D&D 5E New York Times remembers early days of D&D

[Kobold Stew]

An article in the NYT today remembers the "moral panic" of the early days of D&D, downplaying (obviously) the game's negative associations.

It's nice for the hobby to get mainstream coverage, but it still seems unable (and we gamers seem unable) to get past where things were 30+ years ago.

Why do you think that is? What can we do?

 

[Radaceus]

I remember this happening, and the 60 minutes coverage. I recall Tipper Gore bashing on it.

One thing I disagree with is the spike in sales being attributed to the Dallas Egbert story. The spike was due to the mass production of 1st edition in 1979/1980, mainly the release of the DMG, and the 'red box' version of basic, which saw prominent shelf space at the local book stores at the end of the decade.

Now as for why we are not able to get past that high water mark of the 80s. Twofold answer. Magic the Gathering 1994, and the combine assault of Ultima Online & Everquest 1998 & 1999 respectively. And actually precursor to that, the shake-up at TSR which saw EGG benched and led to the WOTC take over, which undermined Ral Partha (no offense Wizkids, but your plastic just isn't as good as the molds you obtained), set the table for that perfect storm when CCGs dominated the table tops.

Bottom line~ I like to refer to it as The Point and Click generation, the 90s and the Ots saw an incline in instant gratification through console and computer games. Short attention span theater which ( edition wars aside) led to streamlining D&D to suit power-gaming munchkins.

 

[fjw70]

I barely remember the outrage over D&D. I started playing in 1982 and the only sign I saw of the outrage was when I stumbled upon an episode of the 700 Club after school one day, but I assumed it was limited to those few people. I was unaware of the 60 Minutes coverage or the Chick Tracks (or whatever they were called).

 

[DEFCON 1]

An article in the NYT today remembers the "moral panic" of the early days of D&D, downplaying (obviously) the game's negative associations.

It's nice for the hobby to get mainstream coverage, but it still seems unable (and we gamers seem unable) to get past where things were 30+ years ago.

Why do you think that is? What can we do?

It's because it's the only interesting controversy D&D has had. So unless the premise of the article is "Hey, people are still playing D&D and it's as popular as ever!" (which plenty of articles do)... the only thing left is to talk about the one "big deal" of the game at the time, which allows us to point out just how stupid we all were back then. It's the same reason why Weird Al's "Behind The Music" episode made a much bigger deal about the Coolio thing than what really happened... because it was the only "drama" he had in his career and they had to build the episode around something.

And there's nothing we can do about it, except for us coming up with some NEW big, horrendous drama-filled issue about the game such that any article in the future would go to that as their de facto "D&D trouble" subject. So if any group of D&D players wants to go out on a murdering spree... spray painting "D&D 4 LIFE!" on the crime scenes and spreading character sheets over the victims... that'll certainly help stop the "satanic D&D" articles from being written in the future.

 

[Sezarious]

One of my gamer friends who I was dming for until life got busy this year is a high school teacher. He was approached by the Principal who asked him about a couple of kids who were reading through d&d books. His question to him was a cautious "Is it safe?" I could not believe that such a question could exist now. My friend said "The most dangerous thing you could get from it is a papercut..." Heheh. He's a good bloke.

 

[iserith]

An article in the NYT today remembers the "moral panic" of the early days of D&D, downplaying (obviously) the game's negative associations.

It's nice for the hobby to get mainstream coverage, but it still seems unable (and we gamers seem unable) to get past where things were 30+ years ago.

Why do you think that is? What can we do?

We have to do a better job of keeping our supplication to the Dark Lord under wraps until the Reckoning is at hand.

 

[BMaC]

The year: 1982.
The scene: Shared bedroom with my brother.

Mom and dad enter. "Gather up all your D&D books. You're going flunk out of school if you don't stop spending all your time playing this game. Mrs. Graham said you used all your graph paper to draw castles and maps!"
We reluctantly surrender a PH, DM guide, a monster manual, and a stack of random notebooks and modules. "We get a report back in four weeks and if you've improved then you can have your books back."
They leave. My brother goes to the closet, takes out his PH, his DM guide, his MM and ..."dumbass," he says, "you gave them our only Fiend Folio!"

 

[Radaceus]

One of my gamer friends who I was dming for until life got busy this year is a high school teacher. He was approached by the Principal who asked him about a couple of kids who were reading through d&d books. His question to him was a cautious "Is it safe?" I could not believe that such a question could exist now. My friend said "The most dangerous thing you could get from it is a papercut..." Heheh. He's a good bloke.

Interesting,

I think I mentioned it around here before but...1979, 7th grade,back of the classroom in Reading class. A few of us kids were finished with Reading, that is we had finished the final textbook in 6th grade ( I believe it was titled Accents or Encore...they were the last two books)... They didnt have any other curriculum for us, originally they had creative writing in mind, so some of the kids managed to talk the teacher into letting us play in the back of class, explaining how the game itself was akin to creative writing. After the first day, the teacher said it was too disruptive, the next Monday their was a partitioned area, and we played D&D for 1 hour a day for that semester.

Nobody complained.

the kicker,
by 9th grade, kids who came to junior high having finished Reading, often ended up in the library or the commons, oddly enough they were often playing D&D, or Car wars, or Heroes and Villains. and this transcended into highschool.

Still nobody complained.

Oh I am sure some congregation forbade their attendees and warned against it, but nobody said a word about it to us

---

regarding what I say to people when they worry about their children playing RPG's~

I have travelled around the globe, mastered a few professions, I cant give all the credit to D&D (the city fire department will attest to that five year old often on a walk about), but I liek to think it helped me hone my skills through theater of the mind

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I think one of the reasons it still comes up is that we've gone from the Satanic Panic to stuff like Harry Potter and D&D being cool. It's such a crazy cultural shift.

Also, that sort of fearmongering leaves a scar. Heck, people out there probably still believe that stuff like McMartin goes on.

Thankfully, my parents never bought into any of it. But the D&D club I started got shut down by the school, alas.

 

[hawkeyefan]

When I was a kid, probably 7 or 8, so this would have been early 80s, I had a CCD teacher who talked about going to book burnings where they burned anything that was considered "dangerous" or pertaining to black magic or some nonsense. The teacher told me how they heard the screams of the demons coming out of the D&D books that they burned.

I remember getting in big trouble for disagreeing with the teacher. I said he must be lying about what he heard. I was sent to the office of whatever the equivalent of the principal was for CCD, and they called my parents to pick me up early.

My father was mad at me at first for arguing with a teacher, but once I explained the details, he told me I wasn't in trouble, and that I did the right thing. So glad to have had parents who supported my imagination as a kid, and whose faith wasn't so easily threatened by a game. We had a neighbor whose parents would not let him play D&D with us, which always seemed so odd to me.

I think the reason that this kind of stuff always comes up is because of how ridiculous it all is in retrospect. And I kind of expect it to always come up in general discussions about the hobby and its past, and I think it should. It's easily the most interesting thing about the hobby to a general audience.