D&D General Satanic Panic at the Disco- Did Beelzebubba Cause D&D's First Crash, Y'all?

[TiQuinn]

My sympathy hasn't increased for her, it has decreased. I have two girls - one of whom grappled pretty hard with suicide ideation a few years ago. It's nerve wracking to be in that position as a parent. But there's a gap between grabbing onto something erroneously as a cause of a child's suicide (or illness, or disability) and turning it into a conspiracy or a crusade. One's a tragedy but the other's more of an atrocity and shouldn't have been given any publicity. But it was indulged by corporate media looking for a sensation and sleazy politicians and social movements looking for a wedge issue. And it still goes on in different forms - we're starting to see how that plays out now with respect to autism and vaccines here in the US as it infects thinking at public policy maker level.

The combination of tragedy, sympathy, fear, and advocacy in spite of data is a powerful cocktail.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The one thing to know is that Tom Hanks has a lot o' 'splainin' to do, and I'm not talking about Bosom Bodies. The two things to know about this is that (1) William Dear was full of it ... none of what he was talking about was true; and (2) this catapulted D&D into national consciousness.

In his book The Dungeon Master, William Dear does sort-of recant. But by then, four years after James Dallas Eggbert III died by suicide, it was way too late.

And it wasn't just D&D! Companies like Proctor & Gamble had to battle this as well because of their logo- with Church groups claiming that the executives were in league with Satan. Constant rumors circulated about every single rock group - and, of course, the implicit Satanic messages from playing the records backwards. Anything that was out of the mainstream, even a little, was in danger of being tarred by the moral panic. It's crazy in retrospect ... but it's there. I think it's important to acknowledge this, because our hobby rightfully focuses on the Satanic Panic because it was a watershed moment in many ways for D&D- but it was a moral panic that had an outsized impact and did a lot of real damage and hurt people far more than just complaining about renaming devils and demons in 2e.

I totally remember the whole Proctor & Gamble thing being on the news when I was a kid!

My sympathy hasn't increased for her, it has decreased. I have two girls - one of whom grappled pretty hard with suicide ideation a few years ago. It's nerve wracking to be in that position as a parent. But there's a gap between grabbing onto something erroneously as a cause of a child's suicide (or illness, or disability) and turning it into a conspiracy or a crusade. One's a tragedy but the other's more of an atrocity and shouldn't have been given any publicity. But it was indulged by corporate media looking for a sensation and sleazy politicians and social movements looking for a wedge issue. And it still goes on in different forms - we're starting to see how that plays out now with respect to autism and vaccines here in the US as it infects thinking at public policy maker level.

Didn't it recently come to light from the guy that DM'ed for Bink Pulling that he played D&D just a handful of times, and wasn't even that into it? While I feel for her pain, it's very clear that she went after the easiest target she could find, regardless of truth.

 

[billd91]

Didn't it recently come to light from the guy that DM'ed for Bink Pulling that he played D&D just a handful of times, and wasn't even that into it? While I feel for her pain, it's very clear that she went after the easiest target she could find, regardless of truth.

I'm not sure it would have been the easiest target, but I'm pretty certain it's one she didn't really understand or was pretty far outside of her own experience. And nothing attracts enmity like being "different".

 

[RealAlHazred]

Satanic Panic at the Disco- Did Beelzebubba Cause D&D's First Crash, Y'all?

Yes.

But also, no.

Next question.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'm not sure it would have been the easiest target, but I'm pretty certain it's one she didn't really understand or was pretty far outside of her own experience. And nothing attracts enmity like being "different".

At the time, you could flip a coin between blaming heavy metal or D&D. Or have it land on its edge and blame both.

 

[MGibster]

I totally remember the whole Proctor & Gamble thing being on the news when I was a kid!

For obvious reasons, we tend to focus on D&D when it comes to the Satanic Panic around here, but RPGs were just a tiny part of the panic. Whenever I hear someone say how stupid people were a few centuries ago for believing in witches I just point to the 1980s.

 

[RealAlHazred]

For obvious reasons, we tend to focus on D&D when it comes to the Satanic Panic around here, but RPGs were just a tiny part of the panic. Whenever I hear someone say how stupid people were a few centuries ago for believing in witches I just point to the 1980s.

The 1980s? I saw a new video the other day about a certain group cannibalizing the unborn in secret rituals. No millennium, century, decade, or year has a preponderance of willful ignorance; it's possibly the most common, uh, "resource" in the universe!

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

The 1980s? I saw a new video the other day about a certain group cannibalizing the unborn in secret rituals.

Meet the new blood libel, same as the old blood libel.

 

[David Howery]

The Satanic Panic was always something that happened to people 'way over there', so far as I was concerned. Which was kinda weird in that I grew up in a tiny very conservative MT town, and.... nobody cared. My first published article in Dungeon listed my home town plain and clear, but I never got a single bit of grief over it. Of course, about the only people who knew about it were a fair sized section of the local college population and a handful of HS kids...

 

[dbolack]

But all of this is missing a very salient point about the specific timing. For this, we are going to briefly discuss E.T.- a movie shot in 1981 and released in 1982. In E.T., do you remember who is playing D&D (albeit not called that because Spielberg couldn't get TSR to agree to it)? That's right- the cool older brother and his cool friends.

My memory of this is it was Rolemaster, or was in the novelization - unsure if that was as a result or what.