic story. I think anyone who role plays should be familiar with it, as it is indeed the basis of much of the confusion and hate that D&D is still subject to, even today.


The movie? Heck, I like it. Own a copy. The acting is ‘early eighties bad’, but it’s not horrible. It’s only Tom Hanks’ second film but his talent still shows through.

The real life event and the movie has done more harm to the reputation of Role Playing Games than anything else in history.

Even today I hear people talk about how Dungeons and Dragons is evil.

`Le