RPG Evolution - True Tales from Stranger Things: Satanism, Strategy & Clubs

The hit Netflix series about the 80s-themed tale of extradimensional entities and the kids who battle them features Dungeons & Dragons prominently. And a lot of it is inspired by what actually happened. There's a lot of things Stranger Things got right, but one of them that doesn't match my experience is the Hellfire Club.

What's the Hellfire Club?​

The Stranger Things wiki explains:

The Hawkins High "Hellfire Club" was an official D&D club at Hawkins High School headed by Eddie Munson. Members Dustin, Mike and Lucas are also members of another D&D party.

More specifically:

The Hellfire Club seems to operate the bottom of the Hawkins High food chain, due to the unique misfortunes experienced in the town due to the Upside Down and the tabloid media fear of Satanic/demonic worship among teenagers. As implied by Eddie, members are typically scouted out if they are "lost sheep" or outsiders. Eddie also implied membership came with a degree of protection, but demanded loyalty to campaign nights. Members of club both create and wear white raglan shirts with black long sleeves, finished with the Hellfire Club name and logo on the center. Hellfire Club is hosted in a drama/theatre room, as evidenced by the stage lights, curtains and props seen around them during game night.

There were lots of clubs like this at the time, but not at my high school. Why? Because of the Satanic Panic.

The Satanic Panic​

During the 80s, Dungeons & Dragons was grouped in with a lot of other teenage activities (like music) as promoting Satanism, withcraft, suicide, and murder. D&D's deadly reputation was exacerbated by the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, which was fictionalized by Rona Jaffe in a made-for-TV movie, Mazes and Monsters (featuring Tom Hanks). Patricia Pulling, an anti-occult campaigner, established Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) to eliminate D&D and disseminated material touting the dangers to schools and police. For critics, they didn't have to look far for evidence. There were plenty of demons, scantily-clad monsters that looked like human women, and even the name had sinister tones of torture (dungeons) and Satanic invocations (dragons).

The Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGA, I'm now Committee Chair) was formed specifically to combat misinformation campaigns led by Pulling and her adherents. But while that was happening in the battlefield of public opinion, kids like myself were still playing D&D despite all the media outcry.

This all added up to tension between gamers and their parents, in which various authority figures declared D&D evil, and then it was up to whoever was in charge to determine if it was worth the risk to let kids play. Some parents watched a few games and realized it was harmless fun; others threw away their kids gaming material. And still others simply relabeled the game as something else.

Strategy & Tactics​

When the Satanic Panic was in full swing, my gaming group had swelled to over ten members. At one point we reached 12, which I found nearly impossible to manage at once as dungeon master. But it didn't matter because we all had a good time, rotating games at different players' houses. With that many kids, it was impossible not to hear us play. My parents were always thrilled that we were at home, socializing, and laughing. No kid ever got pulled out due to any concerns over the game.

But school was a different story. There was no D&D club. When we tried to join the only role-playing game club, we learned why it was called Strategy & Tactics: the school couldn't reference D&D in the title, even though that's what most people played anyway. And if you did play, you couldn't admit that you were playing, because D&D was a good way to get the club shut down.

Although the Satanic Panic eventually comes home to roost in Hawkins, it has a surprisingly stable footing at the high school: Customized shirts? Access to the theater room? An official club at all? We could never have imagined such a thing!

It didn't matter. We showed up to one session of Strategy & Tactics and realized were were much better off playing with our existing group. And that's what we did.

Stranger Things definitely got one archetype right that was in my circle of friends, in the character of Eddie. More on him in the next installment.

Your Turn: Were there official D&D clubs at your school in the 80s?

 

[Nightfly]

Ramones and Clash, sure. The show has him listening to stuff like The Smiths before The Smiths had an album out on a major record label. He'd practically have to be a college radio DJ to have any of their stuff.

The showrunners hadn't even been born in 1983. Really blows my mind, because I find the show to be a perfect recreation of my 80s youth.

 

[Stormonu]

This is humerus to say the least. At the time RPGs were well represented in the community, not just DnD. There was no panic, there was a tragedy of two young men that commit suicide and DnD was said to be of blame. From college campuses to conventions to clubs DnD ands other games were played. Stores like Toys are Us sold the game with no issues. The so-called panic was over reported yet under influenced. In fact, the panic spurred sales of DnD. With no internet at the time there was no central way to spread the so-called story. Some churches did try to ban the game for youths and some parents grew concerned but not on a national scale. The whole thing is more myth these days then fact. What is overlooked is the sheer number of DnD groups in colleges born of the early adopters of DnD in the 70s like me. We played both war games and DnD and other RPGs on the late 70s in high school with no issues. When I joined the navy in the 80s DnD was super popular and over the 6 years I was in I found gamers everywhere.
Not once did encounter the so-called panic in my hobby, it just was not a panic, just a blip and forgotten. We forget in stranger things Eddie is also a pusher, a drug dealer, regardless of him running DnD the character prays on the needy, drug dealers are a blight. Also, on the show he’s pursued do to the fact a young woman he is selling drugs to dies tragically. This is not the satanic panic, till that time the gamers were tolerated till Eddie ran.

This link might help. Michael A. Stackpole: The Pulling Report (rpgstudies.net)

It very much depended where you were. As I stated, in California, it was pretty normal to play D&D (I got my AD&D books from Toys-R-Us). But in the bible belt in the South, it was a whole 'nother ball game and the Satanic Panic was VERY real, to the point the average person I was around actually believed there were active acts of secret demonic cults sacrificing kids in the local city area. If you pressed for evidence, it was "mostly dead cats"* that had been found, but local disappearances could not be proved, nor were there any real evidence of killings, mutilations or otherwise - but everyone was sure it was going on.

* For some reason, there has been an extreme hatred of cats down here where I live; some rural folk will go out of their way to kill cats, stray or domestic - though it's nowadays extremely frowned upon, and now (after over 20 years of officials "looking the other way") can finally land you in jail.

 

[James Mishler]

We had an official D&D Club at my high school, at least, for a while. I am not sure when it started, but it was running strong when I arrived at school my Freshman year in Fall 1983.

It was an official school club, sponsored by the Anatomy and Physiology teacher (AP Biology I modern terms, I guess), Mr. Strange (too bad he did not have a doctorate). We even had club t-shirts (nothing as fancy as the Hellfire Club) and got our group photo in the yearbooks.

Then in Summer 1986, some minister or priest dug their claws into our school principal and convinced him that D&D was Satanic... And that was all she wrote. No more D&D Club my Senior year...

 

[Eyes of Nine]

My high school there were only 55 kids in my graduating class (all boys private school). That said, there were 6-7 of us there who played D&D. I also had another group with the kids in my neighborhood. This was Massachusetts, so far from the Bible Belt. But I appreciated and understood even then that there was a Satanic panic. It just didn't splash on me thankfully

 

[Emirikol]

The hit Netflix series about the 80s-themed tale of extradimensional entities and the kids who battle them features Dungeons & Dragons prominently. And a lot of it is inspired by what actually happened. There's a lot of things Stranger Things got right, but one of them that doesn't match my experience is the Hellfire Club.

View attachment 255751​

What's the Hellfire Club?​

The Stranger Things wiki explains:

More specifically:

There were lots of clubs like this at the time, but not at my high school. Why? Because of the Satanic Panic.

The Satanic Panic​

During the 80s, Dungeons & Dragons was grouped in with a lot of other teenage activities (like music) as promoting Satanism, withcraft, suicide, and murder. D&D's deadly reputation was exacerbated by the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, which was fictionalized by Rona Jaffe in a made-for-TV movie, Mazes and Monsters (featuring Tom Hanks). Patricia Pulling, an anti-occult campaigner, established Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) to eliminate D&D and disseminated material touting the dangers to schools and police. For critics, they didn't have to look far for evidence. There were plenty of demons, scantily-clad monsters that looked like human women, and even the name had sinister tones of torture (dungeons) and Satanic invocations (dragons).

The Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGA, I'm now Committee Chair) was formed specifically to combat misinformation campaigns led by Pulling and her adherents. But while that was happening in the battlefield of public opinion, kids like myself were still playing D&D despite all the media outcry.

This all added up to tension between gamers and their parents, in which various authority figures declared D&D evil, and then it was up to whoever was in charge to determine if it was worth the risk to let kids play. Some parents watched a few games and realized it was harmless fun; others threw away their kids gaming material. And still others simply relabeled the game as something else.

Strategy & Tactics​

When the Satanic Panic was in full swing, my gaming group had swelled to over ten members. At one point we reached 12, which I found nearly impossible to manage at once as dungeon master. But it didn't matter because we all had a good time, rotating games at different players' houses. With that many kids, it was impossible not to hear us play. My parents were always thrilled that we were at home, socializing, and laughing. No kid ever got pulled out due to any concerns over the game.

But school was a different story. There was no D&D club. When we tried to join the only role-playing game club, we learned why it was called Strategy & Tactics: the school couldn't reference D&D in the title, even though that's what most people played anyway. And if you did play, you couldn't admit that you were playing, because D&D was a good way to get the club shut down.

Although the Satanic Panic eventually comes home to roost in Hawkins, it has a surprisingly stable footing at the high school: Customized shirts? Access to the theater room? An official club at all? We could never have imagined such a thing!

It didn't matter. We showed up to one session of Strategy & Tactics and realized were were much better off playing with our existing group. And that's what we did.

Stranger Things definitely got one archetype right that was in my circle of friends, in the character of Eddie. More on him in the next installment.

Your Turn: Were there official D&D clubs at your school in the 80s?

Stranger things dodged the elephant in the room: the church

I didn't care to relive that portion of that era so I wasn't disappointed.

 

[doctorhook]

Stranger things dodged the elephant in the room: the church

I didn't care to relive that portion of that era so I wasn't disappointed.

Yeah, it’s a stylized representation of the 1980s intended for 2010s audiences. Lots of fashion and music, some history, very little of the politics, religion, or bigotry that might have been a lot more common.

 

[jaycrockett]

I actually had a D&D club in middle school, in the mid eighties, but not in high school. Not exactly sure why. During lunch in high school we played spades. Now that I think of it, I wonder if there was a contingent of my friend group who would have been averse to D&D due to their church. I grew up in east Tennessee in the eighties but any Satanic Panic was invisible to me. Bought books in toy stores, got them from my parents for Christmas, etc. But I bet there was that anti-D&D sentiment in certain churches in the area. However these same churches were still saying rock and roll music was immoral.

 

[MockingBird]

My grandmother was very against D&D, said it would create a gateway for demons to enter my house. She told my mom she should burn my books and stop buying them. My mom never did that of course. All the talk about gateways and demons made it even more cool to the kid version of me. This was in central Mississippi and I'm sure it wasn't isolated to just me. I lived in a very small town so just me, my cousin and a close friend played. My friends sisters boyfriend was in the Navy and he found out we played so he DM'd for us, that was cool cause that was the first time I actually got to play a character and not DM. My cousins husband was a ranger in the Army and he had all the Dragon Lance and Icewind Dale books and gave them all to me too. The military seems to be a rich environment for D&D, I'm in the Air Force and met more people who play D&D than I have anywhere else.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Nope. Grew up in the rural midwest in the 80s and this was my experience.

So, I played D&D and was pretty quiet about it. One of my future friends and gamers was a shy kid at the time, would sit on the bleachers before school and read D&D books. A girl who went to my church and was in his class told him one day he was "going to hell" because he read that stuff. Really hurt. Our pastor never preached anything about D&D, so can only presume the Pulling campaign got the word out.

That same year, however, a kid from a bigger town who wasn't shy about playing convinced me to "go public" with D&D. So, I did. At one time, we had 10+ gamers at my house (way too many), including the shy kid. We never formed an official school club, but we did end up with a solid group of friends who weren't afraid of people knowing we gamed, though it wasn't the first thing I'd bring up on dates.

 

[Bupp]

We had a D&D club in middle school, but not in high school There was a teacher that sponsored it and a wargames club (Napoleonic miniature land and ship battles). No teacher to sponsor in high school, but by that point I had my own groups and didn't need a school group.

One of my players was not allowed to play. His parents were religious. He kept his dice and mini in my collection. We just never played at his house.