Moms who banned DnD

[Mercule]

Next time we saw him, he told us she had just come back from a church group meeting where they were given the "D&D is Satanic" speech, and that was the end of it for him.

This sort of thing really fries me. As a Christian, I feel like these closed-minded hate-mongers give my religion a bad name. I can't even stand to be associated with them.

I could probably go on a pretty serious rant about it, but it definitely crosses that "no religion" boundary (and the point that is specifically on my mind would probably get me banned), so I will say nothing further about it.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

What I'm going to say, I'm saying to credit my mother, not to put down anyone else's who might have chosen to approach teh situation differently.

That said, my mother has always been the type who is intelligent and motivated enough to question "groupthinking" and make up her own mind - yes, certainly by factoring in her beliefs, but by doing the philosophical heavy lifting herself and determining the right course of action based on her own empirical evidence.

You'd better believe my mother got treated to the "D&D is satanic", "D&D leads to suicides", "D&D leads to drug use and murder!" speeches that I'm assuming everyone else heard in the 80's. Unlike others, that didn't prompt her to take the knee-jerk course of action and ban the game, but rather to see whether there was anything to the allegations.

She offered to let me host games when other mothers wouldn't, so that she could watch us play the game repeatedly, and even sat down with us to play a couple of times to get a feel for what the game was really about and whether there were any hidden messages. Satisfied that it was just a game - harmless at worst, educational at best - she let us keep playing, and became our staunchest defender when small-minded people tried to "enlighten" her about the 'dangers of D&D'.

It's from my mother's willingness to question authority and think through hard questions for herself that I derive much of my personality and approach to the world today. At the time I was merely grateful that she let us keep playing, but now looking back I can see the true scope of the gift she gave to us and be truly grateful.

 

[Desdichado]

My parents never got into that "D&D is Satanic" thing, but they were concerned that "D&D is obsessive, and will make me waste all my time" vibe. Shows that my parents were much more on top of things than I often gave them credit for!

 

[Fast Learner]

I had the opposite situation regarding parents and D&D: I was taught brown-box D&D at a summer camp-type thing and when I came home I immediately bought the red box and taught it to my best friends: the preacher's kids of the church we attended. When their parents learned about the game they encouraged us to play more: smart people who knew it was good for our imaginations and kept us focused on good mental stuff rather than getting into trouble.

Yup, that's right, a Christian preacher encouraging us to play D&D as often as possible. The first time I heard about preachers condemning it I was really quite confused.

 

[night_lord]

i had a friend too like that.

In High School (and college), I had a friend named Chris who loved to play Berserkers. He even had one named Lothar (go figure). Anywho, he had to hide the fact that he played D&D with us from his parents, who were very religious. He would comment about how, at his church, they would hold sermons about how evil D&D was, and how Satanic it was.

I had a friend like his too. His dad was a minster and he had to lie to him on what he was doing. I also remeber my other friend was given an anti- DnD tract from his friend who thought DnD was evil. I think what helped with my mom was that I still went to church and was a good kid. An now that I'm an adult I still go to church she's realized that DnD didn't make me evil. I also looked into alot of the hype about DnD and presented that to my parents. I don't blame my parents, they were just trying to be good parents, I'd like to think that I would make a more informed decision if placed in the same situation.

 

[VorpalBunny]

I was fortunate to have progressive, intelligent parents and teachers. When "Santa" brought me the D&D Basic set in 1980, my mom said something like "Remember, it's just a game" or something like that - and then left it at that. I think she recognized the creative outlet D&D provided, as well as the educational aspect of the game. She even played in a game or two...

My D&D club in High School met in my Spanish teacher's room. She had heard of D&D, knew what it was about, but it wasn't her thing so she never played. Still, she stayed after school and did work in her room so that we'd have a place to play for a few hours.

 

[Henry]

My mother watched me a few times playing with my friends, and that was it - no more questions, play it like you want, but homework and commitments came first. The only condition was that I shouldn't be telling my aunt and the others in my church that I played, mainly because she was tired of hearing the arguments and defending it.

 

[Skarp Hedin]

My parents weren't ever concerned that the game was evil, as far as I know. I never saw any of that stuff until I was much older, the hype and all. However, one of my friends came to my confirmation (I'm Catholic) and afterwards when we were all hanging out in the church and hobnobbing with the bishop, one of my players (who's still one of my players) went and asked the then-bishop of Vermont what he thought about D&D. The poor man seemed a bit surprised, but he said that as far as he knew, there was nothing wrong with it, so he didn't see any problems with playing.

So there you go, the bishop said it's okay.

 

[BV210]

The only time I was ever banned from D&D was when my schoolwork would suffer from all the time spent playing. Fortunately, these were relatively short term banishments.

However, a group I played with in Jr High (composed of a bunch of us from church, including our Youth Minister) had to quit D&D when one of the guys' parents decided it was "bad." So to be able to keep including him in our games, we switched to Star Frontiers and his parents were fine with it. I guess blasting disgusting aliens with laser rifles was better than blasting an ogre with a fireball. Go figure.

 

[wolfen]

Self-inflicted religious trauma...

My parents couldn't care less if I was playing DnD. Heck, I couldda been practicing voodoo and making small-animal sacrifices in my bedroom for all they cared. How do you rebel against such apathy?

So when I was about 15 I joined this really strict christian cult. I threw out all the 1st Edition DnD books (I had all of them and more), Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Heroes n Heroines...all my music, comic books, war games, stopped playing football and all other Sabbath-conflicting sports, etc.

So I always laugh when I think of those weirdo uptight parents...I was so much worse.



wolfen